without complaint a vast amount of governmental iniquity and oppression. A poor and hungry people will be discontented under a government which may be in all ways morally and mechanically perfect. The contemplation of an ideal administration is little satisfactory to a ragged citizen with an empty stomach. In ignoring this fundamental fact, the United States committed its most serious error in its experience in the Island of Cuba.

CHAPTER XIX

LAW AND JUSTICE

THAT the United States had the power to effect radical changes in the existing legal system of Cuba, is shown by the fact that such changes were made. The legal or moral right to interfere in any way with the established laws of a land which our Supreme Court declared to be “foreign territory," beyond the point of necessity for the immediate maintenance of law and order and the protection of life and property, has been called in question. Yet this right was assumed, and the assumption was endorsed by the administration at Washington.

The maladministration of the laws in force in the Island, under the Spanish régime, gave rise to a belief that the evil lay in the laws themselves. In an address before the Ohio Bar Association, on July 12, 1899, the Hon. William Wirt Howe made the following statement:

“The student of Spanish jurisprudence is impressed with the learning and the juristic ability which it displays. There is no trouble in this respect. It is a noble system. But the contrast between the splendid science of the system and the moral quality of its administration in the Spanish colonies, is something very pathetic."

The Spanish system of jurisprudence is, like all such systems, the result of development. Walton, in his Civil Law in Spain and Spanish America (page 22), summarizes the history of Spanish law under six headings:

The Primitive Period, Sixteenth Century B.C. to 414 A.D. The Visigoth Epoch, 414 to 687 A.D.

The Hispano-Gothic Period, 687-700 to 711 A.D.

The Saracenic Invasion, 711 to 1255 A.D.

The re-establishment of Roman Laws, 1255 to 1810.
The Modern Epoch, 1810 to 1900.

With the establishment of her vast colonial interests, during the early years of the sixteenth century, it became necessary for Spain to provide laws and legal processes for the new territory which had been acquired by conquest and by discovery.

In 1524, there was issued a royal decree of which the following was a part:

"Considering the great benefits and advantages which, by the grace of God, we have received, and every day do receive, from the increase and growth of the Kingdom and dominions of our Indies; and being well advised of the obligation and duty towards them which this imposes upon us, we are solicitous, on our part (with God's assistance), to devise suitable means by which such great kingdoms and dominions may be governed and ruled in a proper manner.

This appears as a sort of preamble to a decree establishing a body known as the Council of the Indies. Walton's Civil Law in Spain and Spanish America (page 520) says: “The Council of the Indies had supreme jurisdiction over all the colonies; all the laws and ordinances of viceroys and governors were subject to its approval; and it had power to frame laws." Until 1661, the laws of Cuba and the Spanish colonies in general were the laws of Spain supplemented by an assortment of decrees, ordinances, and regulations, issued by the Crown, by the Council, and by the Church. In that year these were compiled and published. A better digested edition was issued in 1681. This was known as

the Compilation of the Laws of the Indies. (Recopilacion de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indies.)

This formed the basis of Cuban law until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the revolution of that period established the constitutional Cortes in Spain. Constitutionalism in Spain has had a somewhat erratic career, but its influence has marked the legal as well as the political history of that nation and its colonies for the last century. By the short-lived Spanish constitutions of 1812 and 1820, Cuba was nominally granted representation in the Cortes at Madrid. A nominal representation was also granted by the Constitution of 1876. None of these was of any real benefit to the Island.

Although Cuba remained a subject colony, her prolonged agitations, her many protests, and her occasional revolts were by no means barren of results. To those measures, and notably to the Ten Years' War, is due the legal reform in Cuba which has been effected during the last quarter of a century. On May 23, 1879, the Spanish Penal Code was extended to Cuba. The Mortgage Law was extended May 1, 1880. To do away with certain undesirable features, and to bring the law into fuller harmony with the provisions of the Civil Code, this code was modified on July 14, 1893. The Monarchical Constitution was applied to the Island April 7, 1881. The Law of Civil Procedure followed, Sept. 25, 1885, and on Jan. 28, 1886, the Commercial Code was put into effect. This was followed, on Oct. 18, 1888, by the Law of Criminal Procedure, and on July 31, 1889, the last of the group, the Civil Code, was also extended to the Island, and the laws of Cuba then became, in general, the same as those of the Peninsula, with the exception of such minor modifications as became necessary to fit them to a Colonial instead of a Crown government.

By the decree of April 7, 1881, the Spanish Constitution of 1876 was applied to Cuba. Under this, nominally, the Cubans possessed all the rights of Spanish citizenship. This Constitution included provisions which are practically the equivalent of a Bill of Rights and the Habeas Corpus. It provided that no inhabitant of Cuba might be arrested except in the cases and in the manner prescribed by law. Within twenty-four hours of the arrest, the prisoner must be discharged or surrendered to the judicial authorities; thereupon a judge having jurisdiction must, within seventy-two hours, order either the discharge of the prisoner or his commitment to jail. Within the same limit of time, the prisoner must be informed of the decision in his case. No citizen could be committed except upon the warrant of a judge having jurisdiction. Dwelling-houses and mails were to be held inviolate without due process of law. Confiscation of property was prohibited, as was expropriation for public use unless just compensation had previously been made. Religious freedom was established, though the Roman Catholic religion was declared the religion of the State. Article XII provided that every Cuban, like every Spaniard, had the right to express freely his opinions, orally or in writing or through the press, without censorship; the right to assemble peaceably, to form associations, to petition, individually or in combination with others, the King, the Cortes, and the authorities. Cubans were given right to hold public office, according to individual merit and capacity. The constitutional rights were guaranteed by laws passed in support of the Constitution. The laws provided remedies, civil and criminal, for their infringement by judges or other authorities.

While it all appears, to the lay mind, to be greatly involved, it is nevertheless the fact that the legal structure,