The Sun.
London, England, 1818-10-23 00:00:00

DIED.

On Satnrilny last, at leer ()use ..n the Beacin, Exmouth,
L,,seonihe.

_Lately, at Rath, aged Gl, Major Thomas Gartside.
Lately, in her 90th year, at the house of her son, the Per.
!keaver, Childrey, Berks., Jane Beaver, widow of the Rev.
Jame, Beaver, Recto. of Plyraptree, Devon.
un the 13th instant, at landsworth, Staffordshire, in the
116111 year of her age, Ann -Stittlwood, widow. Shy %vat
horn in 1702, the veal Quiet, Anne came to the throne. stta-
was the mother of 15 eitildrell, the eldest of whom, ni,w
ink:, is so yesas old. Site had been nearly blind few years,
but all her other faculties sue retained to the last.

FEDERA AFRICANA.

(Nu. IX.]

THE CASE OF FRANCE.

'Fite case of France only remains t( he con-
sidered, and it has strongly supported the gene-
ral hypothesis, as has already in part beet:
sbewn.

" Of all
.the offending nations," (said the
veriter of 1807,) " her lot hEts perhaps been the
most deplorable. Her glory is like the liOt of
a conflagration; a lustre fed by ruin, misery, and
death, in the mansion to which it belongs."
Perhaps her enormous aggrandisement by fo-
reign-conquest might, at that time, seen; to-coint-
ter-balance in some measure the internal
ties. by which they had been prepared. But
where are those conquests now ? and how many
humiliations as well as tertible disasters has'she
since sustained!

I ant far from supposing; that France bad tint,
prior to her Revolution, as well as since, pro-
voked the Divine displeasure by other crimes than
thoseof which her Colonies and the African Con-
tinent were the theatres. Undoubtedly there was
odenee enough, even
.within her own borders, to
merit the chastisements she has received: The
same may be said of all the other slave-trading
ttar,ions. We can hardly imagine, indeed, any
case of an avenging Providence, in which the
grand and immediate provocation singled out for
the display of- Divine justice, has not been pre-
ceded and accompanied by others also of a hein-
ous kind ; for atrocious offences are rarely either
of rapid or solitary growth, whether in personal
or national character. When therefore we speak
of a particniar sin as having drawn down Divine
judgments on a nation or individual, we mean
only that it was the chief provocation, and that
on account of .which, principally or solely, it
pleased Heaven to manifest its displeasure; let-
ting its chastising hand appear front behind that
druid of second causes which usually veils its par-
ticular moral government, by circumstances
which significantly marked the relation between
the punishment and the crime.
ft was in this view that the Ti act of January

1807 represented the Slave Trade as the great an-
tle-revolutionary crime of France, as well as of
the other colonising Powers of Europe, which
Lad. excited the. anger of Eleaven, and been chas-
tised by the calamities of the age. It was the
same which, to use his own words, " stood pro-
inioently forth among their national offences ; de-
fying, like Satan, in the foremost rank, the
wrath of the Ahnighty,"
'The indications of this offending cause, in the
.caie of France, were pointed out by hint in the
time, and magnitude, and general character, of
those strange calamities which overwhelmed the
king and nation so speedily after the grand ex-
tension of the French Slave Trade, through the
excitement of the Royal Ordinances and bounties.
They -might have been found, perhaps, also in
some of the predisposing causes of the Revolu-
tion ; and still more in the particular nature and
circumstances of its afflicting events.
There had been a great and rapid change in
the principles and Maxims of the French G(o.'ern-
Mem; of kallich the eager patronage of the Slave
Trade, in and after 171i4, was only one of the
trvits. Aristocratical feelings, which, combined
enthusiastic loyalty, were the great support
of the ihroue, bad been much and dangerously
relaxtd,in favone of Colonial interests. The
Aare of sp:endiu fortunes, rapidly acquired in the
col•nties, and profusely spent in Europe, had
given to the sugar planting lottety, in France as
well as in England, great and delusive attractions,
witi47 the less opulent of the ancient Nobility
found theMselves eclipsed in splendour by those
Meteors iroat another hemisphere ; and more un-

able than before to sustain the appearances which
their rank prescribed, under the reigning habits
, of expense, and luxury of manners ; evils which
the same competition of colonial opulence had
tended greatly to inflame. It became, there-
fore, a natural and very frequent expedient
ivith old French Nobles, to sustain their sinking
fortunes by alliances with the families of Opulent
colonists ; and this as naturally led to their en-
gaging in sugar-planting on their own account,
either on estates that came to them by marriage,
or which they bought for the purpose. The agri-
cultural aspect of such specolations, threw a veil
over their commercial character, and thereby re-
codeiled them better to, the pride of the French
Noblesse. Hence an intimate cotanexion was
formed between tire Colonies and the Coutt ; and
their influence there became so powerful, that no-
thing was refused to them that was thought likely
to promote their interest, or increase their conse-
quence and ,credit. Their successful planters
were raised iu such great numbers to the class of
Nobility, as powerfully to break down in France
the salutai.y feeling of respect for hereditary rank ;
end also much to increase there the inconvenience
pt personal privileges, add that popular hatred of
them which was. soon so fatally indulged. The
evil was the greater, from the unstable and pre-
carious nature of property in the sugar colonies.
The wealth that had o'-lained Nobility for the
planter of Martinique or St. Domingo, was very
likely to vanish in a few years, and leave him and
his- family encumbrances on society, by a rank
%. which they could not sustain.
It would be easy to skew, it time would per-
, mit, how great a weight was cast, by causes such
as these, into the revolutionary scale, at a time
when disaffection and selfish ambition, with the
11ave of change, so fatally preponderated over the
loyall of France. It is commonly supposed, in-
deed;. that the colonial interest at that period ge-
nerally sided with the Crown ; but this is a popu-
lar error, and quite opposite to truth. The ex-
ercise of private despotism had not failed to pro-
chree in the French West Indies its ordinary ef-
ttfcts ; nursing a proud and turbulent spirit in
the dominant class, which made them impatient
under the curb of authority, and well disposed
t (rem to any change.that might impart to them
iethlical power. Many, indeed, "of the ancient
Nobies, who ivere among the earliest emigrants,
waue•proprietoes of estates in the West Indies
and a O&M -proportion of the planters of St. Do..
ign„gn and dnadaloupe soon became loyaliSts and
exiies, because the question was no longer be.

tureen the Crown and the Convention, but be-
tween themselves and their slaves. But until it
was made apparent that the rights of man would
not he limited to the 'colour of the skin, the
Royalists in no part of the dominion's of France,
perhaps, formed a smaller minority than in the
towns of her West Indian Islands.

„._ .
IVhatevel consequences resulted to the French
Govonment 'from these causes, the mischief was
well deserved ; because, while the supposed inte-
rests of commerce and of revenue bad been greedi-
ly promoted in the Colonies, those of justice and
humanity towards thy slaves, awl of religion, had
been wholly neglected and forgotten. This, in-
deed, was not unnatural, when colonial feelings
and prejudices directed the measures of the Court.
The Code Noir of Louis XIV, was suffered to fall
into almost total disuse. Christii4ii instruction to
the slaves had never, since the first settlement of
the Freticlr islands, teen so grossly neglected ;
and never Were the cruel practices of masters less
controlled by the laws. The only efforts in re-
lation to the unflottmate slaves of a Government
possessing the whole legislative power, were em-
ployed to aggravate and perpetuate their moral
degradation and their misery ; for that such
must be the effect of rapidly augmenting their
wimbers, by new excitements to the Slave Trade,
it is needless to prove. In the large bounties
given for importation, there was not -even any
discrimination as tip the sexes, in order to lessen
that shocking disparity between them which the
Slave Trade always produces ; though it is ad-
mitted by the apologists of the Colonies to be a
source of the most lamentable and incorrigible
evils, both physical and moral.
Thus did the French Government, under the
unfortunate Louis XVI. discharge its duties in
the Antilles ! It forgot its responsibility to God,
and-sought only to gratify the planters. .11,,t the
hour of retribution was arrives. Tlie cry of in-
nocent blood ascended up to [leaven, the groans
of the oppressed bondmen entered into the ears
of the Lord of Sabbaoth, and the 'evolutionary
plague- began.
IVhile the throne was patronising an extreme
and merciless slavery, a liberty as extreme and as
merciless was advancing to subvert the throne.
While the French Nobility was widening its base
by oppression, its own ruthless oppressors were
at hand. While the French Treasury teas abet-
ting an iniquitous commerce, and disbursing large
sums as the price or innocent blood, * ►he indi-
gence of that very Treasury became the immediate
occasion of convoking the States, and of all the
evils that followed. •

Whether the lavishing public honours and mo-
ney for the extension of the Slave Trade and sla-
very, thus contributed in a natoral way to pre-
pare the Revolution or not, the calamities that
ensued had in their particular nature, as well as
in the apt time of their arrival, circumstances that
seem pretty strongly to mark them as chastise-
ments of the crime. The Tegria, or predatory
slave-making wars themselves, with all their noc-
turnal horrors, the cruel imprisonments, the false
accusations, the unjust and corrupt judgments,
and all the other modes of violence and wrong,
which France suborned in Africa for the supply
of her Slave Trade, seemed to be brought home
into her own bosom. They could hardly at least
be more dreadful or flagitious than were the mob
massacres, the revolutionary denunciation, and
tribunals, the civil and military executions, and
the barbarities of every kiud that soon after
scourged the interior of that ill-fated land. The
same universal terror, the same perpetual insecu-
rity of life and liberty, 16ng prevailed in both
countries; nor could the white and black savages,
whom the French bounties stimulated to torment
the unhappy Africans, be more wicked awl terri-
ble than their Jacobin avengers. Exile and indi-
gence in a foreign land became also to French
Statesmen and Nobles, to the Colonial Proprie-
tors, and other classes of persons most involved in
the national crime, a retaliation strikingly close.
As they could not be sold for slaves in England
or Europe, it would hardly, without a miracle,
he closer.

If we turn to the events that soon followed in
St. Domingo, and the other French colonies, the
case will be still more impressive. In two years,
1787 and 1788, no less t}►au 60,345 slaves ap-
peared, by authentic official returns, to have been
imported into St. Domingo alone ; and it is pro-
bable, as we have already seen, that five times
that n►►mber at least were brought to that and
other French colonies within seven years, by the
direct instigation of that Government which was
soon after su terribly chastised.
Where are the colonial advantages that were
so eagerly expected from this enormous mass of
human misery and guilt ? What are now the in-
terests of France in St. Domingo ? We have re-
stored to her Martinique and Guadaloupe ; but
‘vhere arc her other sugar colonies ? and what
did she reap from any of them during three and
twenty years, but hnmiliation, bankruptcy, and
blood ?

The horrible theatre of St. Domingo deserves
distincter notice, and would open to us new and
most interesting views, not only of an avenging,
hnt a delivering Providence. But they must be
reserved for an abler pen; or at le.ast• for a fu-
ture occasion ; as they are too important to be
lightly sketched, and far too wide for ray present
limits. I will only remark here, that as the pro-
prietors and merchants of that island %sere no-
toriously the chief instigators of France, in her
sins against the Africa!' race, so they have drunk
the deepest of that cup of Divine indignation
which was filled for their unfortunate country.

France, having been thus severely chastised,
and having at the same time been made a scourge
for her associates in the Slave Trade, obtained by
the Peace of Amiens a breathing time, and an
opportunity for repentance. She had abolished
the Slave Trade by law ; but it was a merely no-
minal sacrifice during her maritime war. Now

It is estimated, in the Tract referred to, on very proba-
ble grounds, that the whole importation into all the French
colonies, under the new system of bounties, which began in
1734, amounted to 300,000. The bounties on staves imported
into the French colonies were at first rin livres per head, in
the Windward Islands, and 100 litres in St: Domingo, which
were raised before the Revolution respectively to 160 and 430
byres. Taking a medium of these sums, and adding 'the
tonnage bounties, by an average of .five slaves to three tons,
we shall find it probable, that above two millions and a half
sterling were paid by France a short time before her nevolu-
kiou foe this odious and wicked purpose,

was the time to spew whether the reformation'
was sincere. Had she been pions or virtuous
enough to adhere to it, great might have been
her reward. Sure lam it would not have been
so easy to involve her speedily again in a new
war with England. She would not have ruined
her best commercial hopes from peace by Making
a waste of St. Domingo, or thrown away a large
arn►y there merely to annihilate the means that
might have enriched her, and made her mistress
of the Antilles. On the courrary, she would
have assumed that formidable attitude in the West
Indies, to wl►ich the black armies of Hayti, under
her brave and faithful Toussaint, and that of
Guadaloupe, under Pelage, invited her. Instead
of destroying those Chiefs, the former, by perfi-
dious ingratitude, fouler than ever before stained
the annals of a civilized people, anti the latter by
a crime that inspires equal abhorrence, though
less pity for the victim*, she would have united
them, and the whole of that indigenous force
which revolution had created for her in those co-
lonies, in the firmest hands of allegiance to her-
self, and' enthusiastic devotion to her service.—
We had proved so well their invincibility, and the
ruitious loss of men anti money incident to a war
against such enemies in the West Indies, that
had France been their beloved mistress, instead
of their execrated tyrant,. a new quarrel with
her would have had many terrors for us, of which
she effectually disarmed it in that part of the
world. . We must have set out in the contest With
a most destructive expenditure, and alarming di-
version of force, for the defence of our most va-
lable colonies. The interests connected with
Malta would have been poised perhaps against
those of our Leeward Islands and .httnaica ; and
even the new dangers of the Continent might
have lost some of their influence in our councils,
when such new considerations were opposed to
the very doubtful remedy of drawing again our
maritime sword.

Besides. France herself might have felt motives
for a pacific policy, it her colonies, instead of
consuming her resources by fruitless expeditions,
bad been yielding to her the commercial benefi!s
of peace. It may be added, that her conduct in
the case supposed,wonld certainly have multiplied
in this country the numbers, and strengthened
the bands of those who thought favourably of her
Government, or who deprecated as Christians ur
philanthropists the renewal of war.
But France, happily for ourselves, perhaps,
and for Europe, took a different course. Napo-
leon had no sooner Obtained sea-room for his
ruthlesi.policy, than he resolved on the restitu-
tion of colonial slavery and the Slave Trade.
thought it convenient, indeed, to conceal for
awhile those purposes, the better-to deceive Tous-
saint, and the other coloured Chiefs, and even to
declare a contrary purpose, hypocritically remark-
ing; " that it would cost humanity .too much to
attempt new revolutions in the colonies in which
slavery had been abolished." But on the 19th of
May, 1802,. having accomplished, as he thought,
his perfidious purpose at St. Domingo, as well as
the other islands, he threw off the mask. lie
brought forward the project of a law before the
Senate, or Tribunitial Council, enacting, that
slavery should be maintained in the colonies, and
that the Slave Trade should be restored, and car!.
vied on conformably to the laws and regulations
that existed in 1789.

There was opposition' to the measure in the
Senate, for it was carried only by a division of 54
votes to 27; Probably some horror was felt at the
foul ingratitude and cruelty of renxing on the poor
negroes of the colonies the galling fetters from
which France herself had, nine years befo7e, re-
leased them, and, perhaps, at the instance of some
of those Senators themselves.

Whether the opposition was to this, or to the
revival of the Slave Trade, or both, I do not
know. The debate was not publisheld., All that
was heard in England, was, that the Tribunitial
Council had voted the law by the majority here
mentioned ; and that it was afterwards adopted
by the Legislative Assembly. Apparently it passed
in the latter unanimously, for no division or dis-
cussion upon it was noticed in the reports of the
legislative proceedings.

Thus it pleased Clod to make the national obdu-
racy of France, like that of Spain and Portugal,
manifest to the whole world, before her ultimate
chastisements arrived. It might other%lisc have
been doubted, whether her nominal reformation,
though it certainly cost her nothing, but fell in
very suspiciously with her interests at the time,
had not been real and sincere. An interval of ma-
ritime peace was wanted to put her to the proof,
and just such an interval was given by the peace
of Amiens. She filled it up with all the enormi-
ties against the poor African race that she could
possibly crowd into it. Her barefaced legislative
apostacy was followed up with deeds of horror in
St. Domingo, at the recital of which. Nature
starts back appalled. At Guadaloupe and Cayenne
the perfidy was the same, the ingratitude greater,
the sanguinary atrocities only less, because after
Pelage and his followers were betrayed, there was
not, as in St. Domingo, any further resistance to
call for the fusillades, time noyades, the blood-
hounds, and les ecoles des chiens. lu Africa all was
done that the short time permitted. The new
law, in restoring all the regulations of 1789, had
renewed the bounties of Louis XVI. at the highest
rates to which he had progressively advvced
them. A fearful paroxysm of the Slave Trade,
therefore, was preparing for Africa, as well as
new expeditions to finish the murderous work sit
St. Domingo, when Providence, to punish the
oppressors, and rescue the oppressed, permitted
the passions of the tyrant to outrun his policy, and
to plunge him into a new war with England ; a
war which was to end in his own downfall, as
well as the signal chastisement of France.

[To he continued.]

Pelage,_ with the armed mulattoes of Guadaloupe,
like Potion and his party, into the snare prepared fur them.
They assisted Richepanse to subdue and destroy the armed
negroes, or rather performed that service wholly for him,
and were rewarded by deportation and death. Their conduct
was certainly faulty; and merited their fate, because they
knew, at least it seems they could hardly possibly be igno-
rant; that the perfidious purpose of Napoleon was to reduce
the poor negroes to slavery, though they had reteived free-
dons from the voluntary act of the Republic herself, and had,
by their bravery, reconquered the- island, and defeuded it
agaiust us during the whole of the war.