The founders
of the Black Republic, we had all along understood, were not in any
sense whatever equipped, as Mr. Froude assures us they were, when
starting on their self-governing career, with the civil and
intellectual advantages that had been transplanted from Europe. On
the contrary, we had been taught to regard them as most unfortunate
in the circumstances under which [11] they so gloriously conquered
their merited freedom. We saw them free, but perfectly illiterate
barbarians, impotent to use the intellectual resources of which their
valour had made them possessors, in the shape of books on the spirit
and technical details of a highly developed national existence. We
had learnt also, until this new interpreter of history had
contradicted the accepted record, that the continued failure of Hayti
to realize the dreams of Toussaint was due to the fatal want of
confidence subsisting between the fairer and darker sections of the
inhabitants, which had its sinister and disastrous origin in the
action of the Mulattoes in attempting to secure freedom for
themselves, in conjunction with the Whites, at the sacrifice of their
darker-hued kinsmen.
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