First Title| On the Territory

Art 1 — The entire extent of Saint-Domingue, and Samana, Tortuga, Gonave, the Cayemites, Ile-a-Vache, the Saone and other adjacent islands, form the territory of one colony, that is part of the French Empire, but is subject to particular laws.
 

Title II | On its Inhabitants

Art 3 — There can be no slaves on this territory; servitude has been forever abolished. All men are born, live and die there free and French.
Art 4 — All men can work at all forms of employment, whatever their color.
Art 5 — No other distinctions exist than those of virtues and talents, nor any other superiority than that granted by the law in the exercise of a public charge. The law is the same for all, whether it punishes or protects.
 

Title III| On Religion

Art 6 — The Catholic religion, Apostolic and Roman, is the only one publicly professed.
 

Title IV | On Morals

Art 10 — Divorce will not take place in the colony
 

Title VI | On Cultivation and Commerce

Art 14 — The colony, being essentially agricultural, cannot allow the least interruption in its labor and cultivation.
Art 18 — The commerce of the colony consists only in the exchange of the goods and products of its territory; consequently the introduction of those of the same nature as its own is and remains prohibited.
 

Title VII | On Legislation and Legislative Authority

Art 20 — No law relative to the internal administration of the colony can be promulgated unless it bears the following formula: the Central Assembly of Saint-Domingue, on the proposition of the Governor, renders the following law.

Art 21 — Laws will only be obligatory for citizens from the day of their promulgation in the departmental capitals. The promulgation of a law occurs in the following fashion: in the name of the French colony of Saint-Domingue, the governor orders that the above law be sealed, promulgated, and executed in the whole colony.
 

Title VIII | On Government

Art 27 — The administrative reins of the colony are confided to a Governor, who directly corresponds with the government of the metropole in all matters relating to the colony
Art 29 — In the future each governor will be named for five years, and can be continued every five years for reason of good administration.
Art 38 — Every two years he presents at the Central Assembly the state of the receipts and expenses of each department, year by year.
Art 39 — He oversees and censors, via commissioners, every writing meant for publication on the island. He suppresses all those coming from foreign countries that will tend to corrupt the morals or again trouble the colony. He punishes the authors or sellers, according to the seriousness of the case.
Art 40 — If the Governor is informed that there is in the works some conspiracy against the tranquility of the colony, he has immediately arrested the persons presumed to be its authors, executors or accomplices. After having had them submit to an extra-judiciary interrogation if it is called for he has them brought before a competent tribunal.
Art 41 — The salary of the Governor is fixed at present at three hundred thousand francs. His guard of honor is paid for by the colony.

Title IX | On Tribunals

Art 42 — The right of citizens to be amicably judged by arbitrators of their choice cannot be infringed.
Art 43 — No authority can suspend or hinder the execution of decisions rendered by the tribunals.
Art 44 — Justice is administered in the colony by tribunaux de première instance and appeal tribunals. The law determines the organization of the one and the other, their number, their competency, and the territory forming the field of each. These tribunals, according to their degree of jurisdiction, handle all civil and criminal affairs.
Art 45 — The colony has a tribunal de cassation, which pronounces on all requests for appeals against the decisions rendered by appeals courts, and complaints against an entire tribunal. This tribunal has no knowledge of the essence of affairs, but it reverses decisions rendered on procedures in which form was violated, or that contain some kind of evident contravention of the law, and sends the essence of the trial to the tribunal that must deal with it.
Art 46 — The judges of these diverse tribunals preserve their functions all their lives, unless condemned for heinous crimes. The government commissioners can be revoked.
Art 47 — Crimes by those in the military are subject to special tribunals and particular forms of judgement. These tribunals also know all kinds of theft, the violation of asylum, assassinations, murders, arson, rape, conspiracy and revolt. Their organization belongs to the governor of the colony.
 

Art XI | On the Armed Force

Art 52 — The armed force is essentially obedient; it can never deliberate. It is at the disposition of the Governor, who can only set it in motion for the maintenance of public order, the protection due to all citizens, and the defense of the colony.
Art 55 — The colonial gendarmerie is part of the armed force. It is divided into horseback and foot gendarmerie. The horseback gendarmerie is instituted for high police matters and the safety of the countryside. It is paid for from the colonial treasury. The foot gendarmerie is instituted for the police functions in cities and tons. It is paid for by the cities and towns where it accomplishes its service.
 

Title XII | On Finances and Goods from Seized and Vacant Domains

Art 57 — The finances of the colony are composed of: Rights on imported goods, weights and measures. Rights on the rental value of houses in cities and towns, of those that produce manufactured goods other than those of cultivation, and salt. Revenue from ferries and post fines, confiscations, wrecks. Rights from the saving of the shipwrecked ships. Revenue from colonial domains.
 

Title XIII | General Dispositions

Art 63 — Every person’s home is an inviolable asylum. During the night, no one has the right to enter there except in case of fire, flood or appeal from within. During the day it can be entered for a specially determined objective, or by a law or an order emanating from a public authority.
Art 64 — In order for an act ordering the arrest of a person to be executed it is necessary that it: Formally express the motive for the arrest and the law in execution of which it is ordered; Emanate from a functionary who the law had formally given the power to do so; The person arrested be given a copy of the order.
Art 66 — All persons have the right to address individual petitions to any constituted authority, and especially to the governor.
Art 67 — No corporation or association contrary to public order can be formed in the colony.  No assembly of citizens can qualify itself as popular society. Any seditious gathering shall be immediately broken up at first by verbal order and, if necessary, by the development of armed force.
Art 71 — In the entire colony there is a uniformity in weights and measures.
Art 75 — It proclaims that it is upon the respect of persons and property that the cultivation of land, all production, and all means of labor and all social order rests.
Art 76 — It proclaims that every citizen owes his services to the land that nourishes him and that saw him born; to the maintenance of liberty equality and property every time the law calls him to defend them.
Art 77 — The General-in-Chief Toussaint Louverture is and remains charged with sending the present Constitution for the approval of the French government. Nevertheless, and given the absence of laws, the urgency of escaping from this state of peril, the necessity of promptly re-establishing culture and the well expressed unanimous wish of the inhabitants of Saint-Domingue, the General-in-Chief is and remains invited, in the name of public good, to put it into effect in the entire expanse of the territory of the colony.