discarded labor. But they have returned by degrees to the

culture of the soil ; they are at work. Let property

be protected, let labor be made active; and colonial society

will settle down on a solid basis A second example

will not, perhaps, be found in the world of this simultaneous
concession of civil and political rights to a population
which had been deprived of them traditionally by slavery.
There is reason to be astonished that such daring should
not have involved more disasters. We have not dared do
the same thing in Africa, although the Arabs are far superior
in civilization to the negroes.^'

Another member''' added: ''It may be maintained that
the planters have neither been the losers by the emancipa-
tion of the negroes, nor by universal suffrage ; without
them, they would have found themselves face to face with
the mulattoes, who are much more hostile to them. In the
colonies, as in France, the best elections have been in the
rural districts.^'

Notwithstanding, if material order, despite local ex-
cesses, was not profoundly disturbed, legal order appeared
wholly insufficient, and it was above all to the establish-
ment of this that the commission had to give their atten-
tion.
