ums to political offenders has been
recognized from time immemorial, and, unless some overt act be
committed, there can be no responsibility on the part of such foreign
countries.

Enough perhaps has been said to show that the Cubans had every reason to
once again rise in revolt, but in order that there may be no doubt as to
the justice of their cause, let us recapitulate:

Spain has invariably drawn from the island all that could be squeezed
out of it.

In spite of her protests she has never done anything for Cuba, all her
aim being to replenish her own exhausted treasury and to enrich the
functionaries of the Spanish government.

While Cuba is a producing country, she has been refused the right to
dispose of her produce to other countries except at ruinous rates, in
spite of the fact that Spain herself could not begin to consume all that
Cuba had to offer. The market of the island, by the way, from the very
nature of things, is the United States, and not Spain.

The rules which limit importation have been most rigid. For instance,
American flour cannot enter Cuba free of duty, while it enters as a free
product into Spain.

Spain has governed Cuba with a most arbitrary hand. The island has had
nothing whatever to say as to the management of its own affairs.

The Cubans have purposely been kept in a state of ignorance, the system
of education amounting practically to nothing.

The Spaniards have never kept one promise made, but after each promise
have increased their oppression and tyranny.

In 1894 Senor Sagasta laid before the Cortes a project for reform in
Cuba; but the sense of this project was confused in the extreme; there
was little hope that a reform planned with such little method could meet
with any degree of successful realization. In fact there was little or
no possibility that the abuses under which the island groaned would be
removed.

At last patience ceased to be a virtue. The present rising in Cuba was
begun toward the close of 1894. The leader was Jose Marti, a poet and
orator, who was then in New York. He at the outset, was the very soul of
the revolutionary movement, and he held in his hands the threads of the
conspiracy.

He was a man of charming and captivating personality, strong in his own
convictions and devoted body, heart and soul to the interests of his
country.

He was the son of a Spanish colonel and when quite young was condemned,
for what reason has never been known, to te