other. Naturally he asked himself what others had thought and said of slavery. He had heard passages recited from Raynal.* He procured the work. And now he found how much is involved in the simple art of reading. Toussaint could read,— Toussaint did read. He read passages similar to what follows, and he became the vindicator of negro freedom :

"Scarcely had domestic liberty revived in Europe, when it was entombed in America. The Spaniard, whom the waves first threw on the shores of the New World, believed himself under no obligation to its inhabitants, for they had not his colour, or his customs, or his religion. He saw in them only his instruments, and he loaded them with chains. Those feeble men, unused to toil, soon perished from the vapours of the mines, and other occupations almost as baneful. Then arose a demand for slaves from Africa. Their numbers increased in proportion as cultivation extended. The Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, the French, the Danes—all nations, whether free or in serfdom, remorselessly sought an augmentation of fortune in the sweat, in the blood, in the despair of these poor wretches;— what a frightful system!

"Liberty is every one's own property. There are three kinds of liberty-natural liberty, civil liberty, political liberty; that is to say, the liberty of the man, the liberty of the citizen, and the liberty of the community. Natural liberty is the right which nature has given to every one to dispose of himself according to his own will. Civil liberty is the right which society ought to guarantee to every citizen to do all that is not contrary to the laws. Political liberty is the condition of a people which has not alienated its own sovereignty, and which makes its own laws, or which is in part associated in its legislation.

"The first of these liberties is, next to reason, the distinctive characteristic of man. We subdue and enchain the brute, because it has no notion of justice or injustice-no idea of greatness and degradation. But in me liberty is the principle of my

* Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissemens et du Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes, par G. T. Raynal. Geneva, 1780.

vices and my virtues. It is only the free man who can say, I will, or, I will not; and who can, consequently, be worthy of praise and blame. Without liberty, or the possession of one's own body and the enjoyment of one's own mind, there is neither husband, father, relation nor friend; we have no country, no fellow-citizen, no God. The slave, an instrument in the hands of wickedness, is below the dog which the Spaniard let loose against the American; for conscience, which the dog lacks, remains with the man. He who basely resigns his liberty, devotes himself to remorse and to the greatest misery that a sensible and thinking creature can experience. If there is no power under heaven that can change my organisation, and convert me into a brute, there is none that can dispose of my liberty. God is my Father and not my master. I am his child, not his slave. How, then, could I accord to political power that which I refuse to Divine omnipotence?

"These are immovable and eternal truths-the foundation of all morality, the basis of all government; will they be contested? yes! and it will be a barbarous and sordid avarice which will commit the audacious homicide. Cast your eye on that shipowner, who, bent over his desk, regulates, with pen in hand, the number of crimes which he may commit on the coast of Guinea; who, at his leisure, examines what number of muskets will be needed to obtain a negro, what number of chains to hold him bound on board his vessel, what number of whips to make him work: who coolly calculates how much will cost him each drop of the blood with which his slave will water his plantation; who discusses whether the negress will give more or less to his estate by the labours of her feeble hands than by the dangers of child-birth. You shudder?-ah! if there existed a religion which tolerated, which authorized, if only by its silence, horrors like these; if, occupied with idle or contentious questions, it did not ceaselessly thunder against the authors or the instruments of this tyranny; if it made it a crime for the slave to break his chains; if it suffered in its bosom the unjust judge who condemned the fugitive to death;—if this religion existed, would it not be necessary that its altars should be broken down and left

in ruins? Who are you who will dare to justify crimes against my independence, on the ground that you are the stronger? What! he who makes me a slave not guilty? He makes use of his rights? What, then, are those rights? Who has given them a character sacred enough to put my rights to silence? I hold from nature the right of self-defence; she has not given you the right to attack me. If you think yourself authorized to oppress me because you are stronger and more alert than I, do not complain when, after my hand becomes vigorous, it shall plant a dagger in your heart; do not complain when you shall feel in your veins that death which I shall have mingled with your food. Now I am the stronger and the more alert, it is your turn to be the victim; expiate the crime of having been an oppressor.

"But,' it is said, 'slavery has been generally established in all countries and in all ages.' True;-but what consequence is it what other nations have done in other ages? Ought the appeal to be to customs or to conscience? Is it interest, blindness, barbarity, or reason and justice, that we ought to listen to? If the universality of a practice proved its innocence, the apology of usurpations, conquests, and oppression of all kinds would irrefutably be completed.

"But the ancients,' you say, 'thought themselves masters of the lives of their slaves; we, having become more humane, dispose only of their liberty and their labour.' It is true, the progress of knowledge has on this important point given light to modern legislators. All codes, without an exception, have taken precautions to guard the life of even the man who pines away in servitude. They have put his existence under the protection of the magistrate. But has this, the most sacred of social institutions, ever had its due force? Is not America peopled with colonists who, usurping sovereign rights, inflict death on the unfortunate victims of their avarice? But suppose the law observed, would the slave materially gain thereby? Does not the master who employs my strength, dispose of my life, which depends on the voluntary and moderate use of my faculties? What is existence for him who has no property in it? I cannot kill my slave, but I may cause his blood to flow drop by drop under the driver's whip; I may overwhelm him with