have appeared a second time among the slaves of Hayti. Toussaint has been accused of harshness and cruelty. I am not prepared to affirm that the charges are without foundation. But it is equally true that his enemies have done their utmost to point out stains in his character. Unfortunately, the means for a thorough investigation are wholly wanting. It has also been said that he was an adept at dissimulation. But secrecy in his circumstances was both needful and virtuous; and if the study of secrecy on his part was undue, let the failing be set down against him at its full value. It has even been intimated that when in power he yielded to the fascinations of the accomplished creole women of the Cape. But the intimation, faint and indirect as it is, rests on no solid grounds. In truth, it was impossible that a man of the origin and aims of Toussaint L'Ouverture should have escaped the shafts of calumny, and, after all due abatements are made, enough of excellence remains to command our admiration and win our esteem. While, however, the world has seen but one Toussaint L'Ouverture, this history sets forth many black men who were possessed of great faculties, and accomplished great deeds. And though the instance of their chief only shows what an elevation men with a black skin may possibly attain, there are in the general tenour of this narrative proofs very numerous and irrefragable, that in the ordinary powers and virtues which form the texture and the ornament of civilized life, an African origin and negro blood involve no essential disqualification. Very clear, certainly, has it appeared that whether in its rights, its wrongs, its penalties, or its rewards, Justice—the ever-living daughter of the eternal God, and the ever-present and ever-active administratrix of Divine Providence-knows nothing whatever of the distinctions, the prejudices, the dislikes, or the preferences of colour. An injury done to a European ceases not to be an injury when the sufferer is an African. Nor are breakers of God's laws punished with less severity within the tropics than they are in the temperate zones. Slavery, which is the essence and the concentration of injustice-Slavery, which from its foundation to its top-stone is one huge and frightful accumula tion of wrongs, of wrongs the hugest and the direst-Slavery, which is the worst form of treachery to man and treason against God, entails vengeance the most terrible, the most awful; vengeance not less sure than dreadful. Alas! that in the scourge the innocent should suffer as well as the guilty. The thought would sink the mind in grief, were it not attended by the conviction that "the hour cometh" when the righteous shall shine as stars in the firmament for ever and ever. The family of Toussaint L'Ouverture received the news of his death with the deepest grief. They wept and wailed, and refused to be comforted because he was not. Under a pretence that they contemplated escape, those innocent persons were transferred from Bayonne to Agen, where they found friends worthy of themselves. When Saint Jean L'Ouverture heard of his father's death, he declared that he should not long survive him. The saying was too true. The effects of the climate on a naturally weak constitution brought him to the tomb ere he had quitted the period of youth. His death almost caused the death of his female cousin, from whom he received in his sickness the most tender and vigilant cares. Shortly after, the family succeeded in obtaining the favour that Placide L'Ouverture should quit his place of detention and reside with them at Agen. Madame Toussaint L'Ouverture, who was beloved and revered alike by her husband and her children, survived that husband and her youngest son for several years, without being able to overcome the grief which their loss occasioned, and which was so deep and constant as to undermine her faculties. She died, in 1816, in the arms of her sons, Placide and Isaac L'Ouver ture. The history of L'Ouverture placed by the side of the history of Bonaparte, presents a number of striking parallels. Both born in a humble position, they raised themselves to the height of power by the force of their genius and the intense energy of their character. Both gained renown in legislation and government as well as in war. Both fell the moment they had attained supreme authority. Both were betrayed by pretended friends, and delivered into the hands of embittered foes. Both were severed from their families. Both finished their lives on a barren rock. The parallels have their contrasts. Toussaint L'Ouverture fought for liberty; Bonaparte fought for himself. Toussaint L'Ouverture gained fame and power, by leading an oppressed and injured race to the successful vindication of their rights; Bonaparte made himself a name and acquired a sceptre by supplanting liberty and destroying nationalities, in order to substitute his own illegitimate despotism. The fall of Toussaint L'Ouverture was a voluntary retirement from power, accompanied by a voluntary renunciation of authority, under circumstances which seemed to guarantee that freedom the attainment of which had been the sole object of his efforts; the fall of Bonaparte was the forced abdication of a throne which was regarded as a European nuisance, and descent from which was a virtual acknowledgment that he had utterly failed in the purposes of his life. In the treachery which they underwent, on one side, Toussaint L'Ouverture was the victim and Bonaparte the seducer; and on the other side, the former suffered from those who had been his enemies, the latter from those who in profession were his constant friends. And in the rupture of their domestic ties, Bonaparte was the injurer, Toussaint L'Ouverture the injured. Nor is it easy to bring one's mind to the conclusion, that retribution was wholly absent in the facts to which allusion has just been made. The punishment is too like the crime to be regarded as accidental. Toussaint's domestic bereavement was requited by Bonaparte's domestic sorrows. The drear solitude of the castle of Joux was experienced over again at Saint Helena by him who inflicted the penalty. Strange to say, it was a friend of the negroes—namely, Admiral Maitland—that conducted the Corsican to his prison. And as if to make the correspondence the more complete, and the retribution the more potent, by an exchange of extreme localities, the man of the temperate regions was transferred to the tropics, to atone for his crime in transferring the man of the tropics to the killing frosts of the temperate regions. Resembling each other in several points of their calamities and pains, the two differed in that which is the dividing line between the happy and the wretched; for while, with Bonaparte, God was a name, with Toussaint L'Ouverture, God was at once the sole reality and the sovereign good.* * See Note C, at the end. BOOK IV. FROM THE EVACUATION OF HAYTI BY THE FRENCH TO THE PRESENT TIME. CHAPTER I. Dessalines promises safety to the Whites, but bitterly persecutes them-Becomes Emperor of Hayti-Sanctions a wise constitution-Yields to vice and folly, and is dethroned and slain. THE retirement of the French forces from the island of Saint Domingo, shortly after the death of Toussaint L'Ouverture, assured the natives of the essential goodness of their cause, and the genuine vigour of their strength. Aforetime, they had been making experiments; now, success gave them a consciousness of superiority. Even when robbed of their national hero, they had destroyed their foe and achieved their independence. From that moment, the blacks, who formed the bulk of the inhabitants, believed themselves invincible. Whatever Europeans were in Europe, in Saint Domingo they were clearly inferior to Africans. There had been a great trial of strength, and white tyranny, having been worsted in the encounter, must submit to its own law-the law of the stronger. In their hyperbolical language the blacks asked, "What fleet, what army, what warriors can in future bring us slavery? At their approach, should we not behold the form of a giant, the angry genius of our native land, raise the tempests with his powerful hand, and break in pieces and scatter their ships? The laws of nature obey his puissant voice; the plague, conflagration, prison, and famine, follow in his footsteps; but without the aid of this genius, whose arms are the elements, have we not souls hardened in adversity, and now |