does nothing but contribute, by the taxes which it pays, to alleviate the burdens of the peninsular treasury, whereas, in reality, just the contrary is the truth. The nation has, of late, guaranteed the conversion of Spanish debts in Cuba, which took place in 1886 and 1890. Owing to these operations, and to the fact that all taxes which did not have to be met directly by its government have been rigorously eliminated from the budget of Cuba, it was possible to reduce the Cuban budget from forty-six and one-half million dollars, which was its amount at the close of the former war (for the fiscal year of 1878-79) to a little more than twenty-three millions of dollars, as appears from the budget of 1893.

The financial laws have been assimilated, and if the system of taxation has not been entirely assimilated, this is because of the fact that direct taxes are very repugnant to the popular feeling in Cuba, especially the tax on land, which is the basis of the Peninsular budget. It appears, however, that our Cuban brethren have no reason to complain in this respect. The direct tax on rural property is two per cent. in Cuba, whereas in Spain it is seventeen, and even twenty per cent. It is evident that every budget must be based on something; in Cuba, as in all other countries in which the natural conditions are similar, that something must necessarily be the income from customs duties. Notwithstanding this, it may be remarked that in the years when the greatest financial distress prevailed, the Spanish Government never hesitated to sacrifice that income when it was necessary to do so in order to meet the especial need of the principal agricultural product of Cuba. Consequently the Spanish commercial treaty with the United States was concluded, which certainly had not been concluded before, owing to any fault of the Spanish Government. Under that treaty, the principal object of which was to encourage the exportation of Cuban sugar, which found its chief market in the States of the Union, many Spanish industries were sacrificed which have formerly supplied the wants of the people of Cuba. That sacrifice was unhesitatingly made, and now that the treaty is no longer in force, is due to the fact that the new American tariff has stricken sugar from the free list.

Attention may also be called to the fact that the colonial provinces alone enjoy exemption from the blood tax, Cuba never having been obliged to furnish military recruits.

The disqualifications of the Cubans to hold public office is purely a myth. Such disqualifications is found on the text of no law or regula

tion, and in point of fact there is no such exclusion. In order to verify this assertion it would be sufficient to examine the lists of Cuban officers, especially of those employed in the administration of justice and in all branches of instruction. Even if it were desired to make a comparison of political offices, even of those connected with the functions which are discharged in the Peninsula, the proportion would still be shown in which Spaniards in Cuba aspire to both. The fact is that a common fallacy is appealed to in the language habitually used by the enemies of Spain, who call persons "Peninsulars" who were not born in Cuba, but have resided there many years and have all their ties and interests there, and do not call those "Cubans" who were born there and have left the island in order to meet necessities connected, perhaps, with their occupation. This was done in the Senate, when the advocates of the separation of Cuba only were called "Cubans," while those only who refused allegiance to the Spanish mother-country were called patriots.

In conclusion, I will relate a fact which may appear to be a joke, but which, in a certain way, furnished proof of what I have just said. When Rafael Gasset returned from Habana, he came and asked me for some data showing the proportion of Cubans holding office under our Government. I asked him, as a preliminary question, for a definition of what we were to understand by "Cuban" and what by "Peninsular." He immediately admitted that the decision of the whole question was based upon that definition, and I called his attention to the fact that here, in the Ministry of the Colonies, at the present time, there are three high governmental functionaries. One is a representative from Habana, being at the same time a professor in its University, and another, viz., your humble servant, is a Spaniard because he was born in Habana itself. Is the other man a Peninsular, and am I not a Cuban? GUILLERMO.

Assistant Colonial Secretary of Spain.

This is the argument from the Peninsular standpoint, and it is probably made in good faith. But while the Spanish rule in Cuba may seem to be just and equitable in theory, it is oppressive and tyrannical in fact. While the government may have partly carried out the letter of its promises, there has been no effort to fulfill the spirit of the compact in the slighest degree, and the violated pledges of the treaty of Zanjon only add new chapters to the long record of Spanish treachery and deceit.

CHAPTER XVI.

PREPARATIONS FOR ANOTHER REBELLION.

Spain's Policy of Distrust-The Cost of the Ten Years' War-Work of the Cuban Exiles-Revolutionary Clubs in the Western Hemisphere-An Expedition Checked-Heroism of Cuban Women-The Struggle Begun.

Ever since Spain lost her colonies on the American continent the Cubans have striven to gain their independence. The Ten Years War cost the mother country 300,000,000 pesetas and 100,000 men, most of them victims of yellow fever. When slavery was abolished in 1880 fresh disturbances ensued. The majority of slave holders, who received no compensation, joined the party of independence.

Spain, adhering to her old policy of distrust, retained a large army in Cuba and a navy round about her shores, the expenses of which caused the budget to amount to $46,594,000 at a time when two-thirds of the island was nothing but a mass of ruins, and when Cuba was beginning to feel the effects of the competition with other sugar-producing countries.

While the European manufacturers received important bounties those of Cuba had to pay export duties on their sugar, and the importation of all agricultural and industrial implements was subjected to a tariff almost prohibitive.

Two laws were enacted in 1882 to regulate commerce between Cuba and Spain. By the provisions of these laws the import duties on all Spanish products were to be gradually diminished until their importa tion in Cuba became entirely free, while the Cubans had to pay on their imports to Spain duties which practically closed the Spanish market to all their products.

Spanish goods, as a rule, are much inferior to those of English, French or American manufacture, but the Cuban consumer was forced to buy Spanish goods or pay an exorbitant price for those which he would have preferred to buy at a fair price. An instance will suffice to illustrate this: When the present war began in 1895 the duty on a hundred kilogrammes of woolen cashmere was fifteen dollars and forty

seven cents if Spanish, three hundred dollars if foreign. These differential duties opened a reign of prosperity for industry in Spain, where foreign goods were imported or smuggled, to be later sent to Cuba as Spanish.

The injustice of these commercial laws was so evident and so detrimental to the interests of Cuba that in 1894 the Planters' Association, the president of which, the Count de Diana, was a Spaniard, referred to them as "destructive of our public wealth, a source of inextinguishable discontent and the germ of serious dissensions."

The insular budgets could never be covered, and the result was that the public debt was kept on the increase. The expenditures were classed as follows: For army and navy, 36.59 per cent of the budget's total; for the debt, 40.89; for justice and government, 19.77, and for public works, 2.75. No public work of any kind was begun in the seventeen years which intervened between the two wars.

The Cuban Treasury, between 1823 and 1864, sent to Spain $82,165,436 in gold. This money entered the Spanish Treasury as "Colonial surplus," but as a Spanish writer (Zaragoza) says in his book, "Las Insurrecciones de Cuba," it was absurd to speak of a surplus when not even the opening of a bad road was undertaken.

Politically, the condition of the Cubans after the restoration of peace in 1878, was as bad as it had been before. Laws existed which might lead unobserving persons to believe that the Cubans enjoyed every liberty, but as a matter of fact the Cubans were kept under the most unbearable vassalage. The Spaniards in Cuba before this war numbered only 9.30 per cent of the island's population, but, availing themselves of a law which gave to them a majority in the electoral census, they were to return twenty-four of the thirty deputies which the island then sent to the Spanish Cortes.

So restrictive was the electoral law that only 53,000 men were qualified to vote in the entire island, although its population was 1,762,000. In the municipal district of Guines, with a population of 12,500 Cubans and 500 Spaniards, the electoral census 'included 400 Spaniards and thirty-two Cubans. This is one among many similar instances. The Board of Aldermen in Havana, the capital city of the island, has for years been made up entirely of Spaniards, and the same may be said of Cienfuegos and other important cities.

Despite all constitutional provisions the governor-general of the island had the power to deport from the island, without a trial, any

person whose presence there he considered dangerous to the security of the State. The island was at peace when Cepeda, Lopez de Brinas and Marquez Sterling, all journalists, were deported. The liberty of the press was and still is a myth. El Pais, the Autonomist organ, was criminally prosecuted in 1889 because it denounced the appointment of one of the sons of the president of the Havana Court of Appeals to a place which he could not lawfully hold.

What liberty of association the Cubans enjoyed may be judged from the fact that a delegate of the government had to be present at their meetings, with power to dissolve them whenever he saw fit to do so.

No Cuban was able to obtain a place in the administration unless he was rich enough to go to Madrid and there become acquainted with some influential politician. Even so, Cubans seldom succeeded in being appointed to places of importance.

The Cuban exiles in Key West, New York and other cities in the United States, and in Costa Rica, Honduras, Santo Domingo and other parts of Spanish America, had been planning a new uprising for several years. The desire of the Cubans for national independence was quickened by what they suffered from Spain's misgovernment. For two or three years the exiles in the United States and Spanish American countries, veterans of the war of 1868-78, and younger champions of free Cuba, organized clubs, collected a war fund, purchased munitions of war and laid plans with their compatriots in Cuba for a new struggle for independence. There were 140 revolutionary clubs in North and South America, Cuba and other West India islands, affiliated under the name of the revolutionary party, ready to support an uprising with financial and moral aid. Cuban workingmen in the United States promised to contribute a tenth of their earnings, or more if necessary. There were firearms on the island that had remained concealed since the former war, some had been bought from corrupt custodians of the gov ernment arsenals, who, finding it impossible to get pay due them from Spain, took this method of securing what was rightfully theirs.

An Expedition Checked.

An expedition that planned to sail in the yacht Lagonda from Fernandina, Fla., on January 14, 1895, was broken up by the United States authorities. General Antonio Maceo, its leader, with José Marti, the political organizer of the new government, went to Santo Domingo, where they could confer with the revolutionist leaders living in Cuba.