and appropriating
their services to themselves. All this relates to the past rather than
the present, since, as we have explained, the relationship of slave
and master is now so nearly at an end as to render such arrangements
inoperative.

There was a law promulgated in 1870,--the outgrowth of the revolution
of 1868, which dethroned Isabella II.,--declaring every slave in Cuba
to be free after reaching the age of sixty, and also freeing the
children of all slaves born subsequent to that year. But that law has
been ignored altogether, and was not permitted even to be announced
officially upon the island. In the first place, few hard worked slaves
survive to the age of sixty; and in the second place, the children
have no one to look after or to enforce their rights. Spain never yet
kept troth with her subjects, or with anybody else, and the passage of
the law referred to was simply a piece of political finesse, designed
for the eye of the European states, and more particularly to soothe
England, which country had lately showed considerable feeling and
restlessness touching the disregard of all treaties between herself
and Spain.

The slaves who still remain upon the plantations appear in all outward
circumstances to be thoughtless and comparatively content; their light
and cheerful nature seems to lift them above the influence of brutal
treatment when it is encountered. That they have been called upon to
suffer much by being overtasked and cruelly punished in the past,
there is no doubt whatever, but it may be safely stated that their
condition has been greatly improved of late. The owners are obliged by
law to instruct the slaves in the Catholic faith, but this has never
been heeded to any extent by the planters, though all the children are
baptized in infancy. The law relative to the treatment of the negroes
also prescribes a certain quantity and quality of food to be regularly
furnished to them, but the masters are generally liberal in this
respect, and exceed the requirements of the law, as their mercenary
interest is obviously in that direction. The masters know by
experience that slaves will not work well unless well fed. With no
education or culture whatever, their intelligence remains at the
lowest ebb. "With plenty of food and sleep," said an owner to us,
"they are as easily managed as any other domestic animals."

Until latterly the slaves have been carefully watched at night, but
nearly all these precautio