Port-au-Prince, 9 September 1826.
(Extract)

I am anxious to transmit all the information I have hitherto been able to collect upon matters of interest and importance in the state of Hayti. And although from the shortness of my residence here, I have not yet been enabled personally to examine into the actual condition of the country and of its inhabitants, yet as I have collected information from every part of it, and have diligently sifted all the evidence on which it is founded, I hope that you will not deem it premature in me to detail generally the result of the researches I have instituted. I beg, however, to reserve to myself the power of hereafter supplying whatever may be now defective, or of entering into such further statements as may appear illustrative, whenever I shall have personally completed my inquiries into the actual condition of Hayti and its inhabitants.

In the year 1801, when Toussaint L’Ouverture had succeeded in expelling his opponent (Rigaud), a first attempt was made to establish a regular form of government, and accordingly, on the 1st July of the same year, Toussaint, under the title of Governor of the French Colony of St. Domingo, promulgated a constitution and laws for the French part of the island, which were drawn up by some French and Italian ecclesiasties, and adopted by the legislative body under his orders.

In fact they consisted of a mere modification of the old colonial laws of France. They established the Roman-catholic as the religion of the French colony, regulated the rights of persons, confirmed the abolition of slavery, fixed the forms of justice, municipal institutions, formation of the colonial guard, both paid and unpaid, the administration of the finances, the administration of agriculture, the exclusion of all emigrants (a list of whom was to be furnished by the mother country) from holding property, and various minor points. The governor originated all laws, which were passed without hesitation by the central assembly.

The most important enactment was that affecting agricultural industry; the provisions of which were decidedly coercive. Indeed if we look back to the state of the country, it was necessary that labour should have been enforced, for during the preceding seven years it had been almost entirely abandoned, and the country reduced to a waste. By the laws then passed, all the cultivators were attached to the plantations to which they might first engage themselves, without the power of subsequently quitting them. They were compelled, under the same plantation regulations, to work as before, with this difference, that instead of having every thing provided, they received (as I am told) nominally, a fourth of the produce of their labour, but in reality much less. This was deemed sufficient to furnish them with the necessaries of life.

Such arrangements, in a country so fertile, soon began to be productive of advantage; and the produce, which had in three years, from 1794 to 1796 inclusive, been reduced to the value of 8,606,720 livres, or one-eleventh of what it was in 1789, amounted in 1802, on an average of two years, to the value 46,266,300 livres, estimated at the prices of 1789, or one-fourth of the produce of that year.

The arrival of the French army under General LeClerc, early in the month of January 1802, put a stop to this improvement. A war of extermination recommenced in all its horrors, and continued until the final of the island by General Rochambeau in November 1803.

As soon as this had taken place, Dessalines, who had succeeded Toussaint as general in chief, with the assembled Haytian chiefs, prepared a declaration of independence, which was proclaimed at Gonaives, the 1st January 1804.

At this time, Hayti, the original name of the island, was adopted instead of that of St. Domingo.

Dessalines, now governor-general for life, professed to make Toussaint his model, and the same system of coercive labour was adopted, although not carried on with equal energy.

He undertook an expedition for the conquest of the Spanish part of the island; in which he failed in consequence of the arrival of a French squadron; on his return he was proclaimed Emperor, by the title of Jaques Premier, on the 8th October 1804.

A constitution, professedly the work of twenty-three persons selected for that purpose, was formed. It declared Hayti free, sovereign, and independent; abolished slavery; fixed the rights of citizens; excluded all whites from being proprietors, except those who had been naturalized, with their children, decreed that all the subjects of Hayti should be distinguished by the generic name of Blacks, whatever might have been their colour; compelled every Haytian to profess some mechanical trade. The Emperor was to approve and publish laws, and to possess absolute control over every branch of the public service. A national and exclusive religion was rejected, and entire freedom of conscience granted. The agricultural system was precisely that of Toussaint, exacting labour for a fourth of the produce, and prescribing the use of the whip; but idleness was punished by imprisonment.

The labourers were fixed to the property where they first established themselves, and could not change without a license from an official agent of the government.

As nearly all the property had belonged to European Frenchmen, it was confiscated and transferred to the government, who did not retain any part of it in their own hands, but let the estates at rents fixed and proportionate to the number of labourers, not the extent of soil; thus retaining the principle that has ever determined the value of property in slave colonies.

The result of this system was as efficacious as it had been under his predecessor, and although the whole population does not appear to have exceeded 400,000 persons of all descriptions, or two-thirds of what it had been under the French government, the value of the produce, taken at the prices of 1789, amounted to 59,191,800 livres, exceeding the value of the produce in Toussaint’s time by 12,925,500, and attaining nearly one-third of what it had been in 1789.

With the exception of the enforcement of labour and its consequences, no other beneficial arrangements seem even to have been contemplated.

The violent death of Dessalines took place on the 17th October 1806; and on the 27th of the following December, deputies named by the emissaries of Christophe and Petion, applied at Port-au-Prince to represent the different departments, and formed the constituent assembly, from which emanated the present constitution of Hayti as revised in 1816; the leading articles of which may be classed under thirteen general heads. The first of these may be considered as declaratory of the principles of the revolution then effected; it declared that slavery could not exist in Hayti; that the republic should never interfere with or attempt to conquer other countries; that the house of every man is his castle; and that no white man could after that declaration acquire property in Hayti.

The remaining twelve portions determined the mode of dividing the republic; that all Indians, Africans, and their descendants, after one year’s residence in Hayti, are entitled to the rights of citizenship; that the Roman-catholic religion is that of the State, though others are tolerated; that the legislature be composed of a chamber of representatives and a senate, the former to be elected by the people, and the latter, consisting of twenty-four members, to be chosen by the representatives. That the president should originate all laws, except money bills, and his final approval indispensable; his office for life, with the right of naming his successor, subject to the sanction of the senate, and entire command of all the military forces vested in him. That courts of civil and criminal justice should be established; that the army should be organized, and agriculture protected; that the state of the public finances should be annually reported by the secretary of state; and that the right of revising the constitution should be vested in the senate.

Minor points were also decreed, but with these it is unnecessary to overload this communication.

Having thus laid the foundation of a government, the assembly proceeded to elect a chief, and offered the presidency to Henri Christophe, who was at that time the senior general officer of the new republic. The limited powers annexed to it by no means accorded with this officer’s views. He desired that he should be entrusted with the absolute control of the whole of the public revenue, and with full power to put to death any person whom he might consider criminal. To this the assembly would not accede; and on the 1st January 1807, Christophe, after defeating Petion at Cebert, about a league from Port-au-Prince, presented himself before the town, and invested it for fifteen days; when he retired to the north, the whole of which he gradually conquered, and at last established his frontier from St. Marc through Verette to Mirebalais.

On his return to Cap Francois he also put forth a constitution, differing only from that of the constituent assembly of Port-au-Prince in the greater extent of powers conferred on the executive. On the 17th February 1807, he assumed the unpretending title of President of the Republic of Hayti.

This was not, however, sufficient; and on the 28th November 1811, a new constitution was published, and the executive vested in a monarch, who was declared to be Henri Premier.

After Christophe had assumed the regal dignity, his privy council presented him with a collection of laws entitled the “Code Henri.” This took place on the 30th January 1812, and on the 20th of the following month the royal sanction was given to them.

This code consisted of seven laws; viz.- 1. Civil Law, 2. Commercial Law, 3. Shipping and Maritime Law, 4. Law of Civil Process, 5. Law of Criminal and Police Process, 6. Law of Agriculture, 7. Military Law.

The whole of these are drawn up with considerable ability, and affect to protect the properties and persons of all; but in practice the will of the sovereign constituted the effective law. The most important of these enactments were the two last, and that regulating agriculture was as rigorous as those which preceded it.

About the period of Christophe’s elevation, he laid siege a second time to Port-au-Prince; but after having remained before it for above fifteen weeks, he precipitately abandoned the enterprise, and from that time till his death seems to have devoted himself to the internal government of his kingdom; and although no formal treaty was concluded between him and his rival Petion, there seems to have been a tacit understanding that hostilities should cease, and that both the contending parties should reserve their strength for opposing their common enemy, France.

As soon as the constituent assembly of Port-au-Prince was relieved from the terrors of a siege, and had found that Christophe had established himself as chief in the north, they proceeded to select a president content to act on the principles of the constitution which they had promulgated.

In furtherance of these views, on the 9th March 1807, the chief magistracy was conferred on General Petion, who had so successfully maintained the rights of the assembly, the preceding January, against Christophe.

Early in 1810, Rigaud, who had formerly defended the southern department against the British troops, came from France, with secret powers from Napoleon (it is said by his opponents) to establish the French ascendancy. The president, who had formerly been his adjutant-general, suspected, but entrusted him with a command at Cayes. No sooner was he armed with power than he took up arms against the government, under the pretext of redressing grievances and of restoring the republic to its original purity.

Unable to accomplish his real object, that of assuming the reins of government by force of arms, he maintained a hostile attitude until his death, which took place about the end of 1811. For a short time the southern department fell under the dominion of General Borgella, who however was soon induced to recognise the supremacy of the president. Thus the republic was restored to its original extent after the separation of the north under Christophe, except a small mountainous district, where a lieutenant-colonel, named Goman, had in November 1806 set up as an adherent of Christophe, but in fact as an independent chief.

Notwithstanding this accession of territory, the island was rent into four governments;- that of Christophe, that of Petion, that of Goman, and that of Old Spain, which last comprised nearly two-thirds of the whole surface.

Petion encouraged trade, especially that with Great Britain, giving a preference by reducing the duties on all British goods to five per cent, while those on all others were ten per cent. But he also introduced the base coinage now in circulation, which is so easily imitated, that although his government only issued five million dollars, there were current at his death above twelve millions; the surplus being fabricated in Europe and America. The real value of each of these nominally 4s. 2d. is certainly not 6d. sterling. The consequence of this, combined with the prohibition to export foreign coin, has been most ruinous.

This chief continued in the office of president upwards of eleven years, doing little more than lose and then recover the territory that composed the republic at its original establishment in 1807. He died in April 1818, and is now considered by the Haytians as their chief benefactor.

On the death of Petion, (which is said to have been accelerated by disappointment and grief at the failure of all his attempts to ameliorate the condition of his country,) he was succeeded by the present president, General Boyer.

His two dangerous rivals, Christophe and Goman, began to decline in power almost at the moment of his elevation. Goman’s means depended chiefly on the convulsed state of the country, and when hotly pursued he was abandoned by his followers, wearied of a most precarious existence; and he himself fell by the hands of a party of Boyer’s troops, sent in pursuit of him in 1820.

There yet remained the formidable king Henry, whose activity, natural acuteness, and unhesitating severity, maintained his authority so long as his health remained unimpaired; but having been attacked by a sickness that terminated in a partial palsy, intrigues were set on foot by some of his own officers for their own aggrandizement. The respect by dread ceased when his activity was destroyed, and he was soon abandoned, even by his guard, with whom his enemies had previously tampered; finding himself thus deserted, he shot himself through the heart at Cape Haitien, on the 20th October 1826.

Christophe established schools; formed a most rigorous and effective police; excited artifical wants among his chiefs, and then compelled them to supply them, without ever retrograding; enforced labour as rigidly as under the French proprietors; formed something like a respectable military and naval force; raised a larger revenue from the north than had ever been received from the whole of the French St. Domingo since 1791; and after calling in the debased coinage issued by Petion and by himself, issued a sound gold and silver coinage. His revenue amounted to 3,5000,000 dollars; the value of his imports to 7,000,000 dollars; that of his exports to 8,000,000 dollars; and he left so large a sum in his coffers that 6,000,000 of dollars found their way into the republican treasures.

The moment that Christophe’s life ended, contests arose as to his successor; Romain and Richard were the chief competitors. At this moment Boyer, availing himself of the confusion, marched with a considerable force to Cape Haitian, assumed the chief authority, abolished every trace of the regal government, and united, for the first time since the death of Dessalines, the whole of French St. Domingo under that of the republic.

Having thus restored the republic to its original bounds, the only object that remained to fill up the president’s ambition was the acquisition of the Spanish part of the island.

While the spirit of revolution was making rapid strides in every part of continental America, it is not to be wondered at that it should have extended its influence to this island. Various schemes of regeneration were at different times agitated; and at last, in December 1821, a small party in the Spanish part of St. Domingo declared in favour of Colombia.

A considerable party remained faithful to the mother country. Rumours of threatened convulsions gave courage to intriguers, and an invitation was sent in the beginning of February 1822, to the president, to take possession of the city of Santo Domingo. He accordingly moved across the island with twelve thousand men, over-run the country, proclaimed the abolition of slavery, took military possession of the whole of the east, and thus became the undisputed chief of the whole island.

The oaths of allegiance were taken by all who chose to remain, with the reservation (admitted by all parties) of a right of never opposing Old Spain.

The fall of the capital was immediately followed by the establishment of Haytian authorities in every other lace; and that was not done in right of conquest, but was represented to be a mere resumption of sovereignty, which had been in abeyance from the time of Toussaint.

Previous to the revolution the population of Spanish Hayti was estimated at about 100,000, of whom about 15,000 were slaves; the remainder were white, of the mixed races, and some few aboriginal Indians. Since the occupation by the republican forces, the emigration has been very large, and I find that the population does not at present exceed 71,223 persons of all classes; so that in the space of about four years and a half, the numbers have diminished above one third of their total amount.

As is usual among American Spaniards, their chief occupation is that of grazing cattle, and a few are employed in agriculture, except for the production of what is absolutely necessary for home consumption.

The government that is now established professes to be purely republican, according to the constitution of the 27th December 1806, but in practice it may be said to be essentially military.

The whole island is divided into departments, arrondissements, and communes. These are all under the command of military men, subject only to the control of the president; and to them is entrusted exclusively the execution of all the laws, whether affecting police, agriculture or finance. There is not, as far as I can learn, a single civilian charged with an extensive authority.

It would be a very difficult matter to give an authentic account of the present state of finances of this country; for although the value of imports and exports were accurately obtained; and we know that five-sixteenths of the whole of the public income are derived from the duties imposed on these, which might be supposed sufficient to establish the basis of a correct calculation; yet the frauds practised in the collection are so very numerous, that it would be impossible to estimate the actual receipts with even an approximation to truth.

Latterly an attempt has been made to systematize the laws of Hayti, and three codes have been published; Code de Procedure, Code Civile, and Code Rural. Two others are now printing, and when finished will comprise the entire code of the republic.

The most important of these is the Code Rural; the chief character of which is the enforcing of labour. It is in fact a modification of the old French regulations, sanctioned by the Code Noir, with additional restrictions.

The provisions are as despotic as those of any slave system that can be conceived. The labourer may almost be considered as “adscriptus glebae” he is deemed a vagabond without license; he is prohibited from keeping a shop; no person can build a house in the country unconnected with a farm. Deviations from the law are punished by fine and imprisonment.

The code determines the mode of managing landed property; of forming contracts for cultivation between proprietor and farmer, farmer and labourer; of regulating grazing establishments; the rural police, or the inspection of the cultivation and cultivators; of repressing vagrancy; and of the repair and maintenance of the public roads. Lastly, it affixes the penalty of fine in some cases, and in others of indefinite imprisonment, at the option of the judges of the peace.

That cultivation would not go on, beyond that which daily necessities might require is I think perfectly true; but it seems problematical whether the mode taken to correct the evils of sloth and inactivity be the best calculated to arrive at the object in view.

The laws have already began to operate, and the officers commanding in the different arrondissements are said to report favourably of their progress.

But trained as every man has been to the idleness of a Haytian military life, it will be difficult to induce them by gentle means to labour, and when the harsher provisions of the law are brought into play, it seems highly probable that they will discover, what they formerly did, that their toil produces no more profit to themselves, while it is more irksome and arduous than their previous idle mode of life; and that the benefit accrues to a new set of masters, having merely a different denomination from those who preceded them

The composition of this population is perhaps the most anomalous and extraordinary that has ever existed in the globe.

The great mass of the community consists either of ignorant men, recently liberated from slavery, or their immediate descendants, equally ignorant with themselves.

The remainder is composed of some white people, chiefly Catalans or their decendants, who are to be found in the Spanish part of the island; a very few Frenchmen, jhaving been here at the declaration of independence, have adopted Hayti as their country, and have been fortunate enough to escape the sanguinary schemes of Dessalines; and of all the various castes resulting from the intercourse by the white with the black.

In July 1825, Baron Mackan arrived here with the ordonnance of the king of France of the 17th April 1825, recognizing the independence of this country upon two conditions; viz. that the ports of Hayti should be open to all nations, by all of which equal duties on importation and exportation should be paid, with the exception of the French, in favour of which a reduction of one half should take place; and the payment, in five annual instalments , of 150 millions of francs, by the present inhabitants of the French part of the island, to commence from the 31st December 1825.

The ordonnance was accepted by the senate on the 11th July.

The president then appointed three commissioners to accompany Baron Mackan on his return to France, for the purpose of negociating a treaty with the French government on the basis contained in the royal ordonnance; and also to raise a loan for the payment of the first instalment. They sailed from this on the 20th July, and a convention was concluded at Paris on the 31st following.

On the return of the commissioners to Hayti, the president refused to ratify the treaty; and on the 26th July 1826 two commissioners sailed from this for France, for the purpose of effecting a final arrangement with the French government.

In considering the recent and present state of Hayti. It appears to me that two very different sets of conclusions may be deduced, the first favourable, the second unfavourable to Hayti. It is true that two and twenty years have elapsed since the Haytians by a public act first declared their independence, and then determined to withdraw all allegiance from the mother country; that after various struggles, one, instead of five distinct governments, has been established, and that this one possesses all the external characters of organization; that the whole island is in military possession of the present authorities; that the country is peculiarly favourable for defence against European troops; that the abolition of the slave trade is a fundamental law of the state; and lastly, that its independence has been formally recognized by the parent state.

On the other hand, it will be seen that the very constitution of society in Hayti is ill assorted; that the jealousies and disunion prevail among its component parts; that there is no fixed principle of action founded on religion and education; that the expenditure has increased. While the population, industry and revenue, have fallen off; and that the army and police, on which the government depend, are ill calculated to repress disorder.

(signed) CHARLES MACKENZIE