n by after-thoughts of humanity. The free descendants of
mulattoes who were enfranchised by French masters in Louisiana, and
who form a respectable and flourishing class in that State, now stand
beneath the American flag at the call of General Butler. But the
Anglo-American alone seems willing to originate a chattel and to
keep him so. His passion will descend as low for gratification as a
Frenchman's or a Spaniard's, but his heart will not afterwards mount as
high.

Acts of enfranchisement required at first the sanction of the
Government, until in 1682 the three sovereign courts of St. Christophe,
Martinique, and Guadeloupe offered the project of a law which favored
enfranchisements; it led to the articles upon that subject in the Edict
of 1685, quoted above, which sought at once to restrain the license of
masters and to afford them a legal way to be humane and just.[Q]

[Footnote Q: Other motives became influential as soon as the slaves
discovered their advantages. A master in want of money would offer
emancipation for a certain sum; the slave would employ every means, even
the most illicit, to raise the amount upon which his or her freedom
depended. A female slave would demand emancipation for herself or
for some relative as her price for yielding to a master; attractive
negresses wielded a great deal of power in this way. A great evil arose
from testamentary acts of enfranchisement, or equivalent promises; for
the slave in question would sometimes poison his master to hasten the
day of liberty. On the other hand, many masters of the nobler kind
emancipated their slaves as a reward for services: the rearing of
six living children, thirty years of field or domestic labor without
marooning, industry, economy, attachment, the discovery of a poisoning
scheme or of an _emeute_, saving the life of a white person with great
risk,--all these were occasional reasons for enfranchisement.]

In 1703 there were only one hundred and fifty freed persons in San
Domingo. In 1711 a colonial ordinance proscribed every enfranchisement
which did not have the approbation of the colonial government. The King
sanctioned this ordinance in 1713, and declared that all masters who
neglected the formality should lose their slaves by confiscation.

In 1736 the number of freed slaves, black and mulatto, was two thousand.
The Government, alarmed at the increase, imposed a sum upon the master
for each act of enfranchisement, in the hope to check