Roume signed the decree that authorized the commerce of the United States under neutral flag, after fifteen days of conferences with Dr. Stévens.

It will soon be seen what answer Toussaint made to this language, so dignified. He was then at the Cap, where Roume had accompanied him, for he had sworn never to separate from him (1). Already intoxicated by the flatteries of the English, of the émigrés, sure of impunity for his actions through the abandonment in which the Directoire left the colony, Toussaint reckoned little with the national authority. Maitland, who had gone to England to seek powers to treat with him on broader bases, did not arrive fast enough to suit him. He resolved to treat with the United States, although there was a rupture between that power and France; Dr. Stévens came to the Cap. After fifteen days of conferences, which Roume attended only to give an appearance of legality to the convention, a decree appeared on 6 floréal (23 April).

This decree authorized the commerce of the United States under neutral flag. From then on Roume must have seen to what man he had chained himself, for upon his first objections relative to the position of the mother country and of the United States, Toussaint had threatened him with overturning the colony, if need be, to reach his ends. When Roume was told that the decree he had signed compromised him with the mother country: “That is true,” he said, “but my refusal might have lost the colony, and between my head and the colony there is no hesitation” (1). Stévens remained at Port-au-Prince as consul general. Soon, on 25 floréal (14 May), Maitland appeared in his turn aboard the frigate *la Camilla*; Colonel Harcourt, an émigré in the British service, had preceded him by a few days. Maitland was the bearer of an order in council of his king, of 9 January 1799 (20 nivôse, Year VII). This order authorized the commerce of importation and exportation between Jamaica and Saint-Domingue.