wned upon the
Cuban mind that what many had scarcely dared to expect or to hope for
was actually achieved. Cuba was independent. For that reason her
political controversies were thereafter to be domestic, and there was
opportunity, even perhaps desirability, of division of the population
into parties.

This indeed was well, in principle. There is nothing more stimulating to
citizenship or more conducive to good government in a republic than a
healthful and amicable division of the citizens into parties, on grounds
of principle. In a monarchy, the opposition party is one of protest and
revolt. In a republic both parties are devoted to the governmental
system, and differ only as to the principles of economics or what not on
which it should be conducted. The lamentable feature of the Cuban case
was that--chiefly, no doubt, because of antecedent conditions, because
of centuries of ruthless repression of all national or civic
aspirations--there had been no development of theories and principles of
government to serve as bases for party division. It could not be said,
for example, that this party was for a protective tariff and that one
was for free trade, that one was for state rights and the other for
national sovereignty. Such distinctions did not exist, and party
divisions without them were therefore on less creditable lines. We have
said that there were no questions of principle. But there was one
supreme question of principle, on which after all the division was made.
But that was a question to which there was only one side for a worthy
political party to take.

At the beginning of Estrada Palma's administration, as we have
indicated, he was not identified with any political party. He was
broad-minded, and conceived himself to be not the leader of a party but
the chief executive of the whole Cuban nation. He selected for his
Cabinet the men whom he thought best fitted for the places, regardless
of their political affiliations. He would probably have been glad to go
through his entire administration as a non-partisan President, occupying
in that respect a position similar to that of a constitutional
sovereign, who traditionally "has no politics." Indeed, he maintained
this independent and impartial attitude until the spring of 1905. Then
he found it impossible to get measures passed by Congress, which he
wanted and which the country needed, unless he affiliated with party
leaders. The result was that he practically ass