scandalmongering. The
work of agriculture is carried on by black slaves imported from
Madagascar. They can be got in exchange for a gun or a roll of cloth,
and the dearest does not cost more than seven pounds. They are compelled
to work from sunrise to sunset, and they are given nothing to eat but
mashed maize boiled in water, and tapioca bread. At the least negligence
the skin is scourged from their body. The women are punished in the same
manner. Sometimes when they are old they are left to starve to death.
Every day during my sojourn in the Isle of France I have seen black men
and black women lashed hands and feet to a ladder and flogged for having
forgot to shut a door or for breaking a bit of pottery. I have seen them
bleeding all over, and having their wounded bodies rubbed with vinegar
and salt. I have seen them speechless with excess of pain; I have seen
some of them bite the iron cannon on which they have been bound.

I do not know if coffee and sugar are necessary to the happiness of
Europe, but I know well that these two vegetables are a source of misery
to the inhabitants of two continents of the world. We are dispeopling
America in order to have a land to grow them; we are dispeopling Africa
in order to have a nation to cultivate them. There are 20,000 black
slaves on the Isle of France, but they die so fast that, in order to
keep up their number, 1,200 more have to be imported every year.

I am very sorry that our philosophers who attack abuses with so much
courage have hardly spoken of the slavery of the black races, except to
make a jest of it. They have eyes only for things very remote. They
speak of St. Bartholomew, of the massacre of the Mexicans by the
Spaniards, as if this crime was not one committed now by the half of
Europe. Oh, ye men who dream of republics, see how your own people
misuse the authority entrusted to them! See your colonies streaming with
human blood! The men who shed it are men of your stamp; they talk like
you, they talk of humanity, they read the books of our philosophers, and
they exclaim against despotism; but when they get any power they show
that they are really brutes. In a country of so corrupt a morality an
absolute government is necessary. The excesses of a single tyrant are
preferable to the crimes and the injustices of a whole people.

_II.--A Land of Beauty and Abominations_

PORT LOUIS, _September 13, 1769_. An officer proposed to make a walking
tour round the