teen dollars, to agree before hand with a medical practitioner if there be one in the commune, to look after their cultivators, and to furnish the necessary medicines; these medicines being furnished gratis to the cultivators contracting at a fourth; but being paid for at cost price, when furnished to associations working for half, or to under-tenants.

"68. Proprietors and chief renters of rural properties, must look to it that the infant children on the property shall be well taken care of. To this end one or more females shall be properly appointed to this charge, the remuneration for whose attention shall be paid by the cultivators, in proportion to the number of their children."

The obligations of the cultivators are also stated, they are to be "obedient and respectful to the proprietors and renters with whom they have contracted, as well as to the managers." They are to be punctual and not leave their labors without permission, except from Saturday morning till Monday at sunrise. They are to render their services in the transportation of the produce, the proprietor or chief renter furnishing the means of transport. Rules are enacted in regard to sub-contracts. Soldiers and other per

sons in the service of the state are allowed to cultivate on shares on the same terms as others; and they may also work by the week, the month, or the job if they prefer. This regulation is admirably adapted to counteract the evils of the large military establishment maintained in Hayti. This law closes with a chapter on "the method of terminating difficulties between proprietors, renters, managers, cultivators, associated persons, sub-tenants, &c.," which we fancy would look very oddly in any slave code. We quote it entire.

"81. When differences shall arise between agricultural proprietors, principal renters, managers, and cultivators, associated for a half, or sub-tenants, the parties shall first carry their complaints or claims before the officer of Rural Police of the section, who, assisted, if need be, by the Council of Agriculture of the quarter, shall forthwith employ himself in amicably terminating the differences, as far as they may be within his province.

82. In cases where the differences are of a nature not to be decided by the officer of Rural Police, assisted by the Council of Agriculture, he shall call upon the parties to

choose arbiters, within the section, to settle and decide their differences.

"83. In cases where the differences cannot thus be settled by arbitration on the spot, or when the parties shall not have named arbiters, the officer of Rural Police shall wait till Saturday or Sunday in order to send the parties before the Justice of Peace of the commune. The whole must be concluded in the space of six days at most.

84. The Justice of Peace shall be bound to decide the difference, and shall not be at liberty, under pain of being punished for a denial of justice, to allege the silence of the law on the cause brought before him for his decision.

"85. The Justice of Peace shall be bound to pronounce within twenty-four hours, at the utmost, after the appearance of the parties."

The fourth law regards the establishment and regulation of farms for breeding cattle, and the contracts between the proprietors or renters, and laborers on the same.

The fifth law regards the care and management of the animals, and the damage they may do in the fields, and is characterized by justice and sound sense.

The sixth law establishes and regulates the Rural Police. Hayti is divided into departments. The departments are subdivided into communes; and these again into rural sections. The military commandant of each department is responsible for the decay of agriculture and the execution of the Code Rural within his department. The commandant of each commune is responsible for his commune; and the officer of rural police in each section is responsible for his section. These officers are to make regular inspections and accurate returns of the population and the state of agriculture. The rural section is limited to about four square leagues in the plains, and in the mountains, according to the nature of the ground. Each officer of such a section has under his command three rural guards. Thus there is one military man to every square league. The same law establishes in every commune a Council of Agriculture for certain specified purposes. The object of the Rural Police is stated to be, 1. To repress vagrancy. 2. To maintain order and assiduity in the labors of the field. 3. The discipline of the laboring population. 4. The making and repairing public and private roads. It was in this portion of

the Code Rural that the West India slaveholders found the articles at which they were so much horror stricken, and which their American copyists profess to believe so much worse than the American slave code. Yet they have found nothing of whips, or chains or irresponsible masters. The whole amount of the coercion, which figures so largely in their comments, is, that persons who have no other visible means of living, must work on the farms under proprietors of their own choice, or on the roads under the rural police. They must not leave the plantation without permission. The slavery advocates would have us infer from the articles which they do extract, that by others which they do not extract the laborers are subject to a discipline similar to that of slavery. Yet the only article on the subject, and which they were careful to omit, is this: "189. Every act of disobedience or insult, on the part of a workman commanded to do any work which he has engaged to do by a reciprocal contract or agreement, shall be punished by imprisonment, according to the exigency of the case, and according to the decision of the Justice of Peace of the commune." The remainder of the code is occupied with detailed regulations in regard to the making and repairing of the roads.

This code passed the Chamber of Commons, at Port au Prince, on the 21st of April, 1826, it passed the Senate on the 4th, and received the signature of President Boyer on the 6th of the succeeding May. It is said to have been the work of Secretary-General Inginac, assisted by a committee of the legislature. After this review, exceedingly brief compared with the code itself, we feel no fear that the reader will disagree with us, when we pronounce it a perfect. contrast to the American Slave code. The most literally rigid execution of the Code Rural could by no possibility produce any thing like the misery which is the daily and inevitable consequence of the American system of coercion. But does it not show that emancipated slaves will not work without compulsion-that they will not work for mere wages? Certainly not. The whole code is built on the supposition that they will work for wages. Its coercive power is well adapted to correct individual cases of idleness or vagrancy which might be expected to abound among such a population as that of Hayti, so released from the

yoke, but it would be utterly impotent to secure the industry of a people generally averse to labor. Who are the agents charged with the enforcement of the so called coercion ? They are chiefly persons chosen by the laborers themselves and chosen from among themselves. The very conducteurs, or, as the slaveholders insist upon translating it, the drivers, are chosen by the laborers whom they are to conduct. The whole code is the work of a legislature chosen by the people, the majority of whom are the laborers themselves. If then it is a case of coercion, it is a case where the people coerce themselves. Alas! what idle wretches the people of Hayti must be-they have to force themselves to labor !

The Code Rural of Hayti, so far as coercion is concerned, is certainly not, as our learned editors have affirmed, "without example in any nation." The British law is remarkably parallel, and the advocates of slavery might as well infer from that, that the British yeomanry are "in a condition little different from that of slaves." Says Sir William Blackstone, in his "Commentaries on the Laws of England," "All single men between twelve years old and sixty, and married ones under thirty years of age, and all single women between twelve and forty, not having any visible liveli hood, are compellable by two justices, to go out to service in husbandry, or certain specific trades for the promotion of honest industry." Again, "A third species of servants are laborers, who are only hired by the day or the week, and do not live intra mania, as part of the family; concerning whom the statutes before cited, (5 Eliz. c. 4. and 6 Geo. III. e. 26,) have made many very good regulations: 1. Directing that all persons who have no visible effects may be coмPELLED to work. 2. Defining how long they must continue to work in summer and in winter: 3. PUNISHING Such as leave or desert their work: 4. Empowering the Justices at Sessions, or the Sheriff of the county to settle their wages: 5. Inflicting penalties upon such as either give or exact more wages than are so settled." Book I. p. 427.

We are inclined to think that the Code Rural is no exception to the general truth that legislators are prone to legislate too much, but it exhibits a wise adaptation of means to ends, and a provision for contingencies which could have resulted only from great experience or marvellous penetra

tion. It does infinite credit to Hayti. What nation, not advanced to the summit of civilization, has produced a code more justly and philosophically adapted to the purposes for which it was framed. To those who are clamorous after a "plan by which slavery can be abolished without producing greater evils," we commend the Code Rural of Hayti, with all its "horrors." If American slaveholders will adopt that, we will cease our interference with their coercion to-morrow.

IV. THE HORRORS OF IDLENESS.

Says James Franklin, "I shall be able to show that Hayti presents no instance in which the cultivation of the soil is successfully carried on without the application of force to constrain the laborer." p. 7. Again, "I declare it to be my firm conviction, that unless coercion be resorted to, the negro will not labor. The impulse for indulging in sloth and indolence is too irresistible, and it will not be in the power of the government to make any progress in agricultural labor, except it be done by actual force." p. 343. And again, "It is perhaps unfortunate that the local authorities in Hayti are individuals without decision, and too apt to submit to the will of the people; mere nonentities, without resolution sufficient to command obedience in their several districts, although invested with power to commit, or inflict summary punishment. Hence there is much reason to presume that the enactments of the Code Rural will become inefficacious for a more general and extensive cultivation of the soil, and that agricultural pursuits will be not the least encouraged or promoted by its clauses, because the task of enforcing them devolves on the very imbecile class of persons who constitute the executive part of the government." p. 363. So it seems that the coercion that has made such a terrible figure in the "horrors of the Code Rural," is only potential, not actual. The charge now is that of Pharaoh against the Israelites-"Ye are idle, ye are idle." And this idleness, too, is the result of emancipation! for says our author in this connection, "It is indisputable that the declaration of freedom to the slave population of Hayti was the ruin of the country." It is consoling however to learn from the same candid and philosophical traveler, that this ruin does not involve the starvation of the people, nor is it