ment, are displayed in his advice; on which imperious circumstances now stamp a peculiar interest. The perilous situation of our sugar colonies, in consequence of the French revolution and the late French expedition, is proved to complete demonstration; and a strong ground for alarm is most clearly stated. The observations here presented to us were written, and most of them printed, before we had received any intelligence of the operations of the French forces at St. Domingo; and subsequent events have given the greatest sanction to the writer's arguments and predictions. He coincides with the opinion which we have always maintained on this point, on authority which we conceived to be worthy of the utmost reliance, that of the late highly respectable Bryan Edwards; and he gives his reasons for thinking that the French expedition against the negroes of St. Domingo, though in its commencement it might display favourable circumstances in the eye of a superficial observer, must be ultimately disastrous. Contemplating a general contest between France and negror-freedom in the West Indies, the author thus delineates the nature of the warfare : To speak of St. Domingo alone: an island containing at least 45,000 square miles*, and half a million perhaps of people, is to be subdued! The time usually spent in West India conquest would not suffice for an unobstructed march across its openest territory. It abounds in natural fastnesses, in passes formidable to an invader, in woods hardly penetrable, in mountains which the panting European would find inaccessible, even if disencumbered of his arms. Here then war is not likely to be soon at the end of its journey.-Its operations must be multiform, extensive, laborious, and long protracted, If to reduce the whole interior country to effectual submission, will be a tedious as well as an arduous work; to fix its subjection permanently, must be far more so: to the incalculable difficulties and hardships of war between the tropics, must be added its European extent and perseverance. But when we consider the new enemy to be encountered, these obstacles, great and unprecedented though they are in themselves, swell into a far greater and less superable magnitude. To the sickly troops of the invading army, would be opposed men entirely exempt from the debilitating influence of the climate, men to whom the yellow fever is unknown, who are accustomed to endure the severest labour under a vertical sun, and who neither sicken from the excessive heat, nor the occasional humidity, of the atmosphere. Geographers differ greatly as to the extent of St. Domingo: Guthrie describes it to be 450 miles long and 150 broad; Mr. Edwards, in his history of that Island, page 122, makes it only 390 in length, and 140 in breadth. - I have followed the latter estimate, but with a large deduction for the great irregularity in the breadth.' While the French soldier would sink with fatigue, and contract perhaps a mortal disease, by an ordinary European march, the negro rather exhilarated, than oppressed, by the solar blaze that exhausts his opponent, at least equally robust with him, and far more agile by constitution and habits, would advance or retreat the same distance as matter rather of recreation than toil, and with a rapidity of which the other is in that climate quite incapable. While the white soldier must be maintained by imported provisions, which cannot without great difficulty and expence be conveyed to him far from the sea-coast, the latter would find in the most interior parts of the island, and even on the tops of the mountains. enough of vegetable food to support his hardy nature, and hold it independently of all the chances of war. The soil itself is his inexhaustible magazine; rapidly producing for him by the briefest and easiest culture, and even by its own spontaneous gift, the esculent plants, and fruits, on which he well knows how to subsist, especially now that the fertile cane lands have for the most part been given up to the culture of provisions. 'Accustomed to live on a mere pittance, and to endure nakedness as well as hunger, it is scarcely possible to reduce him by cutting off bis supplies; he may therefore leave disease and waste to fight his battles, and find in retreat, and delay, certain expedients to frustrate the most powerful invasion. "The very surface of the country presents infallible means of ha rassing and destroying an invading army by a desultory system of war. By the impetuous torrents that rush in the rainy season from the mountains to the sea, every West India island is broken into innumerable deep ravines, or as they are called in the English-creole dialect "guts," so that in general it is impossible to proceed a mile without meeting one of these guts or ravines. Their sides are often too steep to be descended with ease, and are besides usually covered with trees and bushes; the high roads are therefore continued across these difficult passes by embankments or bridges above or below; which it is impossible for a horseman, and even difficult sometimes for a foot passenger unused to the country, to cross. It is obvious how this circumstance might be improved, not merely for the purposes of ambuscade, but, by the easy expedient of breaking down the bridges and embankments, to stop the advance of an enemy: indeed it is far more difficult to preserve these roads, than to destroy them; as they are frequently broken up by the torrents in the rainy season, and not repaired without considerable labour and ex pence. Even where such difficulties as these do not present themselves, as in the more level parts of the islands, or where the mountains do not rise very abruptly, there are still obstacles of a very formidable nature to the advances of an invading army. In the uncultivated part of the country, the underwood is so dense and thorny as not to be easily penetrated, except by the negroes, whose dexterity in passing through the woods by the help of their cutlasses or hatchets is admirable; and even in the cultivated ground, from the high growth of the canes, coffee, and most other tropical productions, an army could ་ could not advance out of the beaten reads, without clearing their way by pioneers almost at every footstep, and being continually exposed to ambuscades. To employ cavalry in such a country is obviously a hopeless expedient; as for the reasons assigned, the roads might easily be destroyed so as to make the passage of a troop of horse impracticable. Their restitution by the hands of white men would be no easy task; and, in some places, perhaps, the labour of an army for a day would not repair a breach that might be made in a single hour. Besides that in passing these roads the troops would be continually liable to be flanked by ambuscades, they would, by being mounted, present fairer marks to a lurking enemy, whom, when discovered and routed, they could not pursue with effect. The fate of a party of the St. Vincent's volunteers who went out on horseback to attack the Charribbs in the late war, sufficiently illustrates this remark. The places of retreat for the negroes, when defeated, would, of course, be the woods and mountains; where it would not only be impossible for horse, but even extremely difficult for European infantry to follow. The superiority of a negro in that climate is in no point more remarkable than in the dispatch and facility with which he ascends and descends the steepest sides of the mountains, without falling or losing his breath; a faculty which, no doubt, he chiefly owes to long and early habit in the cultivation of those high and steep acclivities in which the sugar Islands abound. By the same habit, greatly assisted by his not having been accustomed to the restraint of shoes, and the consequent flexibility of the muscles of his toes and feet, he is not incommoded with the slippery surface of the mountain ridges, though washed with almost continual rains; and where a white man would find it very difficult to walk steadily, the negro, to the surprize of strangers, is seen descending with a quick step, with a bundle of grass or wood on his head, without once losing his footsteps or dropping his load. It is on the mountains, that the runaway negroes who abound in the English islands elude the pursuit of their masters: it was on the mountains, that, by making a wise but obvious use of the advantages which I have mentioned, the Maroon Negroes of Jamaica established and long maintained their independence; and it was principally the inaccessibility of such retreats, that so long baffled our efforts to con quer a handful of Charribbs in St. Vincent's. 'It would be idle to insist much on the general advantages of such a native source of defence, for how many instances are to be met with, even in the history of Europe, of a rude and undisciplined people, destitute of all other warlike resources, presenting successfully the barrier of a mountainous country, to long continued efforts made by powerful nations to subdue them? But for the reasons already assigned, this barrier is far more formidable between the tropics than in the temperate climate of Europe; nor had the Welch, Swiss, or Corsican mountaineers, the same constitutional superiority over their invaders, that the negroes of the sugar sugar islands possess in their own mountains over the European sol dier. When, on the whole, I consider merely the physical disparity between these hardy children of the sun in their native climate, and troops from the temperate zone, I could almost compare the sup posed contest to a battle in the water between a seaman and a shark, or in the air between an aëronaut and an eagle.' We must not forget to estimate also the difficulty of making those who have tasted the cup of freedom return to the cruelest servitude, and bare their backs to the whip of the negroe-driver. From all these considerations, the author inclines to believe that St. Domingo will become the cradle of the liberty of the African race, as it formerly was that of their bondage in the western world: and the consequences of the freedom of so vast a body of negroes, as affecting the state of slavery in our own islands, it is not difficult to conjecture. Supposing, however, that the French should ultimately succeed in forcing the blacks to resume their former yoke, or were they even to make a compromise with them, so vast a military establishment in St. Domingo and other islands must be kept up, that Jamaica and the rest of our colonies must be incessantly open to invasion, and in case of war would all soon pass into the hands of the enemy. Having stated the dangers to which our West India property is thus exposed, the author proceeds to suggest the measures which wise policy calls on us to adopt in this crisis. After having recommended a strict neutrality to be maintained by us in the present dispute between France and her colonies, and shewn the narrow policy of the planters with respect to negroeslavery, he observes; that the only practicable foundation on which the future security of the sugar colonies can be built, is that of meliorating the condition of the great mass of the people, and converting them from dangerous enemies into defenders; and this is only to be done by the exercise of the legislative authority of Parliament. If, through mistaken principles of policy or deference for an active and powerful party, that right, and let me also call it, that duty, shall be still neglected, the slave system will continue to be a source of internal weakness and danger, till revolution or foreign conquest become the well merited result.' Englishmen and Frenchmen have both had melancholy experience of the rapid mortality of European troops in the West India islands; and, if necessity should force the republic to cultivate the friendship of the negroes, and policy should lead them to organize negroe-troops for that part of their dominions, we must pursue the same course: since, as this wri ter ter remarks, to contend with the republic between the Tropics, without a large portion of the same home-made belligerent force, would be like beating up for recruits against Cadmus, who could raise armies in a moment from the ground.' Reprobating the slave system on political as well as on moral considerations, the author's next object is to warn the minister against founding a new slave-colony in our recently acquired island of Trinidada. He advises, on the contrary, that a portion of the rich and unopened soil of this island be sold at a low price, or granted freely to all who will undertake, as the condition of the tenure, and on peril of reverter to the crown, to settle and cultivate it by the labour of free negroes.-The commercial capacities of Trinidada are here highly estimated. Hurricanes having never been known to extend so far to the southward as this island, the author points to the deep and capacious bay of Paria as a safe harbour for our ships; while its situation will afford a most useful and important entrepôt between the manufactures of Great Britain, and the traders of Spanish America. We repeat that facts and considerations of great importance are brought together, in various striking points of view, in this pamphlet; and we hope, for the sake of our country, that it will not be written and published in vain: since the alternative which this writer sets before us in the West Indies is immediate reform, or a speedy loss of dominion. Moy. ART. XIV. Gleanings in Ireland; particularly respecting its Agricul זן T is well known that the inhabitants of Ireland possess, in the geographical position, figure, and soil of their country, many natural gifts highly propitious to the pursuits of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; and that, if a general attention were paid by them to the due improvement of their physical advantages, they must inevitably become a rich and prosperous people. With the laudable and patriotic view of stimulating his fellow-subjects, in this part of the united kingdom, to such exertions as Providence requires and their own interest demands, Mr. Fraser submits the present tract to their consideration; which contains the result of attentive research, combined with judicious reflections; and which, in point of composition, atones for the little defects which we were sorry to ob *See Rev. for Dec. last, p. 360. |