OBSERVATIONS OF BERQUIN DUVALLON ON THE FREED PEOPLE OF COLOUR IN LOUISIANA IN 1802 The class of free people of colour is composed of negroes and mulattoes, but chiefly of the last, who have either obtained or purchased their liberty from their masters, or held it in virtue of the freedom of their parents. Of these, some residing in the country, cultivate rice and a little cotton; a great number, men, women and children collected in the city, are employed in mechanical arts, and menial offices. The mulattoes are in general vain and insolent, perfidious and debauched, much giving to lying, and great cowards. They have an inveterate hatred against the whites, the authors of their existence, and primitive benefactors. It is the policy of the Spanish government to cherish this antipathy; but nothing is to be feared from them. There is a proportion of six whites to one man of colour, which, with their natural pusillanimity, is a sufficient restraint. The mulatto women have not all the faults of the men. But they are full of vanity, and very libertine; money will always buy their caresses. They are not without personal charms; good shapes, polished and elastic skins. They live in open concubinage with the whites; but to this they are incited more by money than any attachment. After all we love those best, and are most happy in the intercourse of those, with whom we can be the most familiar and unconstrained. These girls, therefore, only affect a fondness for the whites; their hearts are with men of their own colour. They are, however, not wanting in discernment, penetration, finesse; in this light they are superior to many of the white girls in the lower classes of society, girls so impenetrably dull, that like that of Balsac's village, they are too stupid to be deceived by a man of breeding, gallantry and wit. OBSERVATIONS ON THE NEGRO SLAVE We come now to the class of negro slaves, the most numerous but least fortunate of all. The negro Creoles of the country, or born in some other European colony, and sent hither, are the most active, the most intelligent, and the least subject to chronic distempers; but they are also the most indolent, vicious and debauched. Those who come from Guinea are less expert in domestic service, and the mechanical arts, less intelligent, and oftener victims of violent sickness or grief (particularly in the early part of their transportation) but more robust, more laborious, more adapted to the labours of the field, less deceitful and libertine than the others. Such are the discriminative characteristics of each, and as to the rest, there is a strong relation between their moral and physical character.