I repeat, that at the time at which he wrote, he had reason, or at least known facts gave him reason, to say this; the liberty of the blacks had then but one name—­St. Domingo.  To-day, the victories of Christian emancipation have come, to contrast with the catastrophes provoked by impenitent despotism.

The English Colonies bear a striking analogy to the Southern States of the Union.  The blacks there are numerous, more numerous even in proportion to the whites than in the Carolinas or Florida.  The climate is even more scorching, and the cultures demand still more imperiously the labor of the blacks.  As to the prejudices of the masters, I dare affirm that the planters of the Continent and those of the Antilles have not long had any thing with which to reproach each other.  Notwithstanding, what has happened in the Antilles?  Not only has liberty been proclaimed—­this was the act of the metropolis—­but the coexistence of races has subsisted.  It is to this point that I claim attention.  They, the whites and the blacks, alike free, invested with the same privileges, exercising the same rights, encountering each other in the ranks of the militia, in the magistracy, and even in the seats of the colonial assemblies, admirably accept this life in common.  And the whites there, observe, are Anglo-Saxons; that is, they belong to that race which is declared incapable of enduring free blacks in its neighborhood.

It is necessary to appeal sometimes from those axioms so boldly laid down, which serve us to make inflexible laws for that which must be subject in an infinite measure to the mobility of circumstances and influences.  The influence of the Gospel, especially, is a fact, the scope of which is never sufficiently measured.  It has created in the Antilles a negro population which maintains its equality face to face with the whites, yet which does not entirely reject their patronage; a dependent population which is also a free population, free in the most absolute sense of the word.  The blacks of the Antilles labor on the plantations, and secure the success of large plantations; but, at the same time, they themselves become landholders, forming by degrees one of the happiest and most remarkable classes of peasants that ever existed.  Their little fields, their pretty villages, manifest real prosperity; and there is something among them that is worth more than prosperity, there is moral progress, the development of intellect, and the elevation of souls.

It will be demanded of us if, in the midst of so much progress, the production of sugar has not suffered.  I answer that, on the contrary, it has increased.  It had been predicted that emancipation would be a death-blow to the British colonies.  I suspect that many people are even yet persuaded of it; now, in spite of the faults committed by the planters, who have neglected nothing to disgust the negroes with labor and to drive them from their old mills, they are found to return to them, contenting themselves