aves are brought here by
our cruisers, Spain is bound by treaty to apprentice them out for three
years, so as to teach them how to earn a living, and then to free them.
My dear John Bull, you will be sorry to hear, that despite the activity
of our squadron for the suppression of slavery, that faithless country
which owes a national existence to oceans of British treasure, and the
blood of the finest army the great Wellington ever led, has the
unparalleled audacity to make us slave carriers to Cuba. Yes, thousands
of those who, if honour and truth were to be found in the Government of
Spain, would now be free, are here to be seen pining away their lives in
the galling and accursed chains of slavery, a living reproach to
England, and a black monument of Spanish faith. Yes, John Bull, I repeat
the fact; thousands of negroes are bound here in hopeless fetters, that
were brought here under the British flag. And, that there may be no
doubt of the wilfulness with which the Cuban authorities disregard their
solemn obligations, it is a notorious fact, that in a country where
passports and police abound in every direction, so that a negro cannot
move from his own home, upwards of a hundred were landed in the last
year, 1852, from one vessel, at a place only thirty-five miles from the
Havana, and marched in three days across the island to--where do you
think?--to some Creole's, or to some needy official's estate? no such
thing; but, as if to stamp infamy on Spain, at the highest step of the
ladder, they were marched to the Queen Mother's estate. If this be not
wickedness in high places, what is? The slave trade flourishes
luxuriantly here with the connivance of authority; and what makes the
matter worse is, that the wealth accumulated by this dishonesty and
national perjury is but too generally--and I think too justly--believed
to be the mainspring of that corruption at home for which Spain stands
pre-eminent among the nations of the earth. I will now give you a sketch
of the cruelties which have been enacted here; and, although an old
story, I do not think it is very generally known.

When General O'Donnell obtained the captain-generalship of Cuba, whether
his object was to obtain honours from Spain for quelling an
insurrection, or whether he was deceived, I cannot decide; but an
imaginary insurrection was got up, and a military court was sent in
every direction throughout the island. These courts were to obtain all
information a