As early as 8th January, 1791, in a document addressed to citizens of color and free negroes of the French islands, he boldly said:-- “A day will come when deputies of color will traverse the ocean to come and sit in the national diet, and to swear with us to live and die under our laws. A day will come when the sun will not shine among you except upon freemen,--when the rays of the light-spreading orb will no longer fall upon irons and slaves.… It is according to the irresistible march of events and the progress of intelligence, that all people dispossessed of the domain of Liberty will at last recover this indefeasible property.”[618] These strong and confident words, so early in date, were followed by others more remarkable. At the conclusion of his admirable work “De la Littérature des Nègres,” first published in 1808, where, with equal knowledge and feeling, homage is done to a people wronged and degraded by man, he cites his prediction with regard to the sun shining only upon freemen, and then, elevated by the vision, declares that “this American Continent, asylum of Liberty, is on its way towards an order of things which will be common to the Antilles, and _the course of which all the powers combined will not be able to arrest_.”[619] This vigorous language is crowned by a prophecy of singular extent and precision, where, after dwelling on the influences at work to accelerate progress, he foretells the eminence of our country:-- “When an energetic and powerful nation, to which everything presages high destinies, stretching its arms over the two oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific, shall dispatch its vessels from one to the other _by a shortened route,--whether by cutting the Isthmus of Panama, or by forming a canal of communication, as has been proposed, by the River St. John and the Lake of Nicaragua,--it will change the face of the commercial world and the face of empires_. Who knows if America will not then avenge the outrages she has received, and if our old Europe, placed in the rank of a subaltern power, will not become a colony of the New World?”[620] Thus resting on the two oceans with a canal between, so that the early “secret of the strait” shall no longer exist, the American Republic will change the face of the world, and perhaps make Europe subaltern. Such was the vision of the French Abolitionist, lifted by devotion to Humanity. THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1824. Small preface is needed for the testimony of Jefferson, whose life belongs to the history of his country. He was born 2d April, 1743, and died 4th July, 1826.