affic. But
doubtless we ought to begin by renouncing the perfidious means of inflaming
their cupidity and their passions. The articles which they are the most
desirous to obtain from us, ought to be the price of the produce of the
soil, and no longer the means of exchange, and the aliment of this dreadful
traffic in human flesh. It would, however, be proper that, as long as
slaves should continue to arrive from the interior, the whites might buy
them. This permission should be granted for a time, and in a certain extent
of country. Their slavery should also be limited to ten years, as we have
said above, and their moral and physical improvement, should be directed in
such a manner as to attach them to the soil by exciting in them the love of
property.

The laws and institutions which govern the mother country, would
incontrovertibly be applicable to the new establishments. It would
certainly be presumable, that on account of particular considerations of
moral and political order, it would be proper to allow local regulations,
in forming which, all proprietors enjoying the rights of citizenship, ought
to participate, without any distinction of colour. It would especially be
highly important, that the regulations for the government of the slaves,
should be founded on mildness and humanity, that prudent and enlightened
persons should superintend the execution of them, and have the necessary
authority to prevent abuses, and to secure to the slave the protection of
the law.

In order to obtain these results, it is evident that it would be no less
essential to preserve the colonies from the scourge of arbitrary authority,
from the excesses of power, which always accompany abuses, injustice, and
corruption. When favor and caprice are the only laws that are attended to;
when intrigue supplies the place of merit; when cupidity succeeds to
honorable industry; when vice and meanness are titles to distinctions, and
the true means of making a fortune; when honours are no longer synonimous
with honour; then society presents only disorder and anarchy, then people
renounce obscure virtue, and laborious acquisition to follow the easy ways
of corruption; then enlightened men, for whom public esteem is a sterile
recommendation, the true servants of the king, the faithful friends of
their country, are forced to disappear, to withdraw from employments, and
the interest of the public, as well as that of humanity, is miserably
sacrificed to