De l’influence de l’esclavage sur les mœurs des maîtres et des esclaves dans les colonies françaises

CHAP. 10: > On the influence of slavery on the morals of masters and slaves in the French colonies.

The French colonies have lost a great part of the importance they once had; Saint-Domingue, which was the most considerable, forms an independent republic, and it counts, within its bosom, neither masters nor slaves; Louisiana forms a part of the United States, and I have spoken of it in describing the morals of the masters of that part of America; the Île de France and a few other less considerable ones are under the power of England. Martinique and Guadeloupe are the only ones that remain to us, and that deserve to be counted.

The entire population of the first was, in 1805, 95,413; of this number, there were 9,206 whites, 8,630 people of color, and 77,577 slaves. The population of the second was reported, in 1788, at 101,971 inhabitants; namely: 13,476 whites, 3,044 free people of color, and 85,461 slaves. Today, it is estimated that the population amounts to 159,520 individuals; but we do not know if, in this growth, the proportions that existed between the diverse classes of the population have not been altered. Supposing that they are the same, the colonial population, which amounts to about 255,000 individuals, is distributed approximately in the following manner: 25,000 or 30,000 individuals who are persons or proprietors, 190,000 or 200,000 individuals who are things or properties, and 20,000 or 25,000 individuals who partake at once of the nature of things and the nature of persons. As slavery exercises an immense influence, not only on the population among which it is established, but also on the peoples who find themselves in contact with it, it was necessary to make known, at least approximately, the number of persons who claim to derive some advantages from it, in order to better appreciate what it costs those who bear its weight [204].

The number of individuals who belong to the enslaved race is very large, compared to those who belong to the race of masters: it is almost one to ten. The labors to which the slaves are subjected, and the products that the masters derive from them, are of the same nature as those of the English colonies. These products are equally destined for export, and, consequently, the slaves are reduced to the lowest possible consumption. The principal circumstances of slavery being the same as those we have previously observed, the moral effects it produces cannot be different. Thus, I will confine myself to indicating their main features, to avoid, as much as possible, the monotony that is necessarily attached to the description of a series of phenomena that are everywhere the same.

In the French colonies, as in all the others, the first effect of slavery has been to debase, in the eyes of the men of the master class, every industrial occupation. All the labors of agriculture have therefore remained the share of the slaves: in the towns or in the cities, all the arts, all the lucrative professions are practiced either by slaves for the profit of their masters, or by freedmen or descendants of freedmen. Every white individual is noble, by virtue of the color of his skin; and every noble individual is bound, on pain of losing status, to live off the products of another's labor [205].

The contempt for the laboring classes is inseparable from the contempt for labor: every man who bears any marks of African origin is therefore debased by this fact alone. Here, as in the United States of America, nothing can absolve a man or a woman of the crime of having a more or less brown complexion, neither probity, nor talents, nor fortune, nor the purest and most irreproachable conduct; but also there is no vice that can stigmatize a man or a woman who has the honor of having white skin. In the colonies where the number of whites has been considerable, as in Saint-Domingue, the aristocracy has not limited itself to stigmatizing persons originating from the two races; it has subdivided itself. The men who have possessed a great number of slaves have called themselves the great whites, and they have designated by the name of little whites those who have possessed a less considerable number [206].

The liaisons that exist between the masters and their female slaves are the same as we have observed in the other colonies. According to one traveler, from these liaisons result vices and crimes unknown in the most depraved regions of the old world. A father there sees with indifference the prostitution of his daughter: he even becomes, if need be, the confidant of her numerous lovers. Often, a possessor leaves in slavery the children he has by his slaves, and transmits them to his heirs with his other goods. Often, too, he sells them; and these examples are so frequent that habit does not even leave a place for remorse [207].

The cruelty of the colonists is in proportion to their immorality; they treat the individuals of the enslaved race with much more contempt and brutality than the coarsest men among us show toward the most vile animals [208]. When it is a matter of a punishment that may entail the death of the slave, the master is nevertheless obliged to apply to a commission, to which is given the name of special commission. But, before this commission, the master or his steward is at once accuser, witness, and rapporteur, and it is he who dictates the sentence. It even sometimes happens that an individual who possesses many slaves, a great white, himself condemns one of his slaves to the torment of fire, and has the sentence executed, by his private authority, in the middle of his plantation [209]. Here, as in Louisiana and Surinam, the women are even more cruel than the men, especially toward the slaves of their own sex who may inspire some jealousy in them [210].

There have been persons, however, who have praised the regime to which slaves are subjected in the French colonies; it has been claimed that there existed vast and magnificent hospitals in which they were received during their illnesses; that the masters had storehouses in which they always kept a large provision of food, and that the general opinion among the colonists was that, to be a good administrator, one had to treat one's slaves gently [211]. These facts could be true, without the slaves being any less miserable; one can be very badly treated in a vast hospital; a master can have storehouses, and give his slaves only bad and meager subsistence; finally, a man can spout fine maxims, and conduct himself in an atrocious manner. Among the possessors of men, words often have a meaning opposite to the one they have among us; this must be so, since they see only things where we see human beings; what they call liberty, guarantee, we call oppression, arbitrariness; what they call moderation, we call violence, cruelty [212].

A single observation can allow us to judge the gentleness of the masters and the happiness of the slaves in our colonies. Since the English government has prohibited the importation of new slaves into its colonies, the enslaved population is treated a little less cruelly than it was before; however, we have seen that it is still exposed to excessive violence. Under the current regime, the greatest decrease to which the annual decline of the slave population of Jamaica has been estimated is 1.5%; in the island of Trinidad, which is where the decline is most rapid, it is 3 2/5% every year [213]. According to Raynal, the annual loss of blacks amounted, in our colonies, to 5%, and accidents raised it to 6 2/3%; it was therefore necessary that our slaves be even more mistreated than those of the English colonies. It has been observed, in these colonies, that the annual decline of the enslaved population is in direct proportion to the quantity of sugar that each slave is made to produce [214]; and since Saint-Domingue was the colony that produced the most, relative to its population, one can conclude that the slaves there were, at least, as miserable as in any other island.

Finally, several French colonies have been for several years under the domination of the English government; the masters are consequently obliged to confine their power within the limits circumscribed by English laws; but these laws, which oblige the possessors of men to leave a certain interval between the punishment and the offense, which limit the number of whip blows it is permitted to inflict each time, and which require that a report be drawn up of the infliction of the penalty, are no less irksome for the colonists of French origin than they are for those of English origin: the ones like the others complain of not being able to abandon themselves, with enough liberty, to the violence of their passions [215].