As appeared in Chapter XX of the former volume, the decrees of the National Assembly of Paris fired the negroes of the French West Indies with the resolve to claim the liberty and equality now recklessly promised by the mother-land. The white settlers, on the contrary, having recently acquired autonomous rights, disputed the legality of that levelling legislation, and rejected all authority but that of Louis XVI. Amidst the ensuing strifes, the chief colonies, especially Hayti, were menaced by that most horrible of all commotions, a servile revolt, when, most opportunely, help arrived from Jamaica. The contrast between the timely succour of England and the reckless iconoclasm of Paris struck the imagination of the French settlers, and the Assembly of Hayti forthwith drew up a declaration, setting forth the illegality of the French decrees, the miseries resulting from them, and the resolve of the colonists to sever a connection absolutely fatal to their welfare. Citing the example of the United States fifteen years before, and recounting the misdeeds of the mother country, they proclaimed to the world the justice of the act of severance. A copy of this declaration, signed by de Cadusey on 27th September 1791, was sent forthwith to Pitt, with a request for the protection of Great Britain. He received it at Burton Pynsent on 27th October.[365] One of the chief delegates from Hayti was de Charmilly, who on 14th November sought an interview with Pitt, and a fortnight later wrote to him, earnestly begging the help of the only nation which could avert ruin from those islands. France, he declared, had passed a decree of blood against her own colonies and was powerless to stop its effects. The National Assembly, having by its annexation of Avignon recognized the right of that papal district to belong to whom it would, Hayti of equal right now voted for union with England. He further advised that its ports should remain open to all nations, a course of action which would herald the dawn of commercial and political freedom among the Spanish colonies of the New World.[366] These alluring prospects failed to entice Pitt from the strict neutrality to which he had pledged himself. So far was he from desiring to profit by the misfortunes of France, as the French princes first, and after them the Jacobins, maliciously asserted.