Thus the lands were divided out among the officers of the army, while the privates were compelled to cultivate the soil under their former military commanders, clothed with more than "a little brief authority." No better could have been expected except by fools or fanatics. The blacks might preach equality, it is true, but yet, like the more enlightened ruffians of Paris, they would of course take good care not to practice what they had preached. Hence, by all the horrors of their bloody resolution, they only effected a change of masters. The white man had disappeared, and the black man, one of their own race and color, had assumed his place and his authority. And of all masters, it is well known, the naturally servile are the most cruel. "The earth," says Solomon, "cannot bear a servant when he reigneth."[203]
"The sensual and the dark rebel in vain:
Slaves by their own compulsion, in mad game
They burst their manacles, to wear the name
Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain."
Coleridge.
Thus "the world of good" they sought was found, most literally, in "the word;" for the word, the name of freedom, was all they had achieved—at least of good. Poverty, want, disease, and crime, were the substantial fruits of their boasted freedom.
In 1789, the sugar exported was 672,000,000 pounds; in 1806, it was 47,516,531 pounds; in 1825, it was 2020 pounds; in 1832, it was 0 pounds. If history had not spoken, we might have safely inferred, from this astounding decline of industry, that the morals of the people had suffered a fearful deterioration. But we are not left to inference. We are informed, by the best authorities,[204] that their "morals are exceedingly bad;" and that under the reign of liberty, as it is called, their condition has, in all respects, become far worse than it was before. "There appears every reason to apprehend," says James Franklin, "that it will recede into irrecoverable insignificance, poverty, and disorder."[205]
Mr. T. Babington Macaulay has, we are aware, put forth certain notions on the subject of liberty, which are exactly in accordance with the views and the spirit of the abolitionists, as well as with the cut-throat philosophy of the Parisian philanthropists of the revolution. As these notions are found in one of his juvenile productions, and illustrated by "a pretty story" out of Ariosto, we should not deem it worth while to notice them, if they had not been retained in the latest edition of his Miscellanies. But for this circumstance, we should pass them by as the rhetorical flourish of a young man who, in his most mature productions, is often more brillant than profound.
"Ariosto," says he, "tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her during the period of her disguise were forever excluded from participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her, she afterward revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial form which was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them happy in love, and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she hisses, she stings. But wo to those who in disgust shall venture to crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory."
For aught we know, all this may be very fine poetry, and may deserve the place which it has found in some of our books on rhetoric. But yet this beautiful passage will—like the fairy whose charms it celebrates—be so surely transformed into a hateful snake or venomous toad, that it should not be swallowed without an antidote. Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Barrière, and the black Dessalines, took this hateful, hissing, stinging, maddening reptile to their bosoms, and they are welcome to its rewards. But they mistook the thing: it was not liberty transformed; it was tyranny unbound, the very scourge of hell, and Satan's chief instrument of torture to a guilty world. It was neither more nor less than Sin, despising God, and warring against his image on the earth.
We do not doubt—nay, we firmly believe—that in the veritable history of the universe, analogous changes have taken place. But then these awful changes were not mere fairy tales. They are recorded in the word of God. When Lucifer, the great bearer of light, himself was free, he sought equality with God, and thence became a hateful, hissing serpent in the dust. But he was not fully cursed, until "by devilish art" he reached "the organs of man's fancy," and with them forged the grand illusion that equality alone is freedom.
For even sinless, happy Eve was made to feel herself oppressed, until, with keen desire of equality with gods, "forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she ate:"—