The Senate sets ten carreaux as the smallest holding that may be acquired and fixes the terms of the cultivators’ labor engagements.

On 20 April the Senate established that no one may acquire less than ten carreaux of land. The cultivators contract with the proprietor or leaseholder, before the justice of the peace, an engagement of labor whose duration may not be shorter than the time of the harvest. They may then leave the plantation only after having given the proprietor or leaseholder three months’ notice, and having made a declaration of it to the justice of the peace. Whoever shall have left the plantation (the vagrant, no doubt) without being furnished with a certificate attesting that he was regular at his work shall be put in prison, eight days for the first offense, one month for the second, and three months for the third. This time shall be spent on public works. The justice of the peace rules on the disputes that arise between the cultivators and the proprietor or leaseholder. If these disputes occasion any disturbance, the commandant of the nearest town must be notified. Whoever shall have provoked the disturbance shall be punished by imprisonment which may not exceed one year; accomplices are liable to the same penalties. The commandants of districts or of towns must suppress disorder as soon as they are required to do so by the proprietor, leaseholder or manager. They become responsible for all the consequences that their negligence may bring about. They have the countryside combed by frequent patrols, chiefly during the hours of work. The cultivators enjoy a quarter of the revenues of the plantations on which they are engaged, free of all charges. The proprietor or leaseholder who shall have diverted to his own profit what should have gone to the cultivators is condemned to restitution and to a fine equal to the value of what was diverted, of which one half goes to the informer and the other to the cultivators. The division of the harvests is made in kind or in money, at the current price and at the choice of the proprietor, in the presence of the justice of the peace, of his assessors and of an officer of the gendarmerie. The distribution among the cultivators is made in the following manner:

The first foreman, 3 shares.
The second, 2 shares.
The head sugar-maker, 2 shares.
The keeper of the animals, 2 shares.
The cart-driver (1), 2 shares.
The infirmary attendant, 2 shares.
Male cultivator, one and a half shares,
Female cultivator, one and a half shares.
Young people of 10 to 14 years, half a share.

The cultivators have, besides, their provision grounds. They are cared for and furnished with medicines at the expense of the proprietor or leaseholder. The old and the infirm keep in every case their huts and their provision grounds. They are likewise cared for by the proprietor or leaseholder. Women who are three months with child cease to go to the labors and are spared during the nursing of their children. Proprietors, leaseholders or managers must on every occasion conduct themselves as good fathers of families. They urge the cultivators to form lawful marriages, showing them that this is the only means of assuring themselves the enjoyment of all the advantages of society, of procuring consolations, care and assistance in their sorrows and their illnesses; of making purity of morals reign among them, so necessary for the happiness of men and the preservation of their health; of increasing, finally, in a marked degree the population of each plantation; of extending the cultivation and enlarging its yield. Each year, two months before the Festival of Agriculture, the commandants of departments, of districts and of towns, and the justices of the peace, shall designate to the government the cultivator of each parish who shall have worked the best. This cultivator shall receive a medal as a prize of encouragement. On the occasion of this same festival, the justice of the peace and the commandant of the town choose a child of seven to ten years on the best-cultivated plantation, belonging to those fathers or mothers who shall have distinguished themselves most by their conduct and by their love of work; this child is raised at the expense of the State. Finally, the offices of inspectors of cultivation, which under Toussaint and under Dessalines had weighed so heavily on the unfortunate cultivators, are abolished.