The land which the French had brought under cultivation previous to the revolution was devoted mostly to the cultivation of sugar, coffee, indigo, and chocolate. It is said that Hayti alone produced as much sugar at this time as all the British West Indies united. The prodigious productions of little more than two million acres of land were as follows: brown sugar, 93,773,300 lbs.; white sugar, 47,516,351 lbs.; cotton, 7,004,274 lbs.; indigo, 758,628 lbs. But great as this product may appear, it by no means gives the entire amount, the quantity of tanned hides, spirits, &c., being equally immense. Immorality and irreligion everywhere prevailed, worse even than at present, if we are to judge from a poem written about that time. The West Indies would seem to be peculiarly conducive to this species of iniquity: “For piety, that richest, sweetest grant, Of purest love blest super-lunar plant, Is here neglected for inferior good, Torn from the roots, or blasted in the bud. Soft indolence her downy couch displays, And lulls her victims in inglorious ease, While guilty passions to their foul embrace Seduce the daughters of the swarthy race.” This brings us to the consideration of the all-important subject called in America the “negro question,” but which is, nevertheless, the immortal question of the rights of man. The inhabitants of Hayti consisted of 540,000 souls, and were divided into three distinct classes--the whites, the slaves, and the mulattoes and free blacks. The term mulatto comprehended all shades between whites and negroes. The whites conducted themselves as if born to command, and the blacks, awed into submission, yielded obedience to their imperious mandates, while the mulattoes were despised by both parties. The freedom they enjoyed was rather nominal than real. On reaching a state of manhood each became liable to serve in a military establishment, the office of which was to arrest runaway slaves, protect travellers on the public roads, and, in short, to “mount a three years’ guard on the public tranquillity.” To complete their degradation, they were utterly disqualified from holding any office or place of public trust. No mulatto durst assume the surname of his father; and to prevent the revenge which such flagrant and contemptible injustice could hardly fail to excite, the law had enacted that if a free man of color presumed to strike a white man, _his right arm should be cut off_. In fact, they were not much above the condition of the free blacks in the United States. “On comparing the situation of these two classes of men”--the slaves and the nominally free--says Coke, “it is difficult to say which was the most degraded. The social difference was, without doubt, very great, but in the aggregate must have been about the same.”