body or of Congress, or a minister of the crown, or a bishop, or a grandee of Spain, a lieutenant-general, a viceadmiral, ambassador, minister plenipotentiary, counsellor of state, judge or attorney-general of the Supreme Court, of the Court of Accounts, etc. No Cuban has ever filled any of the above positions, and scarcely two or three are grandees. The only natives of Cuba who can be senators are those who have been deputies in three different Congresses, or who are professors and have held for four years a university chair, provided that they have an income of $1500; or those who have a title of nobility, or have been deputies, or mayors in towns of over 20,000 inhabitants, if they have in addition an income of $4000 or pay a direct contribution of $800 to the Treasury. This will increase in one or two dozen the number of Cubans qualified to be senators.

"In this manner has legislative work, as far as Cuba is concerned, turned out to be a farce. The various governments have legislated for the island as they pleased. The representatives of the peninsular provinces did not even take the trouble of attending the sessions of the Cortes when Cuban affairs were to be dealt with; and there was an instance when the estimates (budget) for the Great Antille were discussed in the presence of less than thirty deputies, and a single one of the ministers, the minister of Ultramar' (Colonies) (session of April 3, 1880).

"As may be seen, the crafty policy of Spain has closed every avenue through which redress might be obtained. All the powers are centred in the government at Madrid and its delegates in the Colony; and, in order to give her despotism a slight varnish of a representative régime, she has contrived with her

laws to secure complaisant majorities in the pseudo-elective bodies.

"To accomplish this purpose she has relied upon the European immigrants, who have always supported the government of the Metropolis in exchange for lasting privileges.

"How far the resident Spaniards monopolize the electoral franchise is shown by the single fact that, although in every 100 of the population there are only 10 Spaniards as against 90 Cubans, for every representative elected by the Cubans the Spaniards elect at least 7 and sometimes io. In other words, the 1,450,000 Cubans are represented, when most successful, by 7 deputies, and sometimes by only 3, while the 160,000 Spaniards residing in the island have been represented by 23 deputies and sometimes by as many as 27, the total number being 40. Such facts need no commentary."

I The above extracts from Varona's work

This terrible indictment is confirmed by El Pais of Havana, the official organ of the autonomist party, often persecuted by the Spanish authorities, yet always loyal to the sovereign of Spain. In its issue of February 4, 1891, El Pais, speaking of the electoral and representative system, says:

"So much is certain: the representative system is here (in Cuba) a wretched farce, a centre of infection, an opportunity to use the system shamelessly and without fear of punishment as a stepping-stone for the satisfaction of vulgar ambition. Wherefore speak of the will of the electoral body, a body that is prostituted and a will that is abject? Parties which do not care to display, by their actions, genuine respect for the natural exigencies and the pro

can be found in Cuba, by Fidel G. Pierra, exSecretary of the Pan-American Congress, pp. 23-25.

per conditions of the representative system, do not deserve to live. With insults to public law and conscience such as have occurred in the district of Punta y Colon, every honest breast will feel invincible repuguance to electoral gatherings converted into depositaries of filth, and into dens of felons; and thus the representation of the country will fall into impure hands, and serve merely to advance promiscuous and rapacious adventurers."

Less than a month after the gifted young Cuban poet, José Martí, had raised the standard of revolt, the Spanish Cortes passed a law which, in a measure, reformed the methods of representation and voting, but did not strike at the root of the abuses just enumerated. Self-government,

as the term is understood in Canada and Australia, has never existed in Cuba, nor can it flourish there so long as the island is ruled by a na