nations, it is impossible to doubt. If there be one lesson in history more cogent in its teachings than any other, it is that no part of America large enough to constitute a self-sustaining state, can be permanently held in forced colonial subjection to Europe. Complete separation between the metropolis and its colony may be postponed by the former conceding to the latter a greater or less degree of local autonomy, nearly approaching to independence. But in all cases where a positive antagonism has come to exist between the mother country and its colonial subjects, where the sense of oppression is strongly felt by the latter, and especially where years of relentless warfare have alienated the parties one from another more widely than they are sundered by the ocean itself, their political separation is inevitable. It is one of those conclusions which have been aptly called the inexorable logic of events.

Thus we have shown that already, in 1869, when the revolution of the preceding year had attained but inconsiderable proportions, President Grant expressed his firm conviction that the ultimate result of the struggle for independence would be to break the bonds which attached Cuba as a colony to Spain. President Grant announced the determination of our Government to intervene if the struggle in Cuba was not speedily terminated. It was pointed out that while the Spanish authorities insisted that a state of war did not exist in Cuba, and that no rights as belligerents should be accorded to the revolutionists, they at the same time demanded for themselves all the rights and privileges which flowed from actual and acknowledged war. That Cuba exhibited a chronic condition of turbulence and rebellion was due to the system pursued by Spain and the want of harmony between the inhabitants of the island and the governing class. That should it become necessary for this Government to intervene it would be moved by the necessity for a proper regard to its own protection and its own interests and the interests of humanity.

The inhuman manner in which the war was waged, and the shocking executions of natives and citizens of this country made an impression of horror on the world.

The nicest sense of international requirements can not fail to perceive that provocation from Spain was overlooked by our Government for a longer period and with greater patience than any other Government of equal power would have tolerated. A writer in the London Times, in 1875, reflecting upon the possibility of Spain's overcoming the then insurrection, and on the prospect of our interference, said:

Were Cuba as near to Cornwall as it is to Florida we should certainly look more sharply to matters of fact than to the niceties of international law. But everything, we repeat, depends upon these matters of fact. If Spain can suppress the insurrection and prevent Cuba from becoming a permanent source of mischief to neighboring countries, she has the fullest right to keep it. But she is on her trial, and that trial can not be long. When she is made to clearly understand that the tenure of her rule over Cuba depends upon her ability to make that rule a reality, she will not be slow to show what she can do, and the limits of her power will be the limits of her right.

In 1869 Gen. Martinez Campos, the greatest soldier Spain possessed, was sent to Cuba to make a final effort to bring hostilities there to a termination. He was not only a great soldier but was believed to be a great administrator, and had the respect of all parties on account of his patriotism and integrity. He was afforded all the aid in the way of men and money which Spain could furnish. In 1878 he succeeded in the so-called pacification, for which service he was raised to the highest pinnacle in Spain and made prime minister. He did not conquer the insurgents but induced them to lay down their arms on conditions of peace which, as the Spanish administrator, he undertook for his Government should be faithfully carried out. A treaty of peace was negotiated with the leaders of the revolution. In 1879 General Campos wrote a long dispatch to his Government from the seat of his triumph, which at this day is extremely interesting, owing to the fact that the

present war owes its origin to the same circumstances as caused the former outbreak. In this dispatch, stating the particulars of the paci fication, General Campos gave an extended review of the situation in Cuba, and of the terms of the treaty of peace and the negotiations which led thereto. This recital shows that General Campos believed, as was afterwards said by our minister, James Russell Lowell, that the reforms he stipulated were necessary if Cuba was to be retained as a dependency of Spain, and, Mr. Lowell remarked, all intelligent Spaniards admitted that the country could not afford another war. As a reason for according conditions to the Cubans General Campos sketched the motives of his policy:

Since the year 1869, when I landed on this island with the first reinforcements, I was preoccupied with the idea that the insurrection here, though acknowledging as its cause the hatred of Spain, yet this hatred was due to the causes that have separated our colonies from the mother country, augmented in the present case by the promises made to the Antillas at different times (1812, 1837, and 1845), promises which not only have not been fulfilled, but, as I understand, have not been permitted to be so by the Cortes when at different times their execution had been begun.

While the island had no great development, its aspirations were confined by love of nationality and respect for authority; but when one day after another passed without hopes being satisfied, but, on the contrary, the greater freedom permitted now and then by a governor was more than canceled by his successor; when they were convinced that the colony went on in the same way; when bad officials and a worse administration of justice more and more aggravated difficulties; when the provincial governorships, continually growing worse, fell at last into the hands of men without training or education, petty tyrants who could practice their thefts and sometimes their oppressions, because of the distance at which they resided from the supreme authority, public opinion, until then restrained, began vehemently to desire those liberties which, if they bring much good, contain also some evil. The 10th of October, 1868, came to open men's eyes; the eruption of the volcano in which so many passions, so many hatreds, just and unjust, had been heaped up was terrible, and almost at the outset the independence of Cuba was proclaimed.

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He showed the gains speedily made by the insurgents and the advantages they had by reason of the familiarity with the country, so that "they defeated large columns with hardly a battalion of men. They almost put us on the defensive, and as we had to guard an immense property the mission of the army became very difficult." He recounted his efforts to reestablish the principle of authority, but said that he had against him a "public spirit without life. Nobody had higher aspirations than to save his crop of sugar. In official regions the enemy was thought inferior, but the commanders generally believed it unsafe to operate with less than three battalions; there was no venturing beyond the highways." He said little was gained by beating the enemy. What he needed was to exterminate them and that he could not do. That had his responsibility been free of the Cortes and the Government he would in the beginning have ventured everything to secure peace-the disembargo of estates, a general pardon, the assimilation of Cuba with Spain, orders to treat prisoners well, and to show that this was not weakness but strength there was "the argument of his one hundred thousand bayonets." He finally related the terms by which he induced the Cubans to lay down their arms. All desired reforms were promised. Municipal law, the law of provincial assemblies, and representation in the Cortes should be established; the jurisdiction of the courts defined, tax laws settled, the form of contribution and assessments determined, schools established, the people to be consulted through their representative as to all these reforms and others, and they were not to be left to the will of the captain-general or the head of a department. This summary is sufficient to indicate what was stipulated between the parties. Said General Campos:

I do not wish to make a momentary peace; I desire that this peace be the beginning of a bond of common interest between Spain and her Cuban provinces, and

that this bond be drawn closer by the identity of aspirations and the good faith of both. Let not the Cubans be considered as pariahs or children, but put on an equality with other Spaniards in everything not inconsistent with their present condition. Perhaps [he concluded] the insurgents would have accepted promises less liberal and more vague than those set forth in this condition; but even had this been done, it would have been but a brief postponement, because those liberties are destined to come for the reasons already given, with the difference that Spain now shows herself magnanimous, satisfying just aspirations which she might deny, and a little later, probably very soon, would have been obliged to grant them, compelled by the force of ideas and of the age. Moreover, she has promised over and over again to enter on the path of assimilation, and if the promise were more vague, even though the fulfillment of this promise were begun, these people would have a right to doubt our good faith, and to show a distrust unfortunately warranted by the failings of human nature itself. The not adding another one hundred thousand to the one hundred thousand families that mourn their sons slain in this pitiless war, and the cry of peace that will resound in the hearts of the eighty thousand mothers who have sons in Cuba or liable to conscription, would be a full equivalent for the payment of a debt of justice.

This debt of justice has not yet been paid.

The highest Spanish authorities have been obliged to confess that the grievances of the Cubans are just and their aspirations for liberty legitimate.

Marshal Serrano, in his official report to the Spanish Government of the 10th of May, 1867, said:

We are forced to acknowledge that in the last years the treasury of Cuba has been used abusively, which is partly the cause of the crisis the islands go through now and of the exhaustion of its resources.

Castelar, in 1873, while president, endeavored to convince Spain of the necessity of making reforms demanded alike by "humanity and civilization," and he deplored making Cuba a "transatlantic Poland." In 1874 our minister to Spain informed our Government that the entire unwillingness of Spain to do anything toward the amelioration of Cuba was shown by the fact that all the governments since the breaking out of the revolution in 1868 had promised to reform the administration, but that the situation of the island was worse than ever. And Secretary Fish informed the Spanish Government that most of the evils of which Cuba was the scene were the necessary results of harsh treatment and of the maladministration of the colonial government.

In 1875 Mr. Cushing, then minister to Madrid, communicated to our Government a large amount of evidence from Spanish sources showing the demoralization existing in the administration in Cuba. The Spanish journals of that date openly informed the central government that war in Cuba could never be ended until the vices of the ultra-marine administration were corrected and its moral tone raised. Spain was exhorted to make one supreme effort for the pacification of Cuba and its moralization. "The journals of all shades of opinion speak of the official corruption," said Mr. Cushing, "and peculations of the public employees in Cuba as a feature of the situation not less calamitous than the insurrection." He remarked that the burden of taxation had become . intolerable, aggravated as it was by the frauds and wastes committed by almost everybody connected with the collection or expenditure of the public moneys; that the abuses of administration, of which so much was being said at that time, were old, chronic, deep-rooted, and impossible of eradication under the colonial régime. "It would seem that each of the ephemeral parties on attaining power, with a crowd of eager partisans behind it like troops of howling wolves, shakes off as many as it can upon Cuba."

Notwithstanding that the public press did not cease to advise the Government that the immorality of the public administration of the

island offered a vast field to censure, nothing was done to improve its condition. It was thought by the central government that it was only necessary by force to save Cuba to Spain. It was common remark, however, that the Government ought to sustain two campaigns in Cubaone against insurrection and the other against corruption. Said Mr. Cushing:

So merely mercenary and so regardless of duty and the public weal are many of the public officers who go out to the island as to cause the saying to become current that on embarking they leave all sense of shame behind them in Cadiz.

And he observed that all testimony was unanimous as to the corruptions and the embezzlements of the administrations of Cuba.

The testimony of Mr. Cushing is of the most convincing character, as he has never been accused of being unfriendly to Spain. That he did not draw a too highly colored picture of Spanish misrule is shown by the declaration of the minister of transmarine affairs at Madrid, in an official paper quoted by Mr. Fish in 1874:

A deplorable and pertinacious tradition of despotism which, if it could ever be justified, is without a shadow of reason at the present time, intrusted the direction and management of our colonial establishment to the agents of the metropolis, destroying, by their dominant and exclusive authority, the vital energies of the country and the creative and productive activity of free individuals. And although the system may now have improved in some of its details, the domineering action of the authorities being less felt, it still appears full of the original error, which is upheld by the force of tradition, and the necessary influence of interests created under their protection. A change of system, political as well as administrative, is therefore imperatively demanded.

It is needless to say no such change has been made.

The Spanish Government to-day in Cuba is of the same character as it was when Richard Henry Dana visited the Island in 1854, "an armed monarchy encamped in the midst of a disarmed and disfranchised people; an unmixed despotism of one nation over another." Dana warned the public against the testimony of Americans and other foreigners engaged in business in Cuba as to the condition of affairs there:

Of all classes of persons I know of none whose situation is more unfavorable to the growth and development of sentiments of patriotism and philanthropy and of interest in the future of a race than foreigners temporarily resident, for purposes of money making only, in a country with which they have nothing in common in the future or the past. This class is often called impartial. I do not agree to the use of that term. They are indeed free from the bias of feeling or sentiment, but they are subject to the attractions of interest. It is for their immediate advantage to preserve peace and the existing order of things.

That the condition of Cuba had not improved prior to the present war is shown by a report of our consul-general at Havana to the State Department in 1885. This stated that the entire population, with the exception of the official class, was living under a tyranny unparalleled at this day on the globe:

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There is a system of oppression and torture which enters into every phase of life, eats into the soul of every Cuban, mortifies, injures, and insults him every hour, impoverishes him and his family from day to day, threatens the rich man with bankruptcy and the poor man with beggary. The exactions of the Spanish Government and the illegal outrages of its officers are in fact intolerable. They have reduced the island to despondency and ruin. The Government at Madrid is directly answerable for the misery of Cuba and for the rapacity and venality of its subordi. nates. No well-informed Spaniard imagines that Cuba will long continue to submit to this tyranny, or at least that she will long be able to yield this harvest to her oppressors. Spain cares nothing whatever for the interests, the prosperity, or the sufferings of her colony. The Government does almost nothing to ameliorate any of the evils of the country. The police are every where insufficient and inefficient. The roads are no roads at all. Every interest which might enrich and improve

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the island is looked upon by the officials as one more mine to exploit.

Cuba

is held solely for the benefit of Spain and Spanish interests, for the sake of Spanish adventurers. Against this all rebel in thought and feeling if not yet in fact and deed. They wish protection from the grasping rapacity of Spain and see

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no way to attain it except by our aid.

He concluded, that from the general misery, war must ensue, of such a savage character that the world would be shocked, and the United States would be compelled from sheer humanity to interfere and save a country which Spain would be unable either to control or to preserve. He had learned from many quarters that in any future attempt to change the condition of affairs all the inhabitants would go hand in hand; "it is generally understood that the permanent white population is of one mind."

While some of the reforms stipulated for by the Cubans and engaged to be carried out by General Campos in 1879 were nominally granted, they were all substantially withheld. The central government did not feel itself bound after the cessation of hostilities was secured to perform the conditions by which that result was brought about. Our consul-general reported (1885) "that the island is worse governed than at any previous period of its history."

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Cuba it was determined must pay the entire cost of the war. At the time when the fostering care of the Government was most needed to heal the wounds inflicted by the war, when every interest was prostrate and every business suffering, new and enormous taxes were imposed. A war tax of the most exaggerated character was laid. Every business, trade, art, or profession is taxed in the proportion of from 25 to 33 per cent of its net income. All ordinary mercantile business and all the petty trades and employments of the country are separately suffering. All participate in the common distress.

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He stated that the absolute legal tax imposed on the island was only a part of what the wretched and impoverished inhabitants were compelled to pay.

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It is a matter of notoriety that illegal charges are constantly made and then taken off for a bribe. The hordes of officials who batten like hungry beasts on the vitals of Cuba make no pretense of honesty except on paper. The highest officers, when they chance to be better than their subordinates, admit the character of their inferiors; more often they share it. The present state of things can not continue. Some change amounting almost to revolution is inevitable. What with governmental oppression and illegal tyranny, emancipation, brigandage, low prices for sugar and high taxes on everything, the ruin of the island is already almost consummated. She is absolutely incapacitated for rendering the revenue demanded or supporting the army of officials who keep her prostrate in her agony.

Shortly after Mr. Blaine became Secretary of State, in the administration of President Harrison, it was the subject of consideration whether Spain could be induced to acknowledge Cuba as independent should the United States agree to guarantee the sum to be paid by Cuba for the relinquishment of all Spanish rights in the island This movement was made by the sugar planters and it was thought that the entire sugar interest would support it. Mr. Blaine announced himself warmly in favor of the project, but after long conferences it was ascertained that the consent of Spain could not be obtained.

In truth, the pacification effected by Martinez Campos in 1878 was hardly efficient even as a truce. The reports of our consular agents, the testimony of travelers, the avowals made in the Spanish press, and the constant evidence almost daily recurring in the Cuban press, show that between 1878 and 1895 Cuba enjoyed little peace or repose. Brigandage, which was merely one form of public discontent, never ceased. Only the presence of a very large Spanish army prevented organized war.