A few intelligent proprietors had foreseen, many years previous to the Revolution, that the continuance of their privileges depended upon the good-will of the mulattoes and the restriction of enfranchisement. The class of mixed blood was becoming large and formidable: of mulattoes and free negroes there were nearly forty thousand. They were nominally free, and had all the rights of property. A number of them were wealthy owners of slaves. But they still bore upon their brows the shadow cast by servitude, from which many of the mixed blood had not yet emerged. The whites of all classes despised these men who reminded them of the color and condition of their mothers. If a mulatto struck or insulted a white man, he was subjected to severe penalties; no offices were open to him, no doors of society, no career except that of trade or agriculture. This was not well endured by a class which had inherited the fire and vanity of their French fathers, with intellectual qualities that caught passion and mobility from the drops of negro blood. Great numbers of them had been carefully educated in France, whither they sent their own children, if they could afford it, to catch the port and habits of free citizens. They were very proud, high-strung, and restless, sombre in the presence of contempt, lowering with some expectation. Frequent attempts had been made by them to extend the area of their rights, but they met with nothing but arrogant repulse. The guilty problem of the island was not destined to be relieved or modified by common sense. The planters should have lifted this social and political ostracism from the mulatto, who loved to make money and to own slaves, and whose passion for livid mistresses was as great as any Frenchman's. They were the natural allies of the proprietors, and should have been erected into an intermediate class, bound to the whites by intelligence and selfish interest, and drawn upon the mother's side to soften the condition of the slave. This policy was often pressed by French writers, and discussed with every essential detail; but the descendants of the buccaneers were bent upon playing out the island's tragedy.