40 Michèle Ducketwas a sort of symbol of all the sufferings the black man was made to endure,
and with impunity, for the law condoned slavery and all the hardships that went
with it. In most cases, their accusations were by the same token an extension
of their denunciation of the bloodthirsty, barbaric practices of so-called 'civi-
lized' peoples, of the pervading spirit of intolerance which corrupted all their
undertakings, of vain conquests and futile voyages.^38 The cause of the black
slaves gave rise to a sense of helplessness reflected fairly accurately in this
quotation from Helvétius :^39 ' Let us avert our gaze from such a baneful sight,
which is so shameful and abhorrent to mankind. '
It is as though the very universality of enlightened philosophical thought
deterred it from undertaking a 'charitable action' at a time when a radical
change in mankind and society was imminent, from serving a cause which was
not sufficiently in the interests of progress, as was, for example, the case of
Calas, a victim of religious intolerance.
There is a well-known chapter in Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois, in which
he questions what 'right we had to make the Negroes slaves' and in which
there is this sentence, showing how injustice (in the strongest meaning of that
which is unlawful) follows injustice: 'The peoples of Europe, having extermi-
nated those of America, had to reduce the peoples of Africa to slavery, in
order to use them to clear all that land for cultivation.'^40
'Might is right' is the only law here. This was clearly stated, but the
' point of law' was not dealt with, for the fact that there was nothing in religious
texts debarred a 'jurist' from giving a straightforward opinion.^41 It was not
until 1780, in the Histoire des Deux Indes, a 'philosophical and political'
history, that the principle of freedom was defended against any ' reasons of
state'. Freedom is 'the ownership of one's body and the possession of one's
mind'. The government does not have the right to sell slaves, the trader did
not have the right to buy them, and no one has the right to sell himself.^42
Thus politics and ethics must join together to bring freedom to enslaved
peoples, even before the other nations have shaken off their own chains. The
idea of a 'one and indivisible' freedom emerges here from the crucible of the
Enlightenment, and turns all causes into one great cause. Because of the uni-
versal nature of its principles, 'practice' outweighs theory, the defence of the
'rights of man' is in itself an instrument of progress and justice, whether that
man be a 'savage' or a 'civilized' being, whether black, mulatto or white, and
whatever his nationality or religion may be.
But the Histoire des Deux Indes went much further than that humani-
tarian protest. It emphasized the Negroes' own revolt and the ' maroon ' phenom-
enon, the significance of which has often been underestimated in the history
of slavery.
A thorough study of texts and documents on slavery shows that the
fear of slaves becoming maroons was a predominant factor in Europe's 'guilty