This petition was drawn up in 1790, and sent to Paris by a wealthy colored man named Ogé. It excited lively discussion in the National Assembly of France. One of the members, named Lamoth, who owned large estates in St. Domingo, said: "I am one of the largest proprietors in that island; but I would lose all that I possess there rather than disown principles which justice and humanity have consecrated. I am not only in favor of admitting men of color into the Colonial Assemblies, but I also go for the emancipation of the negro slaves." After animated discussion, the reply received by the mulatto deputies from the President of the Assembly was: "No portion of the French nation shall in vain claim its rights from the representatives of the French people." When the white planters of St. Domingo heard of this, they were filled with wrath. In one place, a mulatto named Lacombe, whose only crime was that he had signed the petition, was seized and hung. In another place, the mob seized a highly respected old white magistrate and cut off his head, because he had drafted for the mulattoes a very moderate petition, begging to be released from some of the hardships under which they had so long suffered. When the colored deputy Ogé returned from France and demanded that mulattoes should have the rights of citizenship, which had been decreed to them by the French Assembly, soldiers were sent to seize him, and he was sentenced to have all his limbs broken on a wheel, and then to have his head cut off. Besides the classes of which I have spoken there was another class in St. Domingo called _petit blancs_, which means small whites. They were so called to distinguish them from the large landed proprietors. They occupied a position not unlike that of the class known as "poor whites" in the slaveholding portion of the United States. They were ready instruments to carry out the vengeance of the infuriated planters. They seized every opportunity to insult the free mulattoes, and to inflict cruelty and outrage on the negro slaves. They went about as patrols, traversing the plantations, and bursting into negro huts at all times of night, under the pretence that they were plotting insurrection. The poor ignorant slaves did not understand what all this mobbing and murdering was for; but finding themselves so much suspected and abused without cause, they became weary of their lives. Many committed suicide, others tried to poison their tormentors. At Port au Prince an attempt was made to get up an insurrection. Fifty slaves, suspected of being connected with it, were beheaded, and their heads, stuck on poles, were set up by the hedges in a row.