We must look elsewhere. A courageous chief is all the negroes need. Where is he? Where is that great man whom Nature owes to her vexed, oppressed, and tormented children? He will doubtless appear. He will come forth and raise the sacred standard of Liberty. This venerable signal will gather round him his companions in misfortune. More impetuous than the torrents, they will everywhere leave the indelible traces of their just resentment. Everywhere people will bless the name of the hero who shall have re-established the rights of the human race." When the Abbé Raynal wrote those prophetic words, he did not foresee that they would meet the eye of the very man he called for; and the humble slave, when he read them, did not hear in them the voice of his own destiny. While he was diligently toiling for his humane masters, and seizing every opportunity to increase his small stock of knowledge, the island of St. Domingo was growing very rich by agriculture and commerce. The planters acquired enormous wealth, built splendid houses, and lived in luxury, laziness, and dissipation, upon the toil of the poor unpaid negroes. Twenty thousand slaves were imported from Africa every year, to make up the deficiency of those who were killed by excessive toil and cruel treatment. These new victims, men and women, had the name of their purchaser branded on their breast-bones with red-hot iron. But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later. Slavery was producing its natural fruits of tyranny and hatred, cruelty and despair. The reports of barbarity on one side and suffering on the other attracted attention in Europe; and benevolent and just men began to speak and write against Slavery as a wicked and dangerous institution. The Abbé Gregoire, a humane Bishop of the Catholic Church, introduced the agitating question into the French Assembly, a body similar to our Congress. He also formed a society called _Les Amis de Noirs_, which means "The Friends of the Blacks." Of course, this was very vexatious to slaveholders in the French colonies. They knew very well that if the facts of Slavery were made known, every good man would cry out against it. Political parties were formed in St. Domingo. Some of the planters wanted to secede from France, and set up an independent government. Others wanted to increase their political power by having a Colonial Assembly established in the island, by means of which they could mainly manage their own concerns as they chose. For this purpose they sent deputies to France. But their request gave rise to the question who should have the right to be members of such an Assembly; and, for the following reasons, that question was very annoying to the haughty slaveholders of St. Domingo.