the island, and
against which it was realized there could be no assurance until Cuba was
an independent nation with full power to regulate and control her own
commerce and her own economic system. Even then, as we shall see, for a
time the island was involved in economic distress because of the
unwillingness of certain sordid interests in the United States to
perform the most obvious and indisputable moral duty of that country
toward its neighbor. There are few passages which the friendly historian
must more regret to record in the story of Cuban-American relations than
that of the delay of the American Congress to enter into proper
commercial reciprocity with Cuba as soon as the independence of that
island was established.

* * * * *

We shall see in these pages why it was necessary, from the very
beginning, for Cuba to be entirely freed and divorced from all political
connection with Spain, and why all the various proposals of autonomy
were essentially and inevitably unacceptable. Such proposals were
repeatedly made, by the Spanish government, but they were invariably
either consciously or unconsciously delusive. The story of Spain's
promises to Cuba is a story of broken promises, and of disappointed
hopes. Nor is that to be wondered at by those who take into
consideration the circumstances in which the promises were made. When
the impossible is promised, the promise is doomed to non-fulfilment.
Spain was in an impossible position. In order to pacify Cuba she had to
promise her reforms, autonomy, liberty. But in order to maintain herself
at home she had to repudiate those promises. Their fulfilment in the
West Indies would have been disastrous in the Iberian Peninsula. While
Spain was a reactionary monarchy at home, she could not practice liberal
and progressive democracy in her colonies. Even when her monarchy became
constitutional, and even during the brief periods of her republican
government, the full concession of Cuba's demands would have been
incompatible with her domestic status. There was an irreconcilable
conflict between the European system--even European republicanism--and
the American system. Spain was compelled for the sake of her Peninsular
integrity and tranquillity to adhere to the former, while Cuba would be
and could be contented with nothing short of the latter. Such were the
terms of the problem which arose in the early part of the Nineteenth
Century. Its only pos