nd the average black nature, such as it now is, be left free to
assert itself, and there will be no more negroes like him in Barbadoes
or anywhere.

Naturally, I found him profoundly interested in the late revelations of
the state of Hayti. Sir Spenser St. John, an English official, after
residing for twelve years in Port au Prince, had in a published
narrative with many details and particulars, declared that the republic
of Toussaint l'Ouverture, the idol of all believers in the new gospel of
liberty, had, after ninety years of independence, become a land where
cannibalism could be practised with impunity. The African Obeah, the
worship of serpents and trees and stones, after smouldering in all the
West Indies in the form of witchcraft and poisoning, had broken out in
Hayti in all its old hideousness. Children were sacrificed as in the old
days of Moloch and were devoured with horrid ceremony, salted limbs
being preserved and sold for the benefit of those who were unable to
attend the full solemnities.

That a man in the position of a British resident should have ventured on
a statement which, if untrue, would be ruinous to himself, appeared in a
high degree improbable. Yet one had to set one incredibility against
another. Notwithstanding the character of the evidence, when I went out
to the West Indies I was still unbelieving. I could not bring myself to
credit that in an island nominally Catholic, where the French language
was spoken, and there were cathedrals and churches and priests and
missionaries, so horrid a revival of devil-worship could have been
really possible. All the inquiries which I had been able to make, from
American and other officers who had been in Hayti, confirmed Sir S. St.
John's story. I had hardly found a person who entertained a doubt of it.
I was perplexed and uncertain, when the Chief Justice opened the subject
and asked me what I thought. Had I been convinced I should have turned
the conversation, but I was not convinced and I was not afraid to say
so. I reminded him of the universal conviction through Europe that the
Jews were habitually guilty of sacrificing children also. There had been
detailed instances. Alleged offenders had been brought before courts of
justice at any time for the last six hundred years. Witnesses had been
found to swear to facts which had been accepted as conclusive. Wretched
creatures in Henry III.'s time had been dragged by dozens at horses'
tails through the st