The Present State of Hayti (Saint Domingo) with Remarks on its Agriculture, Commerce, Laws, Religion, Finances, and Population

Christophe had not long been at the head of the government before a competitor for the supreme authority started up in the person of Alexandre Petion, a mulatto, who had succeeded to the command held by Clerveaux, after the death of that general, and was subsequently commander-in-chief at Port au Prince. Petion was greatly respected by the people; he was of a mild and attractive manner, and possessed talents of a very superior order. He had been educated in France, and served in the French armies, in which he had acquired the rank of a field officer. He was a skilful engineer, in which capacity, it appears, he had rendered the most essential services to Toussaint and Dessalines, from both of whom he received the greatest marks of attention and advancement in his military rank. He was induced to aim at the sovereign authority at the instigation of the population of the southern and western districts, the largest proportion of which were persons of colour; and the blacks in the same division were much inclined to support his claims, his general deportment and his known talents having inspired them with confidence and esteem.

Both chiefs now began to have recourse to arms, and Christophe, who had succeeded in many of the rencontres which had taken place, secured the whole of the north; but on his advancing to the south, and making an attempt on Port au Prince, he failed, returned to his seat of government at Cape François, and began to shew a disposition towards peace and the prosecution of those designs which he meditated for insuring the tranquillity of his country, and promoting the happiness of the people.

In the February following he published his new constitution, in which the Catholic religion is declared to be the religion of the state, and every other religion is tolerated. For the better encouragement of commerce and an intercourse with foreigners, it is declared “that the government solemnly guarantees the foreign merchants the security of their persons and properties.”

He began also to make great advancement in the instruction of youth, and contemplated the establishment of public schools, so soon as the state of the country should be sufficiently tranquillized to enable him to carry his intentions into effect.

In a proclamation which he subsequently issued, he dwells strongly on the subject of agriculture, and expresses an anxiety, beyond his ordinary solicitude, for the encouragement of that great source of national wealth. He makes a most forcible and powerful appeal to the people, exhorting them to an unceasing application to the culture of the lands, by the produce of which foreigners would be attracted to their ports, to enter into an exchange for the products of their own countries, as well as for money, whereby their country would advance in wealth, and themselves in happiness and prosperity. Being uninformed as to the line of politics which foreign countries might adopt towards them, he declared it to be his wish to remain quiet until they had made their decision, expressing a hope only that it might be such as would be favourable to their commerce, and tend to cement an intercourse founded on a basis of reciprocity.

The declaration often made by Christophe, that he never would permit an interference with the colonies of any European state, was often questioned and never believed to be sincere; but an event occurred which at once proved his sincerity, and called forth the approbation of the British government. Discovering that some individuals in the southern parts of the island were intriguing with those persons in the island of Jamaica who were hostile to their government, he immediately arrested them, and brought them to punishment for infringing the declaration which he had so often made. The British government viewed this act of Christophe in a very favourable light; and in consequence of his integrity, it permitted an intercourse with certain ports in Hayti, by an order of council of February, 1807. This contributed greatly to increase the commercial views of Christophe, and became of considerable importance to the Haytians, as well as beneficial to British merchants.

In the year 1811, Christophe was raised to the throne, under the title of King Henry, an act which seems to have had the approbation of the majority, if not of the whole of his subjects who were endowed with talents to discriminate. They were of opinion that the conversion of the state into a monarchy suited the exigences of the times, as more likely to make them respected abroad, and maintain their rights at home; putting it ever out of their consideration that it was an act only of gratitude, that they should manifest their sentiments of attachment for one who had, through a long career of war and desolation, rendered such important services in the cause of liberty.

The act which raised him to the throne provided also for the establishment of the various offices of state, and made other important arrangements for the security of the crown, declared hereditary in the family of Christophe, all of which met with a general concurrence, and gave the fullest satisfaction to the people.

I shall not pursue my narrative of the operations of the respective chiefs who were now at the heads of the governments of the north and the south, but merely notice a few circumstances which appeared most prominent in the proceedings of each.

About the period of the elevation of Christophe to the throne of the northern part of Hayti, a cessation of hostilities between him and his rival took place, through, it is generally believed, the intercession of the British government, who interposed to stop the further effusion of blood between the two chieftains, and if possible to reconcile them to the government of their respective divisions, without encroaching on each other, or without again exciting that jealousy which had so long existed between them. The application to the British government to take upon itself directly the adjustment of their differences, and to suggest a reconciliation on specific terms, was entrusted to the charge of a British merchant in the confidence of Petion, who, from his reverses, seemed to court a peace with his rival. Lord Castlereagh, the then secretary of state for foreign affairs in England, it is believed, declined to interfere when applied to upon the subject, the nature of the application being such as to preclude the British cabinet taking any part in it. Petion solicited the aid of England to preserve his dominions against the encroachment of his rival, in return for which he offered to place the trade of the British upon a more favourable footing than that of any other nation: motives however of a political urgency in the then state of the colonies of Great Britain induced his lordship to reject the proposition; but it is understood, and I believe generally admitted, that there was an indirect suggestion made to Christophe to suspend hostilities, and which succeeded; for we do not perceive that any acts of aggression were subsequently committed by either chief. It is also true that Petion lowered the imposts on British goods imported into his country from 12 to 7 per cent., giving them a preference of 5 per cent. over those of other neutral nations.

Hostilities having been suspended, both these chiefs began to turn their attention towards the improvement of their dominions, and to use every possible effort for the encouragement of agriculture and commerce; but they certainly pursued quite opposite courses to attain their end; and in a few years it was evident, that the one who adopted a system of rigid enforcement raised his country into affluence, whilst the other who submitted to the indolent habits of his people, and was regardless of the consequences that would ensue from too great a supineness and inactivity, sunk it into the lowest state of poverty, and was necessitated to resort to measures which finally proved its ruin. I shall offer a few remarks on the respective characters of these two individuals, by way of shewing their different ideas of the people whom they governed, and of the most effectual way of raising their country to wealth and prosperity.

Christophe, there is no doubt, was the most conversant with the real character and disposition of his countrymen. He was sensibly impressed with the idea, that to govern them, it would be requisite and imperative to resort to strong and powerful measures, and not to proceed by slow and easy degrees: he knew that if he were once to relax in his authority, and permit them to pursue their own course, indolence would become so deeply rooted, that to obtain any exertions from them hereafter, would prove a most Herculean task, and in all probability lay the foundation of much irritation, if not of disturbance. He was persuaded therefore, that, before it would be possible to raise his country in wealth and in happiness, an implicit obedience to such regulations as he should deem adviseable, must be enforced; that if the people were left to their own free agency, from their innate love of indolence, nothing could be obtained from them: they would wander about quite unconcerned for to-morrow, satisfied with that which the day had produced. He knew that the negro race were prone to idleness and addicted to lust and sensuality; that they were ignorant of the duties of civilized life, and of the ties which bound them together; and it was a matter of the first importance for the consideration of those who were to direct the affairs of state, to devise the means by which they should be taught their duty to their country; that idleness and concupiscence were vices of the worst cast; and that unless an upright and moral course were pursued, they could neither expect improvement in their individual condition, nor advance themselves in the opinions of mankind. To accomplish these objects, he was fully aware, or, at all events, his advisers had made him sensible of it, would be a work of no ordinary difficulty, and that unless obedience could be legally exacted, and the people compelled to the performance of all civil obligations, it would only be a waste of time to attempt to rule, or to endeavour to place the government on a solid and permanent foundation.

With such impressions as these, Christophe and his council and advisers set about a work, which, whatever may be said of them as legislators, exhibits no little share of talent and judgment. His Code Henry made its appearance in 1812; it is a digest of the laws passed for the government of the kingdom, and seems to have provided for every class of offences. Some of its laws are new, and others are founded upon the laws of his predecessors, with such judicious curtailments or additions as circumstances seemed to require. Those of agriculture and commerce are decidedly such as were in force in the time of Toussaint and Dessalines; and as they were effectual, and tended highly to augment those sources of national wealth, it displayed great discernment and discretion in Christophe to adopt them as part of his code.

With this shield for the executive administration of the government, Christophe began to exact a due observance of all those measures likely to be beneficial to his country. He enforced attention to agriculture, encouraged commerce with foreigners, whom he led to his ports by extensive purchases of their commodities to supply the wants of his government, and he made rapid strides towards the advancement of education by establishing schools for the instruction of youth, and by inviting men of learning and talents from all countries, for the purpose of presiding at the head of the institutions which he had formed for the promotion of science. His regulations unquestionably display sound views of policy, which ought to have ensured the welfare of the country, together with the security and happiness of its people.

It has been often asserted that the negroes are as capable of receiving instruction in morality, religion, and every branch of science, as the people of any other nation or colour. This I shall not attempt to deny; but it may not be improper to say that very few instances have yet been adduced to support such a theory, and that Hayti is an illustration of the contrary being the fact; for with all the advantages, with all the opportunities which Christophe afforded his people to improve their minds, and to seek for knowledge in the various branches of science, very few indeed have been found who have raised themselves above mediocrity, whilst thousands have been found incapable of tuition, or have rejected instruction altogether.

Mazeres, in speaking of them, says, “The negro is only a grown child, shallow, light, fickle, thoughtless, neither keenly sensible of joy or of sorrow, improvident, without resources in his spirits or his soul. Careless, like other sluggards; rest, singing, his women, and his dress form the contracted limits of his taste. I say nothing of his affections, for affections, properly so called, are too strong for a soul so soft, so inactive as his.”6

On the subject of public instruction, which, the same writer contends, can never be introduced into Hayti, because there cannot be found people to comprehend its true virtues, he says, “There cannot be found throughout the dominions of Christophe ten men who can read fluently; and there certainly cannot be found one sufficiently learned to comprehend the meaning of the words military tactics, geography, mathematics, fortification, &c.”

Mazeres is certainly not altogether wrong; his observations in the first paragraph are correct, with the exception of his opinion of the affections of the negro. It must, I think, be admitted that the affections of the negro race are somewhat warm and unalloyed; and in no instance are they so feelingly illustrated as in the solicitude evinced by the negro for his offspring. To his children his attachment is strong and unalienable; and he displays it on leaving his home with the greatest fervour, and on his return with every mark of gratitude and joy. Mazeres would wish to sink the affections of the negro to a condition below the instinct of the brute creation; but that he is wrong I can pronounce from experience, not only in Hayti, but in other quarters in which that species of the human race exists. In his second paragraph, he has gone too far in saying, not “ten men can read fluently”; but if he had asserted that, at the period of the revolution, when the first acts of rebellion commenced, a few only could “read fluently,” I think he would not have been wrong, for I do not find that among the blacks, at that period, any were at all learned, or had any skill or knowledge in those branches of science which he particularizes. This is exemplified in Toussaint, Dessalines, and Christophe, not one of whom, at the commencement of the struggle, had been instructed in even the common branches of education. Dessalines in particular could neither read nor write, with the simple exception of signing his name. All the three chiefs were indebted to foreigners for the elegant style of language in which their proclamations were written; and it is too great a stretch of vanity and egotism to attribute them to the citizens of the country, when it is so notorious that most of those papers which issued from the bureau of Christophe, and from the bureau of Count Limonade, were written by Europeans, whom the former had admitted into his confidence, and who were consulted by the latter on all occasions of importance. Baron Dupuy was doubtless a man well qualified for the office he held as secretary to the king (Christophe), and to whom has been given the credit of many of the state papers of his sable majesty, and I know that such a compliment is no more than what is justly due to his talents; but were he present, he would declare that he derived the highest possible assistance, in his productions, from one or two foreigners who were acquainted with the technicalities of official correspondence, to which the Baron had not been accustomed, and who therefore generally undertook to correct any part of it that required such labour.

Baron de Vastey, who is a warm advocate for the genius and talents of his countrymen, and exceedingly severe upon the opinion of Mazeres, says, “See the grown children planning the construction of impregnable fortresses, building palaces, calculating almanacks, possessing black writers, poets, and ministers of state.” Now I really have not been able to discover where these impregnable fortresses, planned by Haytians, are to be found. I believe that when the Baron wrote there was not one single fortification erected from the design of a Haytian; they were the old works of the French repaired, where such repairs were wanted. The Citadel Henry, or Fort Ferrier, is the only new fortress of which I have heard, and that was not constructed from the design of a Haytian, but from the plan of a British officer, from whom it takes one of its appellations, Ferrier. The same thing is true with respect to the palace Sans Souci. The only merit to which the Haytians can lay claim, in the erection of these works, is the preparing the materials, and the labour of carrying them to the spot on which they are built: for the whole of those materials for building which could not be obtained on the spot, were carried from other parts on the shoulders of the people, and Christophe compelled blacks and browns, young and old, boys and girls, of all ages and denominations of citizens, to perform that labour which ought to have been performed by brutes. Young and interesting girls were to be seen carrying bricks or boards up the mountains, almost ready to sink under their loads, followed by soldiers with fixed bayonets or the sabre; but on this subject both De Vastey and Prince Saunders are silent. As to writers and poets, I have only heard of those now mentioned, De Vastey and Larnders, except Chandlatte, Count de Roziers, who, I imagine, being something of poet-laureate to the king, governor-general of the play-house, prepared pieces for representation, teeming with the most fulsome compliments to the monarch’s virtues, and wrote sonnets to the peerless beauties of the queen and the princesses. Here, I believe, ends the catalogue of architects, poets, and writers of Hayti; and unless the Baron de Vastey can adduce other proofs of Haytian capacities, I must be excused if I still remain sceptical. I must wait to see what time and a further intercourse with the world will accomplish; at present but little of that improvement manifests itself which has been the subject of so much praise and admiration. That the people of Hayti should improve, and that society should become refined, I confess I wish may be realized, but at this moment it is very distant from it.

Christophe was particularly anxious to improve the face of his country, by making every exertion to divest it of all those appearances of dilapidation effected during the war; and by commanding all the nobility, and persons attached to the state, to erect magnificent houses on their estates, and otherwise to ornament the plantations in the vicinity of their residences, so as to give the whole an air of grandeur equal, if not superior, to former times; but in this he did not succeed, except in a few instances, the poverty of the people who had been raised to their new dignities, putting it out of their power to comply with his demand.

After the fall of Bonaparte in 1814, the ministers of Louis XVIII. sent out commissioners to Hayti to try what could be accomplished by a negotiation with the two chiefs on the subject of the admission of France to the sovereignty of the island. By these emissaries an indirect menace was held out, forgetting that by harsh measures no good could be done. De Medina, who was the commissioner deputed to Christophe, had served in the army of Toussaint, and afterwards betrayed his cause and joined Le Clerc. Such an individual was an object of considerable suspicion to Christophe, and from some irregularity which ensued respecting the credentials of Medina, he was arrested, and his papers seized. On the examination of the papers, it was discovered that his aim was to excite insurrection and disorder among the people, and endeavour to prevail upon them to recognize Louis XVIII. as their sovereign, that monarch assuring them of his paternal solicitude, and of his pledge that they should retain their property and military rank.

Christophe brought Medina to trial, and he was found guilty by a military tribunal of the charges which had been alleged against him. He was committed to the prison of the Cape, and it was said died in confinement; but no accounts were given afterwards respecting him, or of the fate which befell him.

Monsieur Lavaysse, who seems to have been the chief commissioner, and who had at the same time proceeded to Port au Prince, for the purpose of carrying on a similar negociation with Petion, met with no better success, – except that having been more cautious he avoided the fate of Medina, – as that chief was well informed of the nature of his mission, and was prepared to give a decided negative to the propositions of the French crown; and the rejection of his proposals was conveyed to M. Lavaysse in a way very flattering to him, nothing being evinced like the passion or violence exhibited by Christophe during the progress of these negociations.

I happened to be in Jamaica at the time of the arrival of the French commissioners, who touched there on their passage for Hayti; and I was often in company with Lavaysse after his return from his unsuccessful mission, and I heard him speak in high terms of the conduct of Petion for promptness and decision, whilst he was warm against the harshness of Christophe. This however might have emanated from the former offering to the French a pecuniary indemnity for his dominions, although he would not recognize France as having the sovereignty; whilst Christophe would receive no proposals from France on the one hand, nor would he submit to any claim for pecuniary compensation on the other.

After the failure of this mission, the French king declared officially that Monsieur Lavaysse had exceeded the power which had been delegated to him; but such a disavowal had no effect on the people, who were more determined than ever to resist the admission of French influence into the country. Other attempts were afterwards made, and commissioners were appointed to proceed to Hayti, with powers from the king of France; but although they proceeded round the island, and sent letters on shore at different places, yet they received no attention, and consequently they thought it advisable to give up the object of their mission as impracticable; and I believe no attempt was afterwards made during the sway of either of these chiefs.

As Hayti might then be considered perfectly secure of her independence, and as a strong feeling pervaded the people of the north as well as the south against the French, the two governments, although there had not been any relations of amity established between them, proceeded in the work of civilization and general improvement in their divisions, without being apprehensive that their tranquillity would be interrupted by the encroachments of either. Christophe was unquestionably, as has been before observed, better qualified than his rival to govern a people like the Haytians, from his being naturally of a determined and resolute temper, and not to be alarmed by the consequences of his measures, however tyrannical, harsh, or oppressive; and therefore, aided as he was by men of capacity, he enforced so rigid a system of government, and exacted from the people so complete a submission to his will, that the north, over which he reigned, presented an aspect of affairs quite different from that of the south. Agriculture was smiling, the produce of the soil increasing considerably, whilst commerce was making rapid progress, and bidding fair to become equally advantageous to the state. Both contributed to the revenue, making it sufficiently ample for all the exigences of government, and consequently there were no calls upon the people of any importance in the way of taxation.

The government of Petion, on the other hand, relapsed into a system of relaxation which subsequently proved the bane of his country, and ultimately brought upon him all those unhappy difficulties which he experienced previously to his death. After he had permitted his people to follow their own indolent inclinations, and indulge in the propensities inherent in the negro race, he found it impossible to prosecute measures for the advancement of the wealth and prosperity of his country similar to those which his rival had so successfully pursued. Agriculture had sunk to the lowest possible ebb, the cultivators being allowed to follow their own inclinations. Instead therefore of industry and a spirit of emulation displaying itself through his dominions, scarcely any thing was to be seen but men and their families indulging in idleness, and in those lusts and vices which could only entail wretchedness on themselves, and poverty on their country.