Le Cap. Commissioners land and are installed.
Meanwhile the popular party was making astonishing progress in France. The law of 4 April had been sanctioned, as we have seen, in spite of all the opposition of the colonial party; the news arriving from the colony moved Brissot, Gensonné and Vergniaud to press energetically for its full execution; Roume’s letters had confirmed the reports of Mirbeck and Saint-Léger. On the motion of the Girondins, the national assembly decreed on 15 June 1792 that the law of 4 April should be carried out in its entire tenor. Under the ministry of Roland, three commissioners were at once named to carry it out: Sonthonax and Polvérel, ardent revolutionaries, and Aillaud, a weak and timid man, all three belonging to the party of the Gironde. It was in vain that the colonial party launched the most outrageous calumnies against them in Paris. Their instructions were to do everything to bring about the general liberty of the enslaved, although they were openly charged only with the execution of the decree of 4 April. They were authorized “to suspend and dissolve all assemblies and administrative bodies, or others calling themselves popular, in the colony, without exception; to suspend the execution of the acts of the authorities that they should judge contrary to national sovereignty or to the restoration of peace; to restore provisionally the former courts to activity, pending the final organization of the judiciary in the colony; to transfer their sittings to such places as circumstances might require, and to present two candidates to the governor to fill vacant posts, the governor being bound to give one of them a provisional commission. In all cases of conflict of powers that might arise, or in any doubts that might be raised as to the extent of their own, all were bound to defer provisionally to their requisition, saving recourse to the National Assembly.” *
Julien Raymond would have been named commissioner had not Tarbé, a member of the national assembly belonging to the colonial party, proposed adding to the law an article providing that citizens owning property in the colonies of America should be excluded from the expedition.
Before the revolution of ’89 Polvérel and Sonthonax were advocates in Paris. The former had made his name at the parlement of Bordeaux by defending public liberties; and Sonthonax had been one of the contributors to the revolutionary gazette of Paris. In 1790 both had been received into the Jacobin club.
The patriot and royalist whites, on learning of their appointment, wished for a moment to oppose their landing.
In the month of July the ships carrying the three commissioners, together with Desparbès, the new governor, sailed from the Île d’Aix. The squadron carried 6000 men of patriotic troops. The maréchaux de camp d’Hinisdal, Delasalle and Montesquiou-Fezensac, who accompanied the civil commission, were to command the provinces of the North, the West and the South. On 18 September the commissioners landed at Le Cap, and on the 19th Desparbès anchored in the roadstead with the rest of the squadron. Immediately after their arrival the enslavers went in crowds to the national palace to try to discover the private sentiments of the delegates; but they withdrew in dismay on seeing that they were dealing with Jacobins who spoke of nothing but guillotining the aristocrats.
On 20 September Polvérel, Sonthonax and Aillaud were installed with pomp and solemnity in the Church of Le Cap. Daugy, president of the Colonial Assembly, addressed them in a speech in which he made the apology of slavery. Struck by the power of the colonial party, they were obliged to swear an oath not to abolish servitude and to carry out only the decree of 4 April. But in France new events, whose spirit was bound to favor the liberty of the Blacks, had just broken out: the revolution of 10 August had been accomplished; and its effects in Saint-Domingue will be such that the civil commissioners will proclaim general liberty there before the National Convention itself.