Le Cap. Dessalines’s decree on foreign cargoes.

Everything was tending toward a true material prosperity. Commerce was flourishing; our great ports were thronged with English, Danish and American ships. The foreign captains, contrary to the laws of the country, secretly sold the greater part of their cargoes, wholesale and retail, to small traders, and carried out of the country the coin in circulation. These frauds were reported to the emperor, who, to stop them, decreed while he was at Le Cap, on 15 October 1804, “That all captains of foreign vessels arriving in the ports of the empire were forbidden to sell their cargoes retail to traders or private persons; that the merchants established under the emperor’s letters patent alone should have the right to deal for the cargoes, singly or several together.