"Slavery," answered my uncle, "has given Louisiana half her population. An inexcusable imprudence was committed in suddenly granting to the slaves of San Domingo a liberty for which they had not been prepared. The blacks and whites both have been victims of this great fault."
"I am undecided," said Bonaparte, "whether it would be better to maintain or abolish slavery in Louisiana."
"Of all the scourges that have afflicted the human race," responded my uncle, "slavery is the most detestable! But even humanity requires great precautions in the application of the remedy, and you cannot apply it if Louisiana should again become French. Governments still half resist emancipation: they tolerate in secret what they ostensibly condemn, and they themselves are embarrassed by their false position. The general sentiment of the world is in favor of emancipation; it is in vain that the colonists and planters wish to arrest a movement which public opinion approves. The occupation of Louisiana—a colony with slaves—will occasion us more expense than it will afford us profit."
As my uncle ceased speaking, Bonaparte turned to Minister Decrés and with a motion of his hand indicated that he was ready to hear his opinion. The minister began eagerly:
"We are still at peace with England," said he; "the colony has just been ceded to us; it depends on the First Consul to preserve it. It would not be wise in him to abandon, for fear of a doubtful danger, the most important establishment that we can form out of France, and despoil ourselves of it for no other reason than the possibility of a war; it would be as well, if not better, that it should be taken from us by force of arms.
"You will not acknowledge, by a resignation of Louisiana, that England is sovereign mistress of the seas, that she is there invulnerable, and that no one can possess colonies except at her good pleasure! It does not become you to fear the kings of England! If they should seize Louisiana, as some would have you fear, Hanover would be immediately in your hands, as a certain pledge of its restoration. France, deprived of her navy and her colonies, is stripped of half her splendor and of a great part of her strength. Louisiana can indemnify us for all our losses. There does not exist on the globe a single port, a single city, susceptible of becoming as important as New Orleans, and the neighborhood of the American States already makes it one of the most commercial in the world. The Mississippi does not reach there until it has received twenty other rivers, most of which surpass in size the finest rivers of Europe.
"The navigation to the Indies, by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, has changed the course of European trade and ruined Venice and Genoa. What will be its direction if, at the Isthmus of Panama, a simple canal should be opened to connect the one ocean with the other? The revolution which navigation will then experience will be still more considerable, and the circumnavigation of the globe will become easier than the long voyages that are now made in going to and returning from India. Louisiana will be on this new route, and it will then be acknowledged that this possession is of inestimable value.
"Finally, France, after her long troubles, requires such a colony for her internal pacification; it will be for our country what a century ago were for England the settlements which the emigrants from the three kingdoms have raised to so high a degree of prosperity. It will be the asylum of our religious and political dissenters; it will cure a part of the maladies which the Revolution has caused, and be the supreme conciliator of all the parties into which we are divided. You will there find the remedies for which you search with so much solicitude!"
I thought this a very bold speech, and it was uttered with much fire and enthusiasm. I could not be sure how the Consul took it, for he said not a word through it all. When the minister had finished speaking he dismissed them both with a few words, but telling them he should expect them to remain all night.
As the door closed behind the two ministers, Bonaparte threw himself back in his chair, his arms folded across his breast, his head drooping forward, in an attitude of deep thought. It seemed to me more than likely that Minister Decrés's words had touched his pride and his patriotism, and he was hesitating now at the thought of getting rid of France's last important colony.