oslavery and aristocratic party in Cuba is gradually arraigning
itself in more and more open hostility and defiance of the home
government, while it still maintains a political connection with the
Republic in the peninsula; and although usurping and defying the
authority of the home government whenever such usurpation or defiance
tends in the direction of oppression or of the maintenance of abuses,
it is still a power in Madrid, and is recognized by the Government.
Thus an element more dangerous to continued colonial relations between
Cuba and Spain than that which inspired the insurrection at Yara--an
element opposed to granting any relief from misrule and abuse, with
no aspirations after freedom, commanding no sympathies in generous
breasts, aiming to rivet still stronger the shackles of slavery and
oppression--has seized many of the emblems of power in Cuba, and,
under professions of loyalty to the mother country, is exhausting the
resources of the island, and is doing acts which are at variance with
those principles of justice, of liberality, and of right which give
nobility of character to a republic. In the interests of humanity,
of civilization, and of progress, it is to be hoped that this evil
influence may be soon averted.

The steamer _Virginius_ was on the 26th day of September, 1870, duly
registered at the port of New York as a part of the commercial marine
of the United States. On the 4th of October, 1870, having received the
certificate of her register in the usual legal form, she sailed from
the port of New York and has not since been within the territorial
jurisdiction of the United States. On the 31st day of October last,
while sailing under the flag of the United States on the high seas, she
was forcibly seized by the Spanish gunboat _Tornado_, and was carried
into the port of Santiago de Cuba, where fifty-three of her passengers
and crew were inhumanly, and, so far at least as relates to those who
were citizens of the United States, without due process of law, put to
death.

It is a well-established principle, asserted by the United States from
the beginning of their national independence, recognized by Great
Britain and other maritime powers, and stated by the Senate in a
resolution passed unanimously on the 16th of June, 1858, that--

American vessels on the high seas in time of peace, bearing the
American flag, remain under the jurisdiction of the country to which
they belong, and therefor