f public meeting and the right of free
locomotion. They elected those who governed them, they made their own
laws, and, in fact, enjoyed the blessings of self-government. They were
not under the sway of a captain-general with arbitrary powers, who, at
his will could imprison them, deport them to penal colonies, or order
their execution even without the semblance of a court-martial. They did
not have to pay a permanent army and navy in order that they might be
kept in subjection, nor to feed a swarm of hungry employees yearly sent
over from the metropolis to prey upon the country. They were never
subjected to a stupid and crushing customs tariff which compelled them
to go to home markets for millions of merchandise annually which they
could buy much cheaper elsewhere; they were never compelled to cover a
budget of twenty-six or thirty millions a year without the consent of
the taxpayers and for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the army
and navy of the oppressor, to pay the salaries of thousands of worthless
European employees, the whole interest on a debt not incurred by the
colony, and other expenditures from which the island received no benefit
whatever; for, out of all those millions, only the paltry sum of seven
hundred thousand dollars was apparently applied for works of internal
improvement, and one-half of which invariably went into the pockets of
Spanish employees.

"If the right of the thirteen British colonies to rise in arms in order
to acquire their independence has never been questioned because of the
attempt of the mother country to tax them by a duty upon tea, or by the
Stamp Act, will there be a single citizen in this great republic of the
United States, whether he be a public or private man, who will doubt the
justice, the necessity in which the Cuban people find themselves of
fighting to-day and to-morrow and always, until they shall have
overthrown Spanish oppression and tyranny in their country, and formed
themselves into a free and independent republic?"

Now, honestly, all prejudice aside, this is not a bad brief for the
plaintiff, is it?

There is one more document to which we desire to call your attention.
And that is, a letter written to Professor Starr Jordan, of the Leland
Stanford, Jr., University of San Francisco, by a Havanese gentleman of
undoubted integrity and of Spanish origin.

Professor Jordan declares that this letter seems to show that "the
rebellion is not a mere bandit