Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Enact Laws To Obviate The
Possibility Of A Barbarous Outrage; Fix, In Every Sugar Estate, The
Proportion Between The Least
Number of negresses and that of the
labouring negroes; grant liberty to every slave who has served fifteen
years, to
Every negress who has reared four or five children; set them
free on the condition of working a certain number of days for the
profit of the plantation; give the slaves a part of the net produce,
to interest them in the increase of agricultural riches;* fix a sum on
the budget of the public funds, destined for the ransom of slaves, and
the amelioration of their condition - such are the most urgent objects
for colonial legislation. (* General Lafayette, whose name is linked
with all that promises to contribute to the liberty of man and the
happiness of mankind, conceived, in the year 1785, the project of
purchasing a settlement at Cayenne, and to divide it among the blacks
by whom it was cultivated and in whose favour the proprietor renounced
for himself and his descendants all benefit whatever. He had
interested in this noble enterprise the priests of the Mission of the
Holy Ghost, who themselves possessed lands in French Guiana. A letter
from Marshal de Castries, dated 6th June, 1785, proves that the
unfortunate Louis XVI, extending his beneficent intentions to the
blacks and free men of colour, had ordered similar experiments to be
made at the expense of Government. M. de Richeprey, who was appointed
by M. de Lafayette to superintend the partition of the lands among the
blacks, died from the effects of the climate at Cayenne.)
The Conquest on the continent of Spanish America and the slave-trade
in the West Indies, in Brazil, and in the southern parts of the United
States, have brought together the most heterogeneous elements of
population. This strange mixture of Indians, whites, negroes,
mestizos, mulattoes and zambos is accompanied by all the perils which
violent and disorderly passion can engender, at those critical periods
when society, shaken to its very foundations, begins a new era. At
those junctures, the odious principle of the Colonial System, that of
security, founded on the hostility of castes, and prepared during
ages, has burst forth with violence. Fortunately the number of blacks
has been so inconsiderable in the new states of the Spanish continent
that, with the exception of the cruelties exercised in Venezuela,
where the royalist party armed their slaves, the struggle between the
independents and the soldiers of the mother country was not stained by
the vengeance of the captive population. The free men of colour
(blacks, mulattoes and mestizoes) have warmly espoused the national
cause; and the copper-coloured race, in its timid distrust and
passiveness, has taken no part in movements from which it must profit
in spite of itself. The Indians, long before the revolution, were poor
and free agriculturists; isolated by their language and manners they
lived apart from the whites. If, in contempt of Spanish laws, the
cupidity of the corregidores and the tormenting system of the
missionaries often restricted their liberty, that state of vexatious
oppression was far different from personal slavery like that of the
slavery of the blacks, or of the vassalage of the peasantry in the
Sclavonian part of Europe.
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