an impassable gulf yawns-impassable at least so long as Spain continues her present suicidal policy. These Spaniards fill every office of trust or profit, from that of Captain-General down to the lowest official. For them are created offices of trust and profit, so fast as the increased means of the treasury will admit, totally irrespective of the actual necessity for such offices, so far as the people are concerned. They are the ravenous, insatiable leeches which, with anxious maternal solicitude, Spain uses to deplete her too healthy infant. They are sent out solely to govern and bleed the people, and most thoroughly are their duties performed. In the appointment of these officials the natives of Cuba h ve not the slightest voice or choice. The different grades of offi cers are only responsible to their superiors, their superiors to the CaptainGeneral, the Captain-General to himself. And, as usual, they do not seek Cuba as a permanent residence, but only for the purpose of making a fortune, and then returning to Spain to enjoy it; they are united by one common interest and object; there is no possible check to their rapacity-no limit to their enormous exactions. The sentiments engendered by this system between the officials and people can be no other than hate and fear, as before stated, and nothing but the presence of a powerful army-from every office or appointment in which natives are rigorously excluded, though heavily taxed for its maintenance-prevents the Creoles from asserting their natural rights, and wreaking the most terrible vengeance on their oppressors. Consider for a moment the nature and extent of the burdens imposed upon the wretched Creoles. They are permitted no voice in the Cortes or legislative department; the press is under the vilest, most rigorous censorship; farmers are compelled to pay a tax of ten per cent. on all their harvest save sugar, and on that article 24 per cent. The island has been under martial law since 1825; over $23,000,000 of taxes per annum are levied upon the inhabitants to be squandered by the home Government; ice is monopolised by Government; flour from the United States is so taxed as to be prohibited, in order that Spain may furnish an inferior article at exorbitant rates; six persons or more cannot meet in private without being liable to police intrusion; there is a stamped paper made necessary for special contracts costing eight dollars per sheet; no goods, either in or out of doors, can be sold without a license; the natives of the island are excluded entirely from the army, the judiciary, the treasury, and the customs; the military government assumes the charge of schools; the grazing of cattle on public lands is taxed exorbitantly; newspapers from abroad, with few exceptions, are contraband; letters passing through the post are liable to be opened at any time, and those to this country from non residents of the island usually are; fishing on the coast is forbidden, being a government monopoly; planters are forbidden to send their sons to the United States for education; the slave trade is secretly encouraged by government, the officers receiving large emoluments from that source; no person can remove from one house to another without obtaining a government permit; all cattle, the same as goods, must pay six per cent. on their value to government; in short, every possible subterfuge is resorted to by the government officials to rob the people, and from their exorbitant demands there is no appeal, or if such be nominally allowed, it is of so expensive and cumbersome a nature, as to be practically useless."

The distinction of class referred to by the judge would disappear in the event of annexation, although we are aware that the heterogeneous character of the inhabitants of Cuba has

population numbers 100,000, and the blacks nearly half a million. The Spaniards proper, or natives of Spain, on the island, number 20,000, and the rest of the white population consists of persons of Spanish descent or Creoles.

been urged as an objection against the purchase of the island; yet Louisiana and Florida are as patriotic and firm in their devotion to the Union as any other States of our confederacy, and their inhabitants are not more homogeneous in their nature than those of Cuba.

With all their disadvantages and hindrances, the wealth and resources of Cuba will compare favorably with any other country. If the amount of taxes that can be drawn from a people without arresting their material progress by paralysing their industry, is the experimentum crucis of the fertility of the land they inhabit, then Cuba will compare favorably with the most productive and thrifty country in either hemisphere. The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Mr. Slidell, chairman, to whom was referred the bill making appropriations to facilitate the acquisition of the island of Cuba by negotiation, in their report say:

แ "Your Committee have before them the last Cuban Budget,* which pre*The Committee could not have been in possession of the latest Cuban Budget-1858, for that gives the amount of revenue for the year 1858, at over eighteen millions of dollars. The statement is from the Gaceta Official of the 10th February, 1859.

District.

Interual Taxes.

$6,515,830 61
1,041,544 98%

The items of revenue that have produced these returns are thus given under

the head of "Sections according to the budget:"

689 37

$10,997,647 924

Imposts and contributions

Custom houses...

$3.842,397 43

10,778,688 97

1,060,395 964

1,799,828 62

74,928 79

840,075 544

230,080 59

$18,126,395 93

sents the actual receipts and expenditures for one year, with the estimates for the same for the next six months. The income derived from direct taxes, customs, monopolies, lotteries, etc, is sixteen million three hundred and three thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars ($16,303,950). The expenses are sixteen million two hundred and ninety-nine thousand six hundred and sixty-three dollars ($16,299,663). This equilibrium of the Budget is accounted for by the fact that the surplus revenue is remitted to Spain. It figures under the head of Atenciones de la Peninsula,' and amounts to one million four hundred and four thousand and fifty-nine dollars ($1,404,059) and is the only direct pecuniary advantage Spain derives from the possession of Cuba, and even this sum very much exceeds the average net revenue remitted from that Island, all the expenses of the army and navy employed at or near Cuba being paid by the island. The disbursements are those of the general administration of the island, those of Havana and other cities being provided for by special imposts and taxes.

"It may be moderately estimated that the personal exactions of Spanish officials amount to five millions of dollars ($5,000,000) per annum, thus increasing the expenses of the Government of Cuba, apart from those which, with us, would be considered as county or municipal, to the enormous sum of twenty-one million three hundred thousand dollars ($21,300,000), or about thirteen dollars and fifty cents ($13 50) per head for the whole population of the Island, free and slave. Under this system of government and this excessive taxation, the population has, for a series of years, steadily increased at the mean rate of three per cent. per annum-about equal to that of the United States."

It is a matter of the greatest surprise to many, how this small island has so long maintained its industrial pre-eminence over all its neighbors, except the United States, against the crushing exactions and barbarous tyranny of Spain. It is admitted that her soil is of the most productive kind, and the location of the island especially favorable to commerce; but then her people do not belong to what is generally regarded as an energetic industrious race, and for this reason, it is argued, that there must be some special cause for the prosperity of Cuba. There are, no doubt, a combination of causes for this great prosperity discoverable in a close examination of the subject, but in our opinion, the controlling cause lies in the fact that although Cuba has been ruled with a rod of iron by Spain, yet her domestic institutions have not thus far been seriously interfered with by the Spanish government. Although Spain was urged on by the influence of England, backed by France, to the adoption of a policy which would have, in all probability, placed Cuba where Jamaica now stands-a desert, a barren waste-her people resisted this policy, and they have thus far been able to avert the disastrous consequences which would have resulted from it, and they still remain in the enjoyment of their institution of bound labor, which has proved the best means for developing the resources of our southern states, as well as those of Cuba. How long the people of Cuba may be able to resist the future efforts of England, France and

Spain to change her labor policy, cannot now be determined. That England has especially used her influence, for years past, to accomplish this change of policy will not be disputed.

After referring to the great productiveness of the island, and its large and increasing commerce, the Senate Committee further remark:

"When we consider that more than two-thirds of the whole area of the island is susceptible of culture, and that not a tenth part of it is now cultivated, we may form some idea of the immense development which would be given to its industry by a change from a system of monopoly and despotism to free trade and free institutions. Whatever may be the enhanced cost of production, caused by the increased value of labor, it will be nearly if not quite compensated by the removal of export duties; and of those levied on articles produced in the United States, which are now by unjust discrimination virtually excluded from consumption."

It cannot be disguised but that the only purpose sought to be accomplished by the British Government through this antislavery policy is to prevent Cuba from becoming a part of our Confederacy.

Lord Palmerston, who has been the head and front of the governmental abolition movement in England, has officially stated that "if the negro population in Cuba were rendered free, that fact would create a most powerful element of resistance to any scheme for annexing Cuba to the United States!" There is some truth in this assertion, but then, it must not be supposed that emancipation is possible in Cuba. We do not believe that the people of Cuba, with our example before them, will ever permit the Spanish Government to yield to England in this respect, although the Court of Madrid has on one or two occasions been induced to attempt it. Besides viewing every future attempt of this kind on the part of foreign powers, including Spain, as a despotic interference by force and fraud against the rightful sovereignty of a neighboring people, to the enjoyment at least of their domestic institutions, who in such an event would revolt against the usurpation, the Government of the United States would be bound to enforce its rule of non-intervention in the affairs of this continent by European powers, to shield the people of Cuba from the consequences of a successful combination of this nature against them. Again, if influenced either by cowardice or cruelty, Spain should succeed in treacherously declaring bound labor abolished in Cuba, the people would, under our well established and defined principle of local sovereignty, be entitled to institute or re-establish whatever domestic institutions, consistent with the constitution of the United States, they might think best calculated to promote their prosperity as a State.

.

With the view of abolishing slavery in Cuba, and to prevent its annexation to the United States, a warm and energetic correspondence was opened between the English and Spanish Cabinets on the subject of the slave trade, and of emancipation in Cuba, in 1841, which was continued, at intervals, until 1856. This correspondence* was conducted on the part of Great Britain by Lord Aberdeen, Sir E. Bulwer, Lord John Russell, and Lord Palmerston. For Spain, by Señor Bertran de Lis, Conde de Alcoy, and the Marquis de Miraflores. England first aimed to establish by treaty, in Cuba, a British tribunal with authority to decide the status of negroes applying for it.

This audacious and insulting proposition of England to examine into the right of Cuba to the enjoyment of her domestic institutions, and to create in the mind of the African the impression that he is not only held to labor in violation of law, but that he is the true owner of the soil by the fruits of which he is sustained, was entertained by Spain, and sent to Cuba in 1841 for consultation. The character of the various remonstrances against this insidious attempt of England to abolitionize Cuba, clearly indicate the reasons that compelled England and France to recede for a time.

The Junta de Fomento of Havana sent to the court a protest signed by Count Villanueva (the intendant of the island), as president of that body, which says:

"It is not to be presumed that any white man will be disposed to submit to so hard a fate. They will all prefer to emigrate to foreign countries to earn their livelihood and save the lives of their children, if they do not previously adopt the course which a state of desperation would prescribe."

"There has been but one feeling or opinion since the arrival of the publications in question from Madrid, which is, that the island would be irrevocably lost by it to the mother country, and to its inhabitants, who would prefer any extreme to the calamity of sacrificing their fortunes, endangering their lives, and remaining in a state of subordination to the negroes."t

The Ayuntamiento of Havana declared that, if Spain should consent to and confirm the proposition, "It would be productive of a bloody revolution in Cuba." This is a fair specimen of the language employed everywhere throughout the island in protesting against the efforts of England to induce Spain to perpetrate so cruel a wrong upon the people of Cuba.

As has been stated, the correspondence between the two

See "Report on the Slave Trade," published by authority of the British Parliament in 1853; and " Correspondence on the Slave Trade," published by order of the House of Commons, 1841.

"Correspondence on the Slave Trade," etc.