Page images
PDF
EPUB

bread. It is a fact which would defy belief, were it not the result of official inquiry, that the immigrants to the United States from Ireland alone, besides having subsisted themselves, have sent back to their kindred, for the three last years, nearly five million of dollars. annually; thus doubling in three years the purchase money of Louisiana.

"Such is the territorial development of the United States in the past century. Is it possible that Europe can contemplate it with an unfriendly or jealous eye? What would have been her condition in these trying years but for the outlet we have furnished for her starving millions?

"Spain, meantime, has retained of her extensive dominions in this hemisphere but the two islands of Cuba and Porto Rico. A respectful sympathy with the fortunes of an ancient ally and a gallant people, with whom the United States have ever maintained the most friendly relations, would, if no other reason existed, make it our duty to leave her in the undisturbed possession of this little remnant of her mighty trans-Atlantic empire. The President desires to do so; no word or deed of his will ever question her title or shake her possession. But can it be expected to last very long? Can it resist this mighty current in the fortunes of the world? Is it desirable that it should do so? Can it be for the interest of Spain to cling to a possession that can only be maintained by a garrison of twenty-five or thirty thousand troops, a powerful naval force, and an annual expenditure for both arms of the service of at least twelve millions of dollars? Cuba, at this moment, costs more to Spain than the entire naval and military establishment of the United States costs the Federal Government. So far from being really injured by the loss of this island, there is no doubt that, were it peacefully transferred to the United States, a prosperous commerce between Cuba and Spain, resulting from ancient associations and common language and tastes, would be far more productive than the best contrived system of colonial taxation. Such, notoriously, has been the result to Great Britain of the establishment of the independence of the United States. The decline of Spain from the position which she held in the time of Charles the Fifth is coeval with the foundation of her colonial system; while within twenty-five years, and since the loss of most of her colonies, she has entered upon a course of rapid improvement unknown since the abdication of that Emperor.

"I will but allude to an evil of the first magnitude: I mean the African slave-trade, in the suppression of which France and England take a lively interest-an evil which still forms a great reproach upon the civilization of Christendom, and perpetuates the barbarism of Africa, but for which it is to be feared there is no hope of a complete remedy while Cuba remains a Spanish colony.

"But, whatever may be thought of these last suggestions, it would seem impossible for anyone who reflects upon the events glanced at in this note to mistake the law of American growth and progress, or think it can be ultimately arrested by a convention like that proposed. In the judgment of the President, it would be as easy to throw a dam from Cape Florida to Cuba, in the hope of stopping the flow of the Gulf Stream, as to attempt, by a compact like this, to fix the fortunes of Cuba 'now and for hereafter;' or, as expressed in the French text of the convention, 'for the present as for the future,' (pour le present comme pour l'avenir) that is, for all coming time. The history of the past-of the recent past-affords no assurance that twenty years hence France or England will even wish that Spain should retain Cuba; and a century hence, judging of what will be from what has been, the pages which record this proposition will, like the record of the family compact between France and Spain, have no interest but for the antiquary.

"Even now the President can not doubt that both France and England would prefer any change in the condition of Cuba to that which is most to be apprehended, viz: An internal convulsion which should renew the horrors and the fate of San Domingo.

[ocr errors]

"I will intimate a final objection to the proposed convention. M. de Turgot and Lord Malmesbury put forward, as the reason for entering into such a compact, the attacks which have lately been made on the island of Cuba by lawless bands of adventurers from the United States, with the avowed design of taking possession of that island.' The President is convinced that the conclusion of such a treaty, instead of putting a stop to these lawless proceedings, would give a new and powerful impulse to them. It would strike a death-blow to the conservative policy hitherto pursued in this country toward Cuba. No administration of this Government, however strong in the public confidence in other respects, could stand a day under the odium of having stipulated with the great powers of Europe, that in no future time, under no change of circumstances, by no amicable arrangement with Spain, by no act of lawful war, (should that calamity unfortunately occur,) by no consent of the inhabitants of the island, should they, like the possessions of Spain on the American continent, succeed in rendering themselves independent: in fine, by no overruling necessity of self-preservation should the United States ever make the acquisition of Cuba.

"For these reasons, which the President has thought it advisable, considering the importance of the subject, to direct me to unfold at some length, he feels constrained to decline respectfully the invitation of France and England to become a party to the proposed convention. He is persuaded that these friendly powers will not attribute this refusal to any insensibility on his part to the advantages of the utmost

harmony between the great maritime states on a subject of such importance. As little will Spain draw any unfavorable inference from this refusal; the rather, as the emphatic disclaimer of any designs against Cuba on the part of this Government, contained in the present note, affords all the assurance which the President can constitutionally, or to any useful purpose, give of a practical concurrence with France and England in the wish not to disturb the possession of that island by Spain.”

Mr. Everett, Sec. of State, to the Count Sartiges, Dec. 1, 1852, S. Ex. Doc.
13, 32 Cong. 2 sess. 15. This document was reprinted, with an
appendix, by Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., at Boston, in 1853.
The same note of Dec. 1, 1852, addressed, mutatis mutandis, to Mr. Cramp-
ton, the British minister at Washington, is printed in 44 Br. & For.
State Papers, 197, where it is preceded by much other correspondence
showing the historic policy of the United States toward Cuba. The
draft of the proposed tripartite convention is given at page 116.
The reply of Lord John Russell of Feb. 16, 1853, to Mr. Everett's note of
Dec. 1, 1852, may be found in the same volume, at page 232. A per-
sonal and unofficial rejoinder by Mr. Everett, dated Sept. 17, 1853,
may be found in the appendix to the Little, Brown & Co. reprint,
above referred to; also, in Wharton's Int. Law Digest, I. 571-578.
"Lord John Russell took my letter of the 17th Sept., 1853, in good part,
and wrote me a very civil private letter on the subject." (Mr. Ever-
ett to Mr. Wm. Hunter, May 11, 1855, MS.)

The controversy is reviewed by Mr. Wm. Henry Trescot, in the Southern
Quarterly Review, N. S., IX. (April, 1854) 429.

Mr. Everett's position is approved in Mr. Marcy, Sec. of State, to Mr.
Buchanan, min. to England, July 2, 1853, MS. Inst. Great Britain,
XVI. 220.

"That rich island [Cuba], the key to the Gulf of Mexico and the field for our most extended trade in the Western hemisphere, is, though in the hands of Spain, a part of the American commercial system. Our relations, present and prospective, toward Cuba, have never been more ably set forth than in the remarkable note addressed by my predecessor, Mr. Secretary Everett, to the ministers of Great Britain and France in Washington, on the 1st of December, 1852, in rejection of the suggested tripartite alliance to forever determine the neutrality of the Spanish Antilles. In response to the proposal that the United States, Great Britain, and France, should severally and collectively agree to forbid the acquisition of control over Cuba, by any or all of them, Mr. Everett showed that, without forcing or even coveting possession of the island, its condition was essentially an American question; that the renunciation forever by this Government of contingent interest therein would be far broader than the like renunciation by Great Britain or France; that, if ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily become American, and not fall under any other European domination, and that the ceaseless movement of

segregation of American interests from European control and unification in a broader American sphere of independent life could not and should not be checked by any arbitrary agreement.

"Nearly thirty years have demonstrated the wisdom of the attitude then maintained by Mr. Everett, and have made indispensable its continuance and its extension to all parts of the American Atlantic system where a disturbance of the existing status might be attempted in the interest of foreign powers. The present attitude of this Government toward any European project for the control of an isthmian route is but the logical sequence of the resistance made in 1852 to the attempted pressure of an active foreign influence in the West Indies." Mr. Blaine, Sec. of State, to Mr. Comly, min. to Hawaii, Dec. 1, 1881, For. Rel. 1881, 635, 637.

(3) INDEPENDENCE.

§ 952.

See, as to intervention in Cuba, supra, §§ 906-910.

"The withdrawal of the authority of Spain from the island of Cuba was affected by the 1st of January, so that the full reestablishment of peace found the relinquished territory held by us in trust for the inhabitants, maintaining, under the direction of the Executive, such government and control therein as should conserve public order, restore the productive conditions of peace so long disturbed by the instability and disorder which prevailed for the greater part of the preceding three decades, and build up that tranquil development of the domestic state whereby alone can be realized the high purpose, as proclaimed in the joint resolution adopted by the Congress on the 19th of April, 1898, by which the United States disclaimed any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over Cuba, except for the pacification thereof, and asserted its determination when that was accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people. The pledge contained in this resolution is of the highest honorable obligation and must be sacredly kept.

"I believe that substantial progress has been made in this direction. All the administrative measures adopted in Cuba have aimed to fit it for a regenerated existence by enforcing the supremacy of law and justice; by placing wherever practicable the machinery of administration in the hands of the inhabitants; by instituting needed sanitary reforms; by spreading education; by fostering industry and trade; by inculcating public morality, and, in short, by taking every rational step to aid the Cuban people to attain to that plane of selfconscious respect and self-reliant unity which fits an enlightened

community for self-government within its own sphere, while enabling it to fulfill all outward obligations.

"This nation has assumed before the world a grave responsibility for the future good government of Cuba. We have accepted a trust the fulfillment of which calls for the sternest integrity of purpose and the exercise of the highest wisdom. The new Cuba yet to arise from the ashes of the past must needs be bound to us by ties of singular intimacy and strength if its enduring welfare is to be assured. Whether those ties shall be organic or conventional, the destinies of Cuba are in some rightful form and manner irrevocably linked with our own, but how and how far is for the future to determine in the ripeness of events. Whatever be the outcome, we must see to it that free Cuba be a reality, not a name, a perfect entity, not a hasty experiment bearing within itself the elements of failure. Our mission, to accomplish which we took up the wager of battle, is not to be fulfilled by turning adrift any loosely framed commonwealth to face the vicissitudes which too often attend weaker states whose natural wealth and abundant resources are offset by the incongruities of their political organization and the recurring occasions for internal rivalries to sap their strength and dissipate their energies."

President McKinley, annual message, Dec. 5, 1899, For. Rel. 1901, xxxi.

"In Cuba such progress has been made toward putting the independent government of the island upon a firm footing that before the present session of the Congress closes this will be an accomplished fact. Cuba will then start as her own mistress; and to the beautiful Queen of the Antilles, as she unfolds this new page of her destiny, we extend our heartiest greetings and good wishes. Elsewhere I have discussed the question of reciprocity. In the case of Cuba, however, there are weighty reasons of morality and of national interest why the policy should be held to have a peculiar application, and I most earnestly ask your attention to the wisdom, indeed to the vital need, of providing for a substantial reduction in the tariff duties on Cuban imports into the United States. Cuba has in her constitution affirmed what we desired, that she should stand, in international matters, in closer and more friendly relations with us than with any other power; and we are bound by every consideration of honor and expediency to pass commercial measures in the interest of her material well-being."

President Roosevelt, annual message, Dec. 3, 1901, For. Rel. 1901, xxxi.
See, supra, § 910, for the independence of Cuba and the Platt amendment.
A reciprocity treaty was concluded with Cuba Dec. 11, 1902, and was
proclaimed, Dec. 17, 1903.

« PreviousContinue »