The Sun.
London, England, 1815-01-12 00:00:00

KINGDOIX OF HAYTI.

LIBERTY AND INDEPENDENCE!
Sitting of the" General Council .of,the Nation,
/Ist October, 1.814,-the, Eleventh Year of the In-

dependence of Hayti, and the Foitrth Year of his
111djesty's Reign. The following Address having

been read, it was unanimously agreed, that the
sdme should be presented to his Majesty:—

• ADDRESS TO THE KING.
• " Sten—ln the annals of the. world no example can be
found of an overture for peace, accompanied by such fright-
. fel and disgraceful circumstances, as that made by the French
General Dauxion Lavaysse, in the name and as the agent of
his Majesty Louis XVIII.
Nations, Sovereigns, and even individuals, have certain
rights, which are respected even by the most barbarous peo-
ple, and no one is permitted to violate them. But if men in
• general have agreed to respect these rights, sanctioned by
custom and public decorum, how much more odious it is that
the Envoy of an enlightened Moriaich and nation has dared
so openly to violate them !
" What the most abominable tyrants, when they wished
to oppress and impose on people the yoke of tyranny, em-
'pineed perfidious means, and concealed their criminal enter-
eeSzes by specious pretexts, because they did not dare openly
to siolatt public rights ; but the Envoy of the King of the
French impudently violates every right, and offers the greatest
of insults to i free people, by proposing to them the alter-
native of slavery or death ! And to whom does this rile agent
.dare to address this declaration of the atrocious intentions of
leis Government ?—to your Majesty, the conqueror of the
French—the defender of liberty and independence; to you,
api Sire, who hare devoted your whole life to the maintenance
and defence of the indestructible and eternal rights of man
—to vane Majesty, who have always taken, as the rule of
lour conduct and actions, the honour and glory of the Hay-
Can people ? He dares to propose to you to descend from a
tirrone where you were placed by the love and gratitude of your
fellow-citizens I—Oh, extravagance of insolence and infamy !
Ile dares to suspect your great soul of such an enormous per-
fidy ! To whom do they dare to speak of masters and of
eSeetel To us—to a free and independent peoples-to war-
riors covered with noble wounds received in the field of ho-
tiour, who have rooted up the ancient tree of prejudices and
slavery—to those warriors who, in a thousand combats, have,
made these barbarous colonists bite the dust. And now the
remaining colonists who escaped our just vengeance, dare stilt
to speak of the re-establishment of that detested reign which
we have for ever castoff!—No, there shall never exist a mas-
ter nor a slave in Hayti !
" Could your Nlajesity have expected such excessive insult
from a Sovereign whom fame has represented so as a wise,
good, and virtuous King, instructed in the schodl of adver-
sity, and an enemy of illiberal prejudices ? How little truth,
' Sac, is there in fame, when we compare events with her
anticipations. The first overture for peace, the first words
of conciliation which are addressed to us in the name of
this Prince, of whom we bad formed so pleasing an idea, are
outrageous insults. It is proposed-to men who have been free
for twenty-five years, who still' have arms in their
.hands,
to lay them down in order to take up again the fetters of
ignominions and barbarous slavery ! In insinuating to us
these horror., lt.iy tea th...in with the specious pretext of
'reace andfecenciliationl They envelope the poniard of trea--
son and perfidy in the honourable and seductive mantle of
the liberal sentiments af justice and humanity of the French
Monarch 'towards us! But on a sudden this vile agent, this
authropophagous monster, changing his language, taking a
tone and atrocious character adapted to his odious mission,
threatens to destroy our race and substitute another. What
justice! what liberality! what humanity!
From this last proceeding of the French, does not every
thing shewthatthe cause of the Haytians is distinct from that
. of the people ? In fact, to what people—to what Sovereign—•
would iany one hue dared to propose conditions so base and
degrading ? They despise us; they think us so stupid as to
suppose that we want the instinct which animals possess for
their preservation.—What madness ! What- excess of auda-
city, to dare to propose that we shall give ourselves up to
the French, and submit to their odious dominion? Is it
for the benefits we ha\'e received that sic should again take
up the chains of servitude ? Is it for a Sovereign who is alto-
gethcr'a stranger to us, who never did any thing for us,. that
we should change our Master ? Is it, in short, for the purpose
of being again delivered over to tortures, and of being de-
voured by dogs, that we should 'renounce the fruits of 25
yeais battles? What, pen, have we now in common with
that people ? Mee we not broken all the bonds that could
unite Os with them ? We have changed the name, the life, the
manners. We bear no resemblance to the French—these
.people, who never ceased to persecute us, and whom we ab-
hor. Why then should we submit to the fate of being eon-
" elensned to groan under their tyranny and oppression ?
" Barbarians !• They dare to despise us ! They think us
unworthy of the blessing of liberty and independence! They
think that we are not capable of sublime sentimeets, or 'of
those generous impulses which form heroes, and make amen
trimesters of their own destinies ! But they are deceived. Let
-
theta-know something of the magnanimity, the energy, and
the courage-of the people whom they dare to outrage! Our
will is to be free, and we shall be so in spite of tyrants!
' ! if our cause should he separated front that of other
' ; if injustice should prevail over equity in this en-
. lightened age, if our tyrants should at length he able to
tritlmeh over us, let the glory of the Hayti:se People at least
stand unequalled in the annals of nations! Yes, we solemnly
pledge ourselves that, sootier than renounce liberty and inde-
rsielence's our entire race shall be ex.terMinated. But before
any Frenchman gains a footiog here, let Hayti become a vast
desert; let our towns, our ruenufaetures, our dwellings, be-
.come a prey. to the tianir. Let each of us multiply his
force—redouble his merry and his courage, in immoleting to
over just fury thousands of those tigers who are alienated
from our blood! Let Hayti present nothing but a heap of
ruins, leilerrifed countenances meet nothing but sights of
death, destruction, And vengeance ! Let posterity hare to
say, on beholding these ruins ' nese lived a free and ge-
uerous people ; tyrants wanted to strip them of their liberty,
but they resolved to perish sooner than part with it Pos-
terity will applaud this act of magnanimity. Oh ! wilt there
he a Inman being so destitute of generosity as to refuse us
his admiration,, his esteem, and his sood wishes
'S In the political wars carried on among eirilised States,
the armies fight, and the people live in evo:e. But in a war
of extermination, such as that with which we lave been
threatened, when everyman thinks of defending his kerne,

the tumos of his parents, ,his libertc, Isis inilependcnce—
what do I say ?—his very existence, and t." at of his wife and
children, it is then a war of man against Man; women and boys
are in a state of war: all are in arms; all the evil we can do our
enemy is a sacred duty; all means of destruction are lawful
for us to use. We stint' revjfe tnose dreadful examples of
exaspmaticn among.. people who, terrified the earth ! Pos-
terity will shudder with horror ; lint far from blaming us, it
will only impute these acts to the perversity of, the age; to
tyrants, and to necessity ! But this will never happen—it is
impossible. Hayti is invincible; and justice, as well as the
cause of justice, will bear her triumphant through all ob-
stacles. No, never shall this execrable enterprise take place.
There is Honour, there is glory among the Sovereigns and
People of Europe; and GREAT BIUTAIN, that Liberator of
the Iroild, will prevent such an abomination !"

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

SERJEANTS7INN-LIALL, JAN. 11.

This day the Judges of the Court of King's
Bench sat in Serjeants-Inn-Hall, agreeably to
appointment, to hear arguments on motions for
new trials.

HOLMN V. WHITMORE.

•
In this case, which was an action upon a po-
licy of ittsurance-on the ship Venus, and in which
a verdict was found for the plaintiff, a rule to
chew cause why a new trial should not take‘place,
was granted by the Court.
The circumstances of t'.e case were these :
The Venus sailed front this country, under a li-
cence directed to her owner, and certaiti other
British merchants, by which/she was allowed to
sail with such a cargo as was sanctioned by law,
and under any flag except the French flag, for anv
port or ports situate between the Scheldt and the
Texel. Tile vessel accordingly sailed, and was
lost. The assured brought his action, and reco-
vered against t+t: defendant, who now moved for
a new trial; and the only question for decision
was, v'',:ether the licence. under which the Ventis
sailed, was such as would protect the property of
an alien ?

The Court, on hearing the question argued,
were unanimously of opinion that it did. Th e li-
cense allowed the vessel to go to certain ports in
ilollaud,7which were all, at the time, in the CNC.-
my's possession. Of this circumstance those who
granted the license could not he ignorant, and at the
time of granting it, they must have contemplated
the probability of its being used to protect alien
property--Rule discharged and verdict for the plain-
tiff confirmed.

COX V. PRINT'S.
This was an action by which the plaintiffs, who
are dealers in silver, sought to recover from the
defendant, as money had and received by him to
the plaintiff's ase, the sum of 281. and a fraction,
being the diffetence in value between the price
paid by them to the defendant for a bar of silver
purchased by the plaintiffs from the defendant,
and its actual worth, as afterwards ascertained
when the whole bar came to be assayed by the
Assay Master. It appeared that the defendant
hail received from a person of the name of Cut-
ton, his principal, residing at Gibraltar, a quan-
tity of silver, in which there was mixed a great
deal of alloy, and that having agreed to sell it to
the plaintiffs, it was referred to a Mr. Johnson,
an Assay Master, to assay it, and ascertain the
precise quantity of pure silver which it con-
tained. In pursuance of this object, the plain-
tiff's man delivered to Johnson, not the whole
bar, bat only a part of it, which having assayed,
he declared the proportion of pure silver to be four
ounces and a few penny weights to 'a pound troy,
and in this proportion the plaintiff's settled with
the defendant for the price of the whole bar.—
Having afterwards, discovered, however, that
there was a greater proportion of alloy in the rest
of the bar, the plaintiffs had the whole of it as-
sayed of new, and having in that manner ascer-
tained that they had overpaid the defendant by
the sum of 281. and a fraction, they brought their
action to recover to that amount; when a verdict
was found for the plaintiffs.
A motion having afterwards been made to have
that verdict set aside, and a nonsuit entered,
Mr. TOPPING and Mr.' ComINS argued in
sup-
port of thh rule, contending that this case Came
under the Law of Caveat Etuptor. --The plaintiffs
had themselves appointed Mr. Johnson' to exer-
cise his judgment for them, and relying upon his
judgment, they had acted upon it, and could not
now complain. They were in the situation of a
man, who having purchased wine, which he him-
self or his servant had previously tasted and ap-
proved of, could not afterwards be heard to bring
his action, complaining that the wine was bad.
Mr. ATTORNEY-GENERAL, Mr. PARK, and Mr.
MARRYATT , having argued the case On the other
side,

The Court was unanimously of opinion, that
there hging here mutual innocence, mutual error,
and things being in every respect entire as be-
tween tl►e'defendant and his principal, to whom
he had not vet accounted, that the plaintiff was
entitled too-a verdict.—The Rule was accordingly
discharged. ,‘