dispelled by the glorious dawn of constitutional liberty.

In 1835, the energetic and iron Tacon became Captain-General. He erected many public buildings, but, under what has been aptly termed his "brick-and-mortar civilization," every liberal movement was sternly repressed. He enriched himself enormously through the slave traffic, yet his reactionary sway was not, like that of Weyler, an unmitigated weyler curse to the people he ruled. Arriving in a time of chronic anarchy and political assassination, he summarily suppressed crime, showed favor to neither rich nor poor, and transported, exiled, or executed one thousand persons of all ranks. Although he countenanced corruption, the American, British, and other foreign consuls of that period unanimously testify to the general good public order he maintained.

Up to this time, the four hundred

thousand free whites of Cuba, who had been remitting to Spain an annual tribute of three million dollars, had enjoyed the right of sending two deputies to the Spanish Cortes at Madrid. Suddenly, on the . 10th of February, 1837, this body decreed that the colony should be deprived of representation, and that, instead, special laws for its benefit were to be passed. Forty years elapsed before the mother-country, taught by the frightful experience of a sanguinary ten years' revolt, began to fulfil these promises.

Meantime, the ever - deepening gloom of black slavery overshadowed the Island. To prevent its perpetuation, Great Britain induced Spain to sign, in 1817, a treaty, by the terms of which the importation of slaves was prohibited, severe penalties against violators enacted, and a mixed international tribunal established at Havana. These provisions

availed nothing; they were either secretly evaded or openly defied. Governor-Generals and all other executive officials connived at the iniquitous business, and reaped from it unheard of profits. Competent

and impartial observers declare the condition of the slaves in Cuba as indescribably frightful. Mrs. Horace Mann, widow of the Massachusetts statesman, made, sixty or seventy years ago, a protracted stay on a Cuban plantation, and was so horrified by what she saw that she wrote a novel, Juanita, as thrilling as Uncle Tom's Cabin. Still more convincing, because of its official nature, is the testimony of Mr. R. R. Madden, British Judge of the Mixed Tribunal at Havana, who published, in 1853, an instructive little book Madden on The Island of Cuba. He tells how slavers infested the ports of Cuba, and, if perchance the cargoes should be confiscated, means would

be found secretly to convey the "Bozals," as the newly imported slaves were called, into the interior, where they would fetch twelve hundred dollars a head. On the plantations, Mr. Madden witnessed slaves literally scourged to death, and children torn from their mothers. It was customary, during the sugar and tobacco crop season, which lasted about six months, for slaves to be worked every day twenty hours at a stretch, the common impression being that "four hours' sleep was sufficient for a slave." No wonder that, under such a system, not a female nor an aged negro could be found on many a plantation.

In spite of such excesses and crimes against humanity, Cuba bore an outward appearance of remarkable prosperity, but, writing in 1869, Larousse, author of the great French Encyclopedic Dictionary, likened her material progress to that obtained

in ancient Egypt by forced labor; and continued: "The riches of Cuba offend humanity. Far from glorifying the industry of men, the degrading spectacle it presents is an insult to the progress of the century!" He expressed the fear that, when the Cuban negroes should rise in arms, they would spare neither the whites who were oppressors, nor the whites who were oppressed. The detractors of the negro race might do well to remember that they have shown a generous forgiveness, and have cheerfully fought, side by side with their white brothers, in the sacred cause of Cuban liberty.

In addition to the incubus of negro slavery, the restrictive policy of the Spanish government hastened the revolution which must inevitably have occurred. Representation, and liberty of speech, conscience, and the press were denied, while illiberal laws retarded commerce and immi