THE DECADENCE OF HAYTI.

Western Star, Issue 1385, 31 August 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE DECADENCE OF HAYTI.

Hayti ia a countryjin a 1 state of "rapid decadence inevitably falling to the rear in the race of civilisation. Agriculture is|deteriorating, foreigners and native white's are withdrawing from" the Eepublic, capital is following them, and it is admitted that the best !of the col oured people are also abandoning this land of revolution and waning civilisation. In spite of all their euriouodings there is a distinct tendency on the part of the Haytianß to sink into the state of a savage African tribe.

THE MASS OF POPULATION are indolent, physically and mentally, ignorant beyond belief, unambitious, superstitious—in fact brutish. The negroes have forgotten even what little they had been taught by their white masters in slavery times. They have wandered far from the highways of civilisation, and betrayed by their own ignorance and superstition, are in danger of sinking to the level, not of the semi-civilised tribes discovered by Stanley and Livingstone in Central Africa, but to the lowest level of the most superstitious, barbarous race in the world. It is a fact not denied by even the best friends of the Haytians that

VOODOO WORSHIP AND CANNIBALISM, are practised openly in all parts of the • island, and horrible orgies, the occasion of unutterable excesses, are held under ; the auspices of Voodoo priests and priestesses—savage rites at which dozens of human victims are sacrificed at a time. The masses of the people are wholly unintelligent and ignorant, deeply tainted with fetish worship, and although it is true that fetish dances were forbidden by a decree, it is also true that that decree has been since repealed, and high officers of the Government now attend these meetings to distribute money and applaud the most frantic immoralities. Despite all denials on the part of Minister Preston, the representatives of the Haytian Government at Washington, and all other people who, for one reason or another, strenuously deny that the practices of fetish worship and cannibalism are characteristic of life in THE BLACK BEPTJBLIC, all that has been stated above and much more than might be stated can be established by an appeal to unimpeachable authorities. It would be well if by an agreement, entered into by the foreign Powers who have commercial interests to protect in the "West Indies, Hayti were teken under the joint protection of a committee of civilised nations, if we may use the expression, with a view to protecting the black people of the island from the effects of their own ignorance and political insanity. The presence of a fleet in the harbours, a few soldiers fortified in eligible position, a constabulary stationed at central places, would compel the Haytians to behave themselves. Ic would encourage the few brave hearts that do not even yet despair of their Republic to make an effort to check the Africanising of their island, and a brighter day might dawn for this

unfortunate people.—Pittsburgh Dispatch.