Though the abolition of the slave trade has been proclaimed, yet the present slaves must be led to liberty only in a progressive manner.  The whites who are possessed of negroes, should not be allowed to prolong their possession and their dominion over them, beyond the space of ten years, and without being permitted to resell them during that period.  During these ten years, the negroes should be prepared for their new condition as well by instruction as by the successive amelioration of their situation; it would be necessary gradually to relax the chain of slavery; and by affording them means to lay up a part of the produce of their labour, inspire them with the desire, and the necessity of possessing something of their own.

After these ten years, which may be called a Noviciate, it is to be presumed, that if lands were granted to them upon advantageous conditions, fixed before hand, if they were furnished in case of need, with the agricultural instruments, the use of which they would have learned, they would become excellent cultivators:  it is needless to remark that the man who cultivates the soil, and whose labour the soil rewards, by its produce, becomes strongly attached to the land, which supplies both his wants and his enjoyments, and is soon led by family affections to the love of social order, and to the sentiments which constitute a good citizen.

The blacks have been too long encouraged to sell their fellow-creatures, for us to depend upon their soon forgetting this deplorable traffic.  But doubtless we ought to begin by renouncing the perfidious means of inflaming their cupidity and their passions.  The articles which they are the most desirous to obtain from us, ought to be the price of the produce of the soil, and no longer the means of exchange, and the aliment of this dreadful traffic in human flesh.  It would, however, be proper that, as long as slaves should continue to arrive from the interior, the whites might buy them.  This permission should be granted for a time, and in a certain extent of country.  Their slavery should also be limited to ten years, as we have said above, and their moral and physical improvement, should be directed in such a manner as to attach them to the soil by exciting in them the love of property.

The laws and institutions which govern the mother country, would incontrovertibly be applicable to the new establishments.  It would certainly be presumable, that on account of particular considerations of moral and political order, it would be proper to allow local regulations, in forming which, all proprietors enjoying the rights of citizenship, ought to participate, without any distinction of colour.  It would especially be highly important, that the regulations for the government of the slaves, should be founded on mildness and humanity, that prudent and enlightened persons should superintend the execution of them, and have the necessary authority to prevent abuses, and to secure to the slave the protection of the law.