for Africa, that, in the struggle for public happiness that occupies them, they have completely forgotten Europe & America. They consider the issue taking into account only the point of view of Natural Law, deliberately ignoring social & political relations; as if an Empire, a Government, a Navy & Colonies were the state of pure nature.

However, since metaphysics & abstractions today determine the fate of Frenchmen, we shall not fear discussing in a subsequent Memoir the issue of servitude & slavery, by applying it to our Servants, our Farmers, & our Negroes in particular. Let us observe, in the meantime, how the English, instigated by the Society of the Blacks, were the first to make the mistake of debating the issue in the middle of Parliament. As a result the Merchants of Liverpool & of other Towns then requested entrance into France in order to settle there, which would not be allowed lest this Power were willing to lose its commerce & its islands¹.

It is thus that England prudently bestowed upon us the dangerous honor of liberating the Negroes & abolishing the Slave Trade. The men who govern everything at this moment, those who possess nothing, wish to generate noise rather than to do good & will not miss this opportunity: The Parisian populace, who does not know what Colonists & the Métropole are, will applaud them. England, who does, will applaud even more & more sincerely.

1. The proposition was made to the Bishop of Sens, who would not take it on any more than the propositions of Holland.

Gentlemen,

Before leaving the Colony that sent us as deputies to You, we were well aware that a society made up of people from Paris had been organized under the name, Society of the Friends of the Blacks.

We had also been informed that this society was to present the issue of the emancipation of Negroes in the Colonies at the Estates General.

However, we confess to you, Gentlemen, in the ideas that we were able to come up with 1800 leagues away from the twelve hundred Representatives of the French Nation, we were not at all alarmed by the plans and projects of a society that, to us, appeared more religious than political.

Indeed, Gentlemen, how could we persuade ourselves that the twelve hundred Representatives of a great people would have welcomed projects formed by an organization composed of so-called philosophers, intelligent individuals – perhaps – but poorly versed in the important matters of administration, commerce, politics, & the balance of Empires?

Our Principals were therefore unable, Gentlemen, to give us instructions, nor orders concerning the issue that is boldly presented to you today, to our great astonishment; you should not be surprised by the embarrassment, in which we find ourselves, of having to respond to the attacks against which our Principals would not deem necessary to guard themselves.

We will admit, Gentlemen, to not having orators amongst us. Property owners, cultivators, people who want nothing more than tranquility & peace, find little benefit from vaguely determined issues & principles.

Our Principals believed, in the simplicity of their ideas, that it would be sufficient to have people of honor, of simple and honest spirit, who know perfectly well the interests & needs of their country, & their importance to France, to pay their respects & their love to the French Nation & the King.

Before entering, Gentlemen, into the details of the great cause that the self-proclaimed Friends of the Blacks present before you, I thought it indispensable to spend some time on the character about which the entirety of Europe feels it can rightfully reproach the French Nation.

Without a doubt, we possess many amiable & commendable qualities, Gentlemen, but at the same time we are considered abroad as being a weak people, unapplied, rash in its resolutions, never knowing when to stop appropriately & with just measures; great lover of novelty, great imitator of its neighbors, & inclined to changing opinions, principles, maxims, almost as much as fashion does.

I shall not enter, Gentlemen, in discussion concerning an accusation that may not have any other basis than the jealousy which these foreigners bestow upon us.

Nevertheless, Gentlemen, we must acknowledge, in all modesty, that there are matters which we are too young to handle, & for which our minds do not yet have sufficient maturity & instruction.

We will not discuss, Gentlemen the

moral principles of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, and in this regard, we will leave to them the most complete and easiest victory.

As for the allegations, the charges that they publicize with such care through their writings, we say to them that a human creature that belongs after three years to the person who bought him in order to cultivate his lands, for more than forty thousand francs, solicits more strongly his charity, his goodwill, his watch, & his care than all these beautiful speeches, these amplifications of rhetoric, these books translated from English, written by adventurists whose only goal is most likely to wreak havoc upon the Universe.

We have little interest, Gentlemen, in overly extoling the importance that our lands have for France; we leave the great developments of this cause up to all the maritime Provinces of the Kingdom, to all the towns bordering the Ocean & the Mediterranean, to the more than five million men who are able to live off an economic increase of more than two hundred million, which end up providing almost two billion to the general workings of a great Monarchy. We will limit ourselves then, Gentlemen, to a simpler & truer discussion concerning this great & important matter.

No one is rich, Gentlemen, from what he consumes, but rather from what he possesses beyond his consumption, & from which he consequently increases his fortune. This is an undeniable truth.

Thus, if France barely produces what is necessary to satisfy its own needs; if what it sells abroad, products of its lands & of its Manufacturers, does not even pay,

take or leave 30 million (*²), what it needs to draw from it for its factories, France is thus not rich on its own.

Indeed, Gentlemen, imagine for an instant that for some reason, France were to lose all its Colonies, & that it were possible that their Cultivators, instead of being French, of French families, of families belonging to France via all the ties that link men of high or well-off status to their country, were suddenly to become English subjects?

In such a case, Gentlemen, it is easy to envision that the Colony Ports being off limits to French vessels, this Kingdom would, as a result, be obligated to import from Abroad the sugar, coffee, cotton, & indigo needed for its consumption, & consequently, it would become dependent on these Foreigners, in the amount of 50 to 60 million, debts which would be impossible to settle through the exchanges of its own lands & manufactures.

It is also easy to imagine how this Power, enemy of France, would benefit from our wealth & properties, & to what extent its strength & glory would bring about an economic increase of six hundred million from what it will have acquired within ten years, to the detriment of France. From this, it would have the means to attack & dismember the most wonderful European Kingdom, no matter the population or the courage of the French.

You can also imagine to what extent poverty would weaken the Kingdom within ten

2. See “Essay on the Commerce of France & its Colonies”, printed by the Moutard Printing Press, page 103.

years if a monetary sum that large were to be taken from within it.

However, Gentlemen, I ask that you consider carefully the list of miseries that would await France if to an enormous monetary loss of six hundred million which it would experience in the space of ten years were added an importation of more than one hundred and forty million –which Foreign powers owe it, all previous years being taken into account– for commodities coming from the Americas and sold to them by the French, & through which this enemy Power of France would necessarily enrich itself.

Imagine, Gentlemen, the negative effects that losing two billion [francs] within ten years would have on the Kingdom.

On the other hand, think of the danger to France posed by businesses formed, at one’s liking, by a Power that would grow in monetary value & rather considerable means. You will quake, no doubt, at the consequences of the plans of a society that is nothing more than the criminal product, I dare say, of a corporation founded in London, one that is protected, guided, & funded by the Cabinet of London, with the hidden intention of causing financial ruin & of annihilating our Kingdom.

And who can assure us, Gentlemen, in these times of troubles & woe; who can assure us that the leaders of this sect, those who drew up these plans in secret since the beginning, are not just puppets of England?

Honest & sensitive souls, no doubt, have allowed themselves to be led on by the principles of this sect though untruthful information about the evils that a portion of humanity endures in the scorching Zone of the Americas. We must forgive their approach, their distancing whose consequences, without a doubt, they did not imagine.

But the leaders of this sect, who are they?

Would they not be people already adept in the underground maneuvers of revolutions?

Can we know the whole depth of their secret views?

Would they not be foreigners exiled by their country, who would be willing to execute the deadly plans of Mr. Pitt, whose name alone should remind the French of all the humiliations of the 1756 war.

God forbid, Gentlemen, that in my indignation, my pain, I should make a mistake about a number of honest people within the Society of the Friends of the Blacks.

There are indeed many within the society that fully possess integrity, honor, & sensibility. The day will come, no doubt, when they will turn red, when they will be upset by the fact that they participated in these plans, concocted by their seducers’ views. And if the misfortunes that would be the dire & inevitable consequences of all this, (if we do not remedy it ourselves), were to befall us, they would be, no doubt, the first to ask vengeance for the evils that we suffered, evils for which there will unfortunately no longer be a remedy.

But Gentlemen, let us imagine for a moment that it were possible for the twelve hundred Representatives of Europe’s first Nation to set aside their consideration for life, & the existence of one hundred thousand French spread throughout all of the Colonies. Let us imagine even with a member from the Society of the Friends of the Blacks, whom I shall name, if you were to demand it; let us imagine that for humanity principles, it were a good thing that five or six hundred thousand black creatures should cut the throats of their masters, one hundred thousand Frenchmen; let us further imagine that it were possible to believe that these one hundred thousand French creatures would allow their throats to be slit, like sheep, by these African creatures, & that

men from the Americas, who have a reputation of being fearless, would let the hands of a Negro plant a dagger in their hearts, a Negro whose birth they witnessed, whom they nourished, without defending themselves?

If this were the case, what would be the fate of France?

Here it is: It would lose two billion in monetary value within ten years.
It would be forced to use, just as Sweden does, a copper currency.
A great number of luxury Workers, Artists, Merchants from the Capital & Provinces, would be forced to emigrate elsewhere in order to survive.
All the Manufactures that supply the Colonies’ needs would be devastated.
Viticulture in Provence, Guyenne, & Saintonge, would be slashed in half.
Weeds would take over the cities of Marseille, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Nantes, Le Havre, & Rouen.
More than five million men nourished & upkept by a wealth of two hundred million would be reduced to utter misery for lack of work, & could lead to additional dangerous people for the Kingdom, & probably cause within it, a large & bloody revolution.
We would have to either sell or burn eight hundred large merchant Ships.
The fortunes of eight to nine hundred Merchants of the Sea Ports, to whom the Colonies owe, perhaps, more than three hundred million [francs], would be undone & diminished.
France, in truth, would no longer need its royal Navy, if we are to believe a bunch of horrible authors, so-called philosophers; but its coasts would, as a result, be open for

enemy incursions, & they would no longer be secured by one million armed men, a fact which men of war will be convinced simply by taking a geographic glimpse of our long & vast Coasts.

And we would also most likely see, Gentlemen, a rebirth of those miserable times under the Monarchy, when people from the North would constantly bring ravage, fire, & murder to all parts of France, despite the efforts and indestructible courage of its inhabitants.

See, Gentlemen, this is what inevitably awaits France, if the excesses of unintelligible metaphysics & exaggerated consequences (derived from unclear principles whose development is to make famous certain ambitious & corrupt writers who relish in the bloody events of revolutions) were to cause the Representatives of the French Nation to allow themselves to speak unfavorably about the Colonies concerning this insidious, deceitful, & criminal issue, which some dare present to you today.

However, Gentlemen, if so many considerations did not yet stop You from declaring the loss of the Colonies; if you were able to persuade Yourselves, having no possessions abroad, that You would rid yourself of any reason for war with England, & would no longer need a Navy so costly during war time;

If it were possible finally, Gentlemen, that based on all these motives, You believed, in good faith, that it would be more advantageous for France to leave its Colonies to their own demise; if, having lost all affection & any interest for the well-being of one hundred thousand Frenchmen spread across your overseas territories,

You found Yourselves authorized to declare the abolition of the slave trade & the general freedom of Negroes in all of the Colonies;

We would allow ourselves to make a few more observations to You.

Can You convince Yourselves, Gentlemen, that Provence, Languedoc, Guyenne, Saintonge, Aunis, Poitou, Brittany, Normandy, Picardie, Flanders, & all of your maritime Provinces will be content with your decision? Do You think that they would exchange their comfort, their wealth, their former prosperity, for philosophical principles whose secret motives will appear shortly in broad daylight?

Don’t You have to fear the complaints on their part, protests contrary to respect, against the trust that you must be instilling in them? Do You believe that their Deputies can from now on face their Fellow Citizens, whom they would have misjudged & whose interests they would have betrayed? Indeed, do you think, Gentlemen, that their discontent could be limited to timid complaints, to whispers without consequence?

Gentlemen, I must wisely draw a veil over this scene of calamity, these misfortunes that would necessarily befall all of France, if prudence & most importantly, if the science of the future were not to preside over the deliberations, over the decree of this noble Assembly at this very moment.

And it is here, Gentlemen, where it is my duty to stand up with force, with courage, even to the detriment of my own head, against the schemers of these treacherous plans, plans whose depth & venom You have probably not fully comprehended, & which cruel people have concealed with the art & skill worthy of the greatest conspirators.

What! Gentlemen, it is at the very moment when France is collapsing under the weight of a frightening debt that can be addressed in part only by the credit & uncountable movement that the Colonies’ goods give to the Kingdom, that one dares present these criminal plans before You!

It is at the very moment when every part of the Kingdom, which was once the most beautiful of all of Europe, is dissolving, that the treacherous dare propose before You its total destruction under the pretext of humanity, charity, liberty, & (an inconceivable thing) political economy.

Do not doubt it, Gentlemen, evil people plotted our entire collapse .

They plotted the dismemberment of the Monarchy:
They plotted civil war;
And how not to recognize here, Gentlemen, the work of France’s eternal enemies?
Where was this society formed? London.
Who were the first founders in France?
People paid by the Cabinet of London.
Who are the Orators they use?
I will stop myself here.
It is useful, Gentlemen, to look at the depth of England’s intentions & to analyze them.
What is in the interest of this Power, Gentlemen?
It is to stealthily bring about the undoing of France;
It is to strip it of its external possessions, to make the most beautiful Monarchy in all of Europe lose its force.
Finally, it is to incite a civil war within the Kingdom.
Its interest is to secretly circulate throughout the States of Europe, by means of crafty & eloquent envoys,

the same plans, the same dissension under the pretext of humanity, & under that of liberty. As a result, England would remain the sole great Power in existence in all of Europe.
It would be the only one able to maintain a formidable navy.
It would be the only one to supply the globe with the merchandise from all the countries in the Universe.
It alone would have an external commerce that would attract the entire World’s gold.
It alone would be the law of the earth; it would be the center of the universe; the dominator of all Nations; everything would go there, & 10 to 12 million men at most, would keep more than 150 million in the shackles of need & necessity.
It is without a doubt, Gentlemen, only after having made a lot of blood flow, without having itself lost any, that skillful England wants to achieve its goals.
They are afraid that their own national debt might cause them the same evils they cause us, if they were to be careless enough to declare war against us; we probably do not have to fear it; but 20 to 30 million people skillfully infiltrated by its numerous agents in all the orders, in every class, would necessarily lead their ambitious & bloody projects to be successful, if it weren’t for some brave Frenchmen daring, at the risk of their lives, to expose the depth & danger of their politics.

You cannot doubt, Gentlemen, that French business has not been the object of English mediations for the past four years.

They have calculated our national debt, the revolting abuses

of our administration, the general spirit that animates our Capital, & they knew that the dissolution of all the parts of the French Monarchy was not far.

It would be difficult to persuade ourselves, Gentlemen, that the English Ministry has not taken great measures, thanks to this insight, which even the least penetrating eyes would have noticed; & if we are willing to remember the embarrassing situation in which Mr. Pitt found himself when he made an account of 48 million public, whose expenses were the secret of the State, we cannot doubt that England has been working against France for two years now.

But Gentlemen, we will have the key to the secret expenses of Mr. Pitt’s account if you remember what was happening in France at the time.

Remind yourselves of the many passionate writers who wrote about our situation, who presented nothing but disasters.

In the worries that secretly agitated the Kingdom; in the shock of a thousand different opinions concerning Governments; in the collapse of so many fortunes, caused by unrestrained luxury & the most dissolute of mores, Gentlemen, these men rose, who saw no other resource against the misery & disgrace that threatened them than in the upheaval of the Monarchy.

Under these circumstances, Gentlemen, a political & religious society was formed in London under the title of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks.

At glance, its doctrine concerned only to the abolition of the slave trade & the gradual liberation of the Negroes. It drew from the principles of natural law,

& its consequences were certainly indisputable in terms of morality.

But political interests blending with those of morality, this sect has its own mystery, as all sects of the World do: & it takes great care to hide this mystery, which holds profound meaning, because of these fainthearted characters who withdraw in fear at the sole thought of great revolutions that could bring bloodshed to the Earth.

This mystery, Gentlemen, hides the vastest project that the human mind could have ever conceived: the overthrow of all Empires.

Gentlemen, the mystery of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks is as such, which offers the seduced imagination of men oblivious of its bloody consequences nothing more than the artifice of a novel which, in the name of humanity, commands destruction.

This sect’s plans, Gentlemen, were concocted in northern New England by Quakers, the most skillful politicians of these Provinces whose land (let us take note) cannot be cultivated except by Whites due to the excessive cold that afflicts the area three quarters of the year.

It is essential to note that these northern Provinces had very few Negroes, that the character of these miserable people inclined to laziness & larceny was quite discredited, & they barely condescended to employing them as servants.

I must also point out to you that in these Provinces & those of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, & Georgia, great jealousies concerning commerce, navigation, & riches had arisen, & that in the southern Provinces the lands having to be cultivated by Negroes, due to the

great heat & unhealthy climate, Slave revolts became a sure way of ending prosperity.

I feel I am letting myself be carried away, Gentlemen, by great political details; but I had to inform you in order to gradually lead you to the results that are necessary for you to form so that you can develop all the layers & political folds of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks.

The northern Provinces of New England, Gentlemen, find themselves having to deal with an enormous debt, from which only by selling their lands & undertaking extensive navigation can they hope to be freed.

In order to achieve this, they must procure a large population & capital, which the discredit of their current state necessarily alienates.

These Provinces have felt, Gentlemen, that they would not achieve the success of their projects, except by inciting revolutions in all the states of the two Worlds, wars that would bring together all the parasites of every State, this class of men for which all countries are more or less equal, & who being able to carry with them all their riches in their wallet, have the ability to shelter themselves from all civil wars within 24 hours.

I must condemn it before you, Gentlemen; it is in the analysis, in the research of political combinations of the people most confused in its own matters, the most careless people that has ever existed on Earth, that the dogmas of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks were formed.

It was there that the first torches were created, in the reversal of thrones &

all forms of government, to inflame the two Worlds.

It is the misfortunes of civil wars that threaten all the States of the Universe that will cause Capitalists from all countries to emigrate, something that New England swears by.

We cannot doubt, Gentlemen, that the first views of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks of Philadelphia were focused of Spain’s overseas possessions, so to speak, those of united Provinces.

By inciting insurrections, revolts in Peru & in Mexico, the Society of the Friends of the Blacks of Philadelphia wished to procure for its country the treasures of these rich lands; & and we should remind ourselves that Spain saw itself, 8 years ago, embarrassed greatly by these parts of its possessions.

We cannot doubt as well that the project to change the face of England & of Holland was part of the conspiracies of this society.

But Gentlemen, great difficulties have prevented the success of this project in the Spanish Colonies.

The Inquisition, this threatening institution, this institution as much political as perhaps it is religious, presented them with a shield too formidable for one to dare to attempt to create a settlement.

Ancient principles, which some strong minds will call prejudices, no doubt, have conserved there a great force. The Spanish still love their King, their former religion, the antiquated forms of their Government. The humble Friends of the Blacks would be sure to obtain there the glorious palms of the martyrdom for which they did not aim; & the sublimity of their system would not flourish there.

England was therefore deemed the part of Europe most suited for the formation of their first establishment; & the English Nation, relying on the religious love that every Englishman has for his country & for his government, must have seen it in this spirit of indifference that it bestows unto religious and political opinions.

It is believed, Gentlemen, that the English merely regarded this society with the same point of view that allowed them to tolerate Cagliostro, the Illuminati, the Martinists & so many others that, within a few years, fell into ridicule, contempt, & oblivion.

But the English Ministry, this tireless spy of all our opinions, of all our actions, without a doubt envisioned it with a different point of view.

Constant observer of the position of our credit, of all the variations of our character & of this spirit of imitation that will never leave us, it saw in the sect of the Friends of the Blacks, a political mean to cause the greatest revolutions that the French Monarchy has ever experienced.

It saw that the time to give France what it reserved for us in its heart for the independence of northern America, had come.

It calculated the worrisome character of this crowd of embryos of the court, which the desire for social movement & the love for novelty, more than that of self-instruction, made it travel throughout England for several years; & it realized that the greatest enemies of the French could be some French themselves.

Indeed, Gentlemen, let us remind ourselves with what ardor the opinions of twenty different sects, ever the more dangerous, the more absurd

than the one preceding it, was embraced by people of all sexes & of all conditions, a few years back; & we will understand that the English Ministry was able to persuade itself that there was nothing ridiculous, destructive, in any way, that was not impossible to make the French adopt.

The English Ministry therefore had to see to the establishment of the Society of the Friends of the Blacks in London without any worry, but furthermore it had to, in their vengeful & destructive views towards France, have this sect protected by their orators, their most famous authors, which in & out of this country know how to measure their opinions, their maxims in accordance with the quantity of gold that is presented to them.

It had to distribute thousands of various writings in favor of this society’s doctrine.

It had to make known the cause of the Friends of the Blacks, these protectors of the liberty of Men, to the supreme court of the English nation.

This cause had to be the topic of many very interesting meetings, & had to cause great worry to the class of numerous observant Merchants of the English Ministry’s workings. In order to further emphasize the pure intentions of the Ministry, these meetings had to follow one another with much liveliness, & slow down afterwards with art & method.

The writings, the books that were written regarding this matter had to be sent to France, in order to be translated there by the most skilled People of the Arts, by a few Philosophers known in the most brilliant circles.

The wealth, the expenses of these People of the Arts,

of these Philosophers, had to increase noticeably.

The French Ministry had to be secretly probed on its provisions and opinions relative to its Colonies.

All the Editors of the public papers of France, the Journalists, the Gazetteers had to be strongly interested in telling skillful accounts of what these English writings contained, of what was most seductive, most pathetic, & most deceptive about this matter.

When the minds of the French were ready thanks to the reading of what was being presented on this matter, the English Ministry busied itself finding clever men, schemers, without fortune, resource, exiled from their own country for seditions, & for whom the need to survive makes them willing to do anything at the risk of perishing publicly.

The English Ministry had to provide these men with gold, for they needed to persuade, seduce, corrupt, & form an establishment. And although all these things had to be of little cost to a weak nation, imitator of its neighbors, sickened by the vices of its own administration, corrupted by its luxury, the English Ministry knew perfectly well that one does not incite a great revolution without making sacrifices.

These men established a Society of the Friends of the Black in Paris, maintaining a fraternal correspondence with the society in London.

The success of this establishment will perhaps shock those who do not wish to reflect on the sentiments prevalent in the Capital.

Gold had to be provided to these passionate, worrisome characters, amateurs of novelties, who wallow in revolutions. The purest morality,

the most seductive, was presented to these sensitive souls, to these men of goodwill who sincerely wish for the better good of humanity. The perspective of all pleasures, of the ambition highly satisfied by the most dignified, the most lucrative positions, of the ministry, of the command of armies, were offered to these little ambitious minions of the court, sketches without any talent, summoned without courage, whose health, honor, & fortunes were for the most part, ruined, & insufficiently intelligent to realize that they would be nothing more than the vile instruments of revolutions, which conspirators more skillful than they would use only to let them down later & place them lower than they were previously.

When the English Ministry was able to assume that the organization of the Friends of the Blacks in Paris had acquired a certain force, it turned to stifling the murmurs of the entire English Nation, the worry of Merchants & Colonial property-owners.

From that point on, the Friends of the Blacks in London were less welcomed; the arguments of Shopkeepers were better understood; the information, opinions appeared to be more favorable to them; & suddenly the cause was redeliberated during another session of Parliament, where it will certainly be picked up & deliberated upon only according to the political calculations & interests of England.

Indeed, Gentlemen, if England–which cannot be counteracted in the commerce & the enormous navigation that its Indian possessions procure it except by the unbelievable influence Colonial products give to France, in all of Europe– were able, through the very sacrifice of the Islands that give it barely 50 million, to determine that France must

renounce theirs, which provide it more than two hundred million, we cannot doubt that skillful England would decide to pronounce the liberation of the Negroes, leaving to its subjects in the Colonies to decide what seemed more suitable to them.

Indeed, Gentlemen, imagine the genius of every Englishman. Can we think that the Inhabitants of the English Colonies would patiently stand a decree that deprived them of their properties, and would put their lives at risk? Do you think that the English Ministry would dare arm the Nation’s fleet in order to uphold such a decree, & that it would not secretly encourage its infraction & repulsion, as soon as you declared the loss of the French Colonies?

And you will judge, Gentlemen, how much subtlety, craftiness, & bad faith, the English Ministry has employed in this matter.

At the time when even all the public papers of England were only filled with discussion around the cause of the Friends of the Blacks; during the time in which the famous meetings of the Parliament occurred, each one more lively than the last in favor of the cause; it was then, Gentlemen, it was during that very time that the English Ministry, which is slightly more knowledgeable of commerce than our own Ministry, signed a treaty by which it obligated itself to supply the Spanish with the quantity of Negroes necessary to exploit the lands of their own Colonies.

Oh! Gentlemen, let us not be abused by tricks that can impress only those who have contemplated subjects only from their cabinet, & who were not interested in exploring the labyrinth of England’s politics.

You should say, Gentlemen: the sect of the Friends of the Blacks in Paris emanated from that of England; therefore, its morality & its doctrine must hide the failure of France; therefore, there is no need here to deliberate on all the propositions that these enemies of France have made to us.

No, Gentlemen, you will not let yourselves lose your way because of the projects of a sect formed by enemies of France. These professions of interest, friendship, fraternity, of which the English Ministry cunningly assures You thanks to journalists –undoubtedly bought out by them–, will not command Your wisdom.

You will not believe the wishes that Your natural enemy can form for the prosperity of France.

You will know where these sentimental writings come from, with which so-called philosophers & journalists deliberately inundate the Capital & the Provinces.

You will understand the motives behind them.

The bloodshed scenes that have played out in all parts of the Kingdom; the miserable spirit that has been instilled in people of the countryside will have opened your eyes to the misfortunes in which You would precipitate the Colonies, if You were to meedle with the regime and the political means that have protected them from their own loss for one hundred and fifty years.

You will not order the destruction of countries whose first possessors had conquered the lands by their courage & their efforts alone; which their descendants have conserved thanks to their prudence & their wisdom; which they have cultivated in order to enrich You & to give to Your Kingdom a supremacy of which your enemies are jealous.

At the very least, You will treat Property-owners of the Colonies as allied loyalists who have provided,

at all times, their fortunes & their lives, to push back the attacks of Your enemies, even when Your Ministers were cruel enough to abandon them to the horrors of famine, from which these enemies alone could guarantee to bring them out.

Experience, Gentlemen, will have taught you that desperation leads people to exaggerated resolutions & almost always contrary to their most precious affections. You will not carry it in the heart of Your parents, of Your friends, of Your brothers.

You will not risk the Kingdom losing almost all of its monetary value in just ten years.

You will not ruin Your maritime Provinces, the most wealthy towns of your Kingdom.

You will not crush the wealth of Merchants in sea ports, to whom the Colonies owe more than 300 million.

You will ponder that the ruin of these Merchants would lead to that of Bankers, of all the Shopkeepers of the Kingdom, a large portion of Landowners, almost all of the Manufacturers, & an incalculable number of Workers of every kind, whom you would force to leave the country, enriching your enemies with their toil.

In short, Gentlemen, You will not pronounce a decree whose effect would be to make France dependent on your enemies, & to hand over to England the empire over the world.
 THE END.

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