rance, and succeeded in securing
a demand for the admission of colonial deputies in at least fourteen
cahiers of primary assemblies. Repeated applications were made to
Necker and to the Minister of Marine, but without result, and when the
Estates-General opened the representatives of San Domingo had no legal
standing. Nevertheless part of the deputies presented themselves on
June 8, making application separately to each of the three orders.

The third estate alone proved receptive. On June 20, eight San Domingo
deputies were allowed to take the Tennis Court Oath. On June 27 the
Committee on Credentials made a report unanimously recommending the
admission of the colonial deputation but declared itself unable to
agree on the number of deputies to which the colony was properly
entitled. The Assembly accepted the report, apparently without a
dissenting voice, and postponed discussion of the question of numbers
to June 3. This brought squarely before the Assembly the delicate
problem of slavery and the status of free-blacks under the new regime,
and brought upon the colonial delegation the wrath of the powerful
Society of the Friends of the Blacks.

The Friends of the Blacks recognized in this San Domingo delegation a
foe. Mirabeau's newspaper challenged their right to count the slaves
as a basis of representation, and taunted them with bitter words.
"Either count your Negroes as men or as beasts; if they are men, free
them, let them vote, let them be elected to office. If they are
cattle, let the number of deputies be proportional to your human
population; we have counted neither our horses nor our mules."[4]

Between the vote of admission on June 27 and the final debate on July
3 and 4 the Friends of the Blacks awoke to the importance of the
issue. Condorcet published a vigorous pamphlet denouncing the slave
holder and all his works. "We are tempted," said he, "to advocate a
law which shall exclude from the National Assembly every man, who, as
a slave holder, is interested in the maintenance of principles
contrary to the natural rights of man, which are the only purpose of
every political organization.... The natural rights of man to be
governed only by laws to which he has given his consent cannot be
invoked in favor of a man who is himself at the very moment violating
the law of nature." The pamphlet closes with the remark that the
planters can doubtless speak concerning their own interests, "but that
on their lips th