Society also has completely changed. I saw at balls given in the palace in 1863 a hundred well-dressed prosperous families of all colours; now political dissensions would prevent such gatherings, even if there were a building in the city which could receive them, and poverty has laid its heavy hand more or less on all. It is the same in a greater or lesser degree in every other town of the republic. Agriculture in the plains is also deteriorating, and the estates produce much less than formerly, though their staple produce is rum, to stupefy and brutalise the barbarous lower orders. Foreigners, nearly ruined by their losses during the constant civil disturbances, are withdrawing from the republic, and capital is following them; and with their withdrawal the country must sink still lower. The best of the coloured people are also leaving, as they shun the fate reserved for them by those who have already slaughtered the most prominent mulattoes. In fact, the mulatto element, which is the civilising element in Hayti, is daily becoming of less importance; internal party strife has injured their political standing, and constant intermarriage is causing the race to breed back to the more numerous type, and in a few years the mulatto element will have made disastrous approaches to the negro. The only thing which could have saved the mulatto would have been to encourage the whites to settle in their country; yet this step the coloured men have blindly resisted. In spite of all the civilising elements around them, there is a distinct tendency to sink into the state of an African tribe. It is naturally impossible to foretell the effect of all the influences which are now at work in the world, and which seem to foreshadow many changes. We appear standing on the threshold of a period of great discoveries, which may modify many things, but not man’s nature. The mass of the negroes of Hayti live in the country districts, which are rarely or ever visited by civilised people; there are few Christian priests to give them a notion of true religion; no superior local officers to prevent them practising their worst fetish ceremonies. In treating of the Black and the Mulatto as they appeared to me during my residence among them, I fear that I shall be considered by some to judge harshly. Such, however, is not my intention. Brought up under Sir James Brooke, whose enlarged sympathies could endure no prejudice of race or colour, I do not remember ever to have felt any repugnance to my fellow-creatures on account of a difference of complexion. I have dwelt above thirty-five years among coloured people of various races, and am sensible of no prejudice against them. For twelve years I lived in familiar and kindly intercourse with Haytians of all ranks and shades of colour, and the most frequent and not least-honoured guests at my table were of the black and coloured races.