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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In Preparing The Way For The Accomplishment
Of This Task, Which Ought To Embrace A Great Part Of The Archipelago
Of the West Indies, it may be useful to cast a retrospective glance on
the events by which the freedom
Of a considerable part of the human
race was obtained in Europe in the middle ages. In order to ameliorate
without commotion new institutions must be made, as it were, to rise
out of those which the barbarism of centuries has consecrated. It will
one day seem incredible that until the year 1826 there existed no law
in the Great Antilles to prevent the sale of young infants and their
separation from their parents, or to prohibit the degrading custom of
marking the negroes with a hot iron, merely to enable these human
cattle to be more easily recognized. 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.
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