It is the focus and
epitome of Spanish dominion in those seas, and I was forced to conclude
that it was well for Cuba that the English attempts to take possession
of it had failed. Be the faults of their administration as heavy as they
are alleged to be, the Spaniards have done more to Europeanise their
islands than we have done with ours. They have made Cuba
Spanish--Trinidad, Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada have never been English
at all, and Jamaica and Barbadoes are ceasing to be English. Cuba is a
second home to the Spaniards, a permanent addition to their soil. We are
as birds of passage, temporary residents for transient purposes, with no
home in our islands at all. Once we thought them worth fighting for, and
as long as it was a question of ships and cannon we made ourselves
supreme rulers of the Caribbean Sea; yet the French and Spaniards will
probably outlive us there. They will remain perhaps as satellites of the
United States, or in some other confederacy, or in recovered strength of
their own; we, in a generation or two, if the causes now in operation
continue to work as they are now working, shall have disappeared from
the scene. In Cuba there is a great Spanish population; Martinique and
Guadaloupe are parts of France; to us it seems a matter of indifference
whether we keep our islands or abandon them, and we leave the remnants
of our once precious settlements to float or drown as they can.
Australia and Canada take care of themselves; we expect our West Indies
to do the same, careless of the difference of circumstance. We no longer
talk of cutting our colonies adrift; the tone of public opinion is
changed, and no one dares to advocate openly the desertion of the least
important of them. But the neglect and indifference continue. We will
not govern them effectively ourselves: our policy, so far as we have any
policy, is to extend among them the principles of self-government, and
self-government can only precipitate our extinction there as completely
as we know that it would do in India if we were wild enough to venture
the plunge. There is no enchantment in self-government which will make
people love each other when they are indifferent or estranged. It can
only force them into sharper collision.

The opinion in Cuba was, and is, that America is the residuary legatee
of all the islands, Spanish and English equally, and that she will be
forced to take charge of them in the end whether she likes it or not.
Spa