They know that they must work, they wish to do so, and they will do so."
This is strong testimony. In 1796, three years after the act of
emancipation, we are told that the colony was flourishing under
Toussaint, that the whites lived happily and peaceably on their estates,
and the blacks continued to work for them. Up to 1801 the same happy
state of things continued. The colony went on as by enchantment;
cultivation made day by day a perceptible progress, under the
recuperative energies of free labor.
In 1801 General Vincent, a proprietor of estates in the island, was sent
by Toussaint to Paris for the purpose of laying before the Directory the
new Constitution which had been adopted at St. Domingo. He reached
France just after the peace of Amiens, when Napoleon was fitting out his
ill-starred armament for the insane purpose of restoring slavery in the
island. General Vincent remonstrated solemnly and earnestly against an
expedition so preposterous, so cruel and unnecessary; undertaken at a
moment when all was peace and quietness in the colony, when the
proprietors were in peaceful possession of their estates, when
cultivation was making a rapid progress, and the blacks were industrious
and happy beyond example.
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