This is strong testimony. In 1796, three years after the act of emancipation, we are told that the colony was flourishing under Toussaint, that the whites lived happily and peaceably on their estates, and the blacks continued to work for them. Up to 1801 the same happy state of things continued. The colony went on as by enchantment; cultivation made day by day a perceptible progress, under the recuperative energies of free labor. In 1801 General Vincent, a proprietor of estates in the island, was sent by Toussaint to Paris for the purpose of laying before the Directory the new Constitution which had been adopted at St. Domingo. He reached France just after the peace of Amiens, when Napoleon was fitting out his ill-starred armament for the insane purpose of restoring slavery in the island. General Vincent remonstrated solemnly and earnestly against an expedition so preposterous, so cruel and unnecessary; undertaken at a moment when all was peace and quietness in the colony, when the proprietors were in peaceful possession of their estates, when cultivation was making a rapid progress, and the blacks were industrious and happy beyond example. He begged that this beautiful state of things might not be reversed. The remonstrance was not regarded, and the expedition proceeded. Its issue is well known. Threatened once more with the horrors of slavery, the peaceful and quiet laborer became transformed into a demon of ferocity. The plough-share and the pruning- hook gave way to the pike and the dagger. The white invaders were driven back by the sword and the pestilence; and then, and not till then, was the property of the planters seized upon by the excited and infuriated blacks. In 1804 Dessalines was proclaimed Emperor of Hayti. The black troops were in a great measure disbanded, and they immediately returned to the cultivation of the plantations. From that period up to the present there has been no want of industry among the inhabitants.