While he was diligently toiling for his humane masters, and seizing every opportunity to increase his small stock of knowledge, the island of St. Domingo was growing very rich by agriculture and commerce. The planters acquired enormous wealth, built splendid houses, and lived in luxury, laziness, and dissipation, upon the toil of the poor unpaid negroes. Twenty thousand slaves were imported from Africa every year, to make up the deficiency of those who were killed by excessive toil and cruel treatment. These new victims, men and women, had the name of their purchaser branded on their breast-bones with red-hot iron.

But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later. Slavery was producing its natural fruits of tyranny and hatred, cruelty and despair. The reports of barbarity on one side and suffering on the other attracted attention in Europe; and benevolent and just men began to speak and write against Slavery as a wicked and dangerous institution. The Abbé Gregoire, a humane Bishop of the Catholic Church, introduced the agitating question into the French Assembly, a body similar to our Congress. He also formed a society called Les Amis de Noirs, which means "The Friends of the Blacks." Of course, this was very[40] vexatious to slaveholders in the French colonies. They knew very well that if the facts of Slavery were made known, every good man would cry out against it. Political parties were formed in St. Domingo. Some of the planters wanted to secede from France, and set up an independent government. Others wanted to increase their political power by having a Colonial Assembly established in the island, by means of which they could mainly manage their own concerns as they chose. For this purpose they sent deputies to France. But their request gave rise to the question who should have the right to be members of such an Assembly; and, for the following reasons, that question was very annoying to the haughty slaveholders of St. Domingo.

[40]

In the United States of America, slaveholders made a law that "the child shall follow the condition of the mother"; consequently, every child of a slave-woman was born a slave, however light its complexion might be. This was a very convenient arrangement for white fathers, who wanted to sell their own children. In the French colonies, the law was, "the child shall follow the condition of its father." The consequence was, that all the children the planters of St. Domingo had by their slaves were born free. This was, of course, a numerous class. In fact, their numbers were two thirds as great as those of the whites. There were at that time 

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