A GEOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL, AND POLITICAL VIEW OF. THE ISLAND OF ST. DOMINGO.

[WITH A MAP.] THE recent events in this part of the new world muft neceffarily attract the notice not merely of every philofophical but of every political obferver throughout the globe: A republic of Blacks, or, as they are more properly denominated, in conjunction with the mulattoes, &c., men of colour, is a phenomenon in the nineteenth century which the mott keen fearcher into futurity has never ventured to predict. The molt that has been forefeen and foretold was the evil which a fordid intereft would be likely one day to produce, by perpetual importations into our lands, and those of our neighbours, of innumerable tribes and cargoes of injured fustering fellow-crea

tures.

It is not natural to expect fuch wrongs canever be forgiven by the creatures who fuffer them. If refentments fhould die away in the breaits of a few of thefe violated perfons who may be kindly treated by their masters, the freth arrival of others of the fame colour and condition muit revive it anew; for it is in human hearts to fympathize in diftreis, and to confpire for relief.

The vait diproportion of the owners to the endlaved, in almost every island of the West Indies, makes it a matter of altonishment that commotions of another, and, if pollible, of a fuil more dreadful nature than thote we thall (peak of, have not occurred in all the iflands, to exhibit a more impreffive letion for the mftruction of the avaricious. It ought to be confidered, that in whatever numbers, or by whatever compact, men may agree to commit an injuftice like this, they must one day expect to draw upon themfelves an adequate punithment. Not to apprehend fuch retribution, would be to incur the charge of comtemning the doctrines of that very religion which these dealers in men make a boat of revering..

The Slave Trade, ever mentioned with abhorrence, was always a popular VOL. II.

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NEW SERIES.

topic in the youth of every French reformer at the commencement of the revolution. The patriot orator could not fail to apoftrophize with effect when he turned to that abominable traffic, which a fuperior, knowledge in the arts, prompted by an infatiable love of wealth, had given rife to. He did not omit laying its charge to the account of that unfeeling defpotifin, which it was the bufinefs of a humane philofophy in all ages to expole, refift, and decry; in thort, the wonderful revolution in this large and rich island is a collateral and fo far correfpondent event of that great revolution in a neighbouring country, which, though it has wrought wonders, has not yet produced half the changes it is capable of effecting in Europe alone.

Woe to thole governments which do not, in a certain degree, conform to the burft of fentiment which the enlightened men of France gave way to, the few years preceding the revolutionary explotion! and haine to thole fatelmen who reft the fafety of the governments they direct upon the greater or leffer popularity of one man whom chance may place at the helin, or be the oftenfible general in the field over an eventful, perhaps a decisive, battle.

If ever Europe ftood in need of great or of experienced flatefmen, it is at this moment. It matters not how firm they may fancy the ground on which they ftand: a couvullion may not be far off, which would move the very foundation and themfelves together. The fulcrum and the lever will in that cafe lofe their powers; floods of oratory will be poured forth in vain; the moral fubject-matter on which they fhould operate will be gone. Demofthenes himfelf harangued in vain: to ufe the language of the chemifts, he found he could not by the fire of his difcourfe raife a fpirit anew he had a caput-mortuum only to work upon; its fublimity was ditipated by uatkilful hands, to whom the work had been committed. But these introductory reflections may be thought irrelative to the main fubjećt.

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