Avis du Gouvernement. [Saint-Domingue, between 6 and 29 July 1790.] Peynier, Louis-Antoine de Thomassin, comte de 18th century,Americana,Autographs & Manuscripts,History,Law

Manuscript on paper. 1 leaf, written in a neat secretarial hand, signed "pour copie conforme, le Ct. de Peinier" at end. 2 pp. Signed manuscript by Peynier from the height of his confrontation with the Assembly of Saint-Marc, documenting the clash between royal authority and the colony s bid for autonomy. Official statement by Governor Louis-Antoine de Thomassin de Peynier, issued amid the final phase of conflic between the royal administration and the Colonial Assembly of Saint-Marc, a body elected in early 1790 by the planters of the western province. Claiming to represent the entire colony, the Assembly soon broke with the governor and metropolitan authority, asserting near-sovereign powers in defiance of the decrees of the National Assembly. In this Avis, Peynier explains his refusal to administer to the troops the oath decreed by the Assembly "fidélité à la Nation, à la partie française de Saint-Domingue, à la Loi et au Roi" and his opposition to promulgating its decree of 6 July 1790, by which it declared itself "confirmed," ordered a Te Deum in thanksgiving for victory over the "enemies of the colony," and directed that each year, on 14 July, the same Te Deum be sung. For the Assembly, these measures were intended to affirm its political legitimacy and to symbolically align the colony with the revolutionary nation, while asserting its independence from royal control. Peynier regarded them instead as unconstitutional acts of sovereignty. Invoking the decrees of 8 and 28 March 1790, which defined the legal framework of colonial assemblies and made the governor responsible for publishing parish results, he reaffirmed that Saint-Domingue, as an integral part of the French Empire, could not "be particularized" within it. The closing attestation, "pour copie conforme, le Ct. de Peinier," indicates that this was the governor s own retained copy. The text corresponds closely to Peynier s later printed Proclamation (Port-au-Prince, Imprimerie de Mozard, du 29 août 1790), published a month after the dissolution of the Saint-Marc Assembly on 29 July 1790. In that edition held at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University (EB .F8355 1781 1) Peynier recounts the same 6 July decree and his refusal to promulgate it, citing the March legislation and reproducing the Instruction (Arts. 17 18) limiting colonial legislative power and reaffirming the governor s executive authority. The episode belongs to the earliest phase of the French Revolution s extension to the colonies. The Assemblée générale de la partie française de Saint-Domingue, meeting at Saint-Marc, sought to apply the revolutionary principles of representation and local sovereignty to the plantation colony, dominated by the white planter elite. Peynier s resistance, backed by Paris, aimed to maintain royal authority and prevent the fragmentation of imperial power. The conflict culminated in the Assembly s suppression and the flight of its deputies to France aboard the frigate Le Léopard events that exposed the deep divisions within Saint-Domingue and foreshadowed the political upheavals that would lead to the Haitian Revolution. A later hand has added "28 mars 1790" at the top of the leaf an error deriving from the text s final reference to the décret du 28 mars 1790. The notice was in fact written after 6 July 1790 (the Assembly s decree) and before 29 July 1790 (its dissolution), a dating confirmed by the subsequent Proclamation. . Light creases, otherwise in fine condition. Manuscript on paper. 1 leaf, written in a neat secretarial hand, signed "pour copie conforme, le Ct. de Peinier" at end.