urselves enjoy.

Moreover, the manifesto clearly shows that the causes of Cuban uprising
are of no recent date; and that, before the United States rose in its
wrath, it was patient and long-suffering.

Although the Senate debated the questions raised by the manifesto for a
long time, nothing resulted from the deliberations.

Questions of extraordinary moment were arising in our own country, from
which terrible results were to ensue, and for the time being, indeed for
years to come, everything else sank into insignificance.

Meantime, the question of independence was still being agitated in Cuba.

General Jose de la Concha, in anticipation of a rising of the Creole
population threatened to turn the island into an African dependency. He
formed and drilled black troops, armed the native born Spaniards and
disarmed the Cubans. Everything was got in readiness for a desperate
defense. The Cuban junta in New York had enlisted a large body of men
and had made ready for an invasion. Under the circumstances, however,
the attempt was postponed. Pinto and Estrames, Cubans taken with arms in
their hands, were executed, while a hundred others were either condemned
to the galleys or deported. General de la Concha's foresight and
vigilance unquestionably prevented a revolution, and for his services he
was created Marquis of Havana.

Then ensued a period of comparative quiet, but the party of independence
was only awaiting an opportunity to strike.

Long before this, Spain had entered upon the downward path. "A whale
stranded upon the coast of Europe," some one designated her. She had
been accumulating a debt against her, a debt which can never be repaid.

And she has no one to blame for her wretched feeble, exhausted condition
but herself--her own obstinacy, selfishness and perversity.

Truly, Spain has changed but little, and that only in certain outward
aspects, since the time of Torquemada and the Inquisition. She is the
one nation of Europe that civilization does not seem to have reached.

The magnificent legacy left her by her famous son, Christopher Columbus,
has been gradually dissipated; the last beautiful jewel in the crown of
her colonial possessions, the "Pearl of the Antilles" is about to be
wrested from her.

Her case is indeed a pitiable one, and yet sympathy is arrested when we
remember that her reward to Columbus for his magnificent achievements
was to cover his reputation with obloquy and load his person wit