With respect to the other resolutions nothing ever came of them; for we waited daily for an answer from the president during the whole of his presidency, but we never received any; and the committee in London, when they had read my letter, desired me unequivocally to say, that they did not see the propriety of the petition, which it had been recommended to them to obtain.

At the next meeting it was resolved, that a letter should be written to the new president for the same purpose as the former.  This, it was said, was now rendered essentially necessary.  For the merchants, planters, and others interested in the continuance of the Slave-trade, were so alarmed at the enthusiasm of the French people, in favour of the new order of things, and of any change recommended to them, which had the appearance of promoting the cause of liberty, that they held daily committees to watch and to thwart the motions of the Friends of the Negros.  It was therefore thought proper, that the appeal to the Assembly should be immediate on this subject, before the feelings of the people should cool, or, before they, who were thus interested, should poison their minds by calculations of loss and gain.  The silence of the former president was already attributed to the intrigues of the planters’ committee.  No time therefore was to be lost.  The letter was accordingly written, but as no answer was ever returned to it, they attributed this second omission to the same cause.

I do not really know whether interested persons ever did, as was suspected, intercept the letters of the committee to the two presidents as now surmised; or whether they ever dissuaded them from introducing so important a question for discussion when the nation was in such a heated state; but certain it is that we had many, and I believe barbarous, enemies to encounter.  At the very next meeting of the committee, Claviere produced anonymous letters, which he had received, and in which it was stated that, if the society of the Friends of the Negros did not dissolve itself, he and the rest of them would be stabbed.  It was said that no less than three hundred persons had associated themselves for this purpose.  I had received similar letters myself; and on producing mine, and comparing the hand-writing in both, it appeared that the same persons had written them.

In a few days after this the public prints were filled with the most malicious representations of the views of the committee.  One of them was, that they were going to send twelve thousand muskets to the Negros in St. Domingo, in order to promote an insurrection there.  This declaration was so industriously circulated, that a guard of soldiers was sent to search the committee-room; but these were soon satisfied, when they found only two or three books and some waste paper.  Reports equally unfounded and wicked were spread also in the same papers relative to myself.  My name was mentioned at full length, and the place