The Sun.
London, England, 1853-01-13 00:00:00

THE EMPEROR SOULOUQUE AND THE
HAYTIAN EMPIRE.

- -
The New York Herald of the 21st ult. devotes a
page and a half to the correspondence which took
place between the late Daniel Webster, then
Foreign Secretary for the United States, and Mr.
Walsh, a diplomatic agent dispatched to Port au
Prince, in the month of Angust last, to co-operate
with the consuls of Great Britain and France in
endeavouring to patch up a peace between the
Emperor and the republic of St. Domingo. Accus-
tomed as we are to the dry punctilions and unin-
teresting diplomatic correspondence set forth to us
in Parliamentary Blne Books, the free and easy,
perfect-equality style of writing adopted by Mr.
Walsh is refreshing beyond measure. When
the current diplomatic news fails to eke
out a dispatch, Mr. Walsh falls immediately
on gossip, and dashes off the sketches of men
and manners, light, airy and vivid, which,
allowing for the prejudices manifested against a
people and institutions tainted with African blood,
are highly amusing and interesting. That Mr.
Walsh has what we on this side of the Atlantic
should call prejudices, though perhaps in the United
States they may be only accounted part of the na-
tionality of a free and enlightened citizen, we think
may be safely premised, when we find Mr. Webster
in the draft of his instructions gravely cautioning
him "to keep his mind free from any prejudice re-
sulting from colour or forms of government, in his
dealings between the Haytian. Empire and the Do-
minican Republic, and not to deny justice to the
Emperor Soulouque because „Zia .government is
monarchical and his subjects of African extraction,
or to be partial in his judgments in favour of the
Dominican Government, because its officers are
composed for the main part of Castilian race, and
because it is republican in its form." Further on
we find that one of the collateral objects of Mr.
Walsh's mission was to negotiate the recognition of
Haytian consuls at American ports, with the ex-
press stipulation that these consuls should not be
of African extraction. Considering that this went
to prevent the Haytian Government employing any
of its own subjects as its commercial agents, this
was pretty strong. We commend these facts to the
notice of the Abolitionists. Mr. Walsh's descrip-
tion of the Emperor's appearance at opening the
Chambers is very amusing. For his political in-
ferences we cannot vouch :--
"His Majesty and suite were robbed in costumes just
arrived from France, making such a display as I have
never seen rivalled except at 'Franconi's,' in Paris ;
and certainly none but theatrical magnificences would
venture to exhibit such glittering and variegated splen-
dour in any other metropolis, however imperial. The
toilette of Souloque himself, was quite wonderful, espe-
cially the chapeau, with its numerous feathers tipped
with different hues. As to the enthusiasm of the people,
so loyally commemorated by the pen of the journalist,
all the warmest part of his description of it is indebted
for its existence to his imagination alone. All the
shouts in the streets proceeded from the throats of a little
mob of ragged urchins, who followed the Emperor as he
caracoled along on his Andalusian steed, and whose pa-
triotic feelings were doubtless raised to the highest pitch
of admiration by the marvellous glories of his appear-
ance. It may be safely affirmed from the mode in which
the Emperor is generally received by his subjects, that
he is only strong by position, and that there is no affec-
tion cherished for him, either political or personal. It is
the knowledge of this fact, and his desperate determina-
tion to sustain himself at whatever cost, that has
caused him to shed so much blood, in which he
has already dyed his hands so deeply that it might
have made their black one red.' Before his sudden
and unexpected elevation to the chair of State, he was
noted for the mildness of his disposition, amounting
to almost imbecility, and those who were the chief con-
trivers of his election imagined that he would be a mere
tool in their hands for the accomplishment of their own
ends. Never was there a more egregious miscalculation,
and most of these very men have already fallen victims
to their mistake. Since his assumption of
animperial
charge,' in which even a good and virtuous nature may
recoil,' he has fancied himself in a constant state of war-
fare with plotters against his power and life, and acting
upon the maxim that the first blow is half the battle,
the moment he suspects he resolves to destroy. I
know,' said he-to an informant of the highest authority,
that I am surrounded by persons who are seeking my
overthrow ; but they made me chief without my asking
them, and chief I will remain, if I have to use all the
powder in the arsenal in shooting at the villains.'"
In a dispatch written at the close of his mission,
Mr. Walsh thus speaks of tho condition of the people
and the Government of Hayti

"It is a conviction which has been forced upon me
by what I have learned here that negroes only cease to
be children when they degenerate into savages. As long
they happen to be in a genial blood it is the rattle and
the straw by which they are tickled and pleased ; and
when their passions are once aroused, the most potent
weapons of subjugation can alone prevent the most hor-
rible evils. A residence here, however brief, must cause
the most determined philanthropist to.entertain serious
doubts of the possibility of their ever attaining the full
stature of intellectual and civilised manhood unless some
miraculous interposition is vouchsafed in their behalf.
In proportion as the recollections and traditions of the
colonial civilisation are fading away, and the imitative
propensity, which is so strong a characteristic of the
African, is losing its opportunities of exercise, the black
inhabitants of Hayti are reverting to the primitive state
from which they were elevated by contact with the
whites—a race whose innate superiority would seem to
be abundently proved by the mere fact that it is ap-
proaching the goal of mental progress, while the other
has scarcely made a step in advance of the position in
which it was originally placed. It is among the mulat-
tos alone, as a general rule, that intelligence and edu-
cation are to be found ; but they are neither sufficiently
numerous, nor virtuous,
nor enlightened to do more
then diminish the rapidity of the nation's descent, and
every day accelerates the inevitable catastrophe by les-
sening their influence and strength.
" The contrast between the picture which is now pre-
sented by this country, and that which it exhibited when
under the dominion of the French affords a melancholy
confirmation of what I have said. It was then indeed an
exulting and abounding' land—a land literally flowing
with milk and honey ; now it
might be affirmed without
extravagance, that where it is not an arid and desolate
waste, it is flooded with the waters of bitterness or co-
vered with noisome and poisonous weeds. ' When I ar-
rived here,' to quote the words of an intelligent foreigner
otfheeyeeprytochhinegf
_itns
oinwdtehpeerne-
dwehnoc eh, a 8
`therebe en nw
a Haytis
au dsai nn coc e
is a want of everything.'
" The Government, in spite of his constitutional
forms, is a despotism of the most ignorant, corrupt and
vicious description, with a military establishment so
enormous that, while it absorbs the largest portion of
the revenue for its support, it dries up the very sources
necessary labourers, to fill the town with pestilent hordes
of national prosperity, by depriving the fields of their
of depraved and irreclaimable idlers. The treasury is
bankrupt, and every species of profligate and ruinous
expedient is resorted to, for the purpose of obtaining the
means of gratifying an insane passion for frivolous expen-
diture. A great portion of the public revenue is wasted
upon the personal vanities of the Emperor, and his ridi-
culous efforts to surround himself with a splenduor
which he fancies to be pre-eminently imperial. It is a
fact that the same legislature which voted him several
hundreds of thousands of francs for some absurd costume,
refused an appropriation of twenty-five thousand francs
for public schools. The population for the most part is
immersed in Cimmerian darkness, that can never be
pierced by the few and feeble rays which emanate from
the higheronsthne t
system, whilst there is
a
gat majorityt a portions fn theo of
and h jealousies
only and antipathies be-
tweenclass at all cconstant
capa-
ble
of guiding the destinies of the land, which threatens
at every moment to shatter the political vessel in which
socialte
they are so perilously working. As to the refining and
elevating influences of civilised life—the influences of
religion, of literature, of science, of art—they do not
exert the least practical sway, even if they can be said
to exist at all. The priests of the altar set the worst
examples of every
kind of vice, and are
universally
mere
adventurers, disowned by the Church, who alone can
come, here in consequence of the assumption by the Em-
peror of ecclesiastical authority, which militates with
that of the Roman Pontiff. The press is shackled to
such a degree as to prevent the least freedom of opinion,
and people are afraid to give utterance, even in confiden-
tial conversation, to ought that.
of the may be tortured into the
slightest criticism upon the action Government."

ihlwasaysp which are to be
offered to construct
Sul JOHN RENNIR IN SWEDEN.-Sir John Rennie,
the engineer, is now in Sweden, occupied in tracing the
line
commencedt o be taken
in t
hbey
spring.tw o newH
r railways,
a line of electric telegraph from Helsingbond on the
Sound to Stockholm, and his offer has been readily
accepted. This line will be the first in Sweden. Hel-
singbord is only at a quarter of an hour's distance from
Elsineur, in Denmark, and the line will be continued
to the latter place, which will shortly be united with
Hamburg ; so that Stockholm will be placed in almost
direct communication with Berlin, Breslaw, Vienna,
Trieste, and all parts of the Empire.

TRADE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND NORMANDY.—A
Caen journal publishes a statistical account of the trade
carried on between Lower Normandy and England, from
which it appears that a steam communication has been
carried on for the last 12 months, between the port of
Carentan, in Normandy, and Poole, in Dorsetshire.
Fifty-four passages have already been made, and the
amount of agricultural produce exported amounts to
1.050,000 f. which may be thus divided :—Butter,
356,000 f. ; salt pork, 81,000 f. ; barley, buck wheat, and
other grain, 40,000 f. ; flour, 33,000 f. ; poultry, 34,000 f. ;
eggs, 283,000 f. ; oils, oil-cake, and sundry merchandise,
85,000 f..; milch cows meet a ready sale in England.; the
small breed are preferred, and those about the price of
125 to. 260 f, Are boot suited for the English market,