The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-01-22
THE sPAHIsH-CUBAH PROBLEM.

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in Cuba, with the presumed intention of join
ing the insurgent army. This is but one
installment. Perhaps it is not the first.
More are doubtless to be received hereafter.
Nor is it to be doubted that arms and NUM-
tons from the United States have found their
way into the insurgent lines, and will con-
tinue to do so in future, as long as the present
struggle shall last. And what the duration OF
this struggle will be is question that at this
moment battles speculation. The rejection of
the overtures contained in the captain gene
rails proclamation of conditional amnesty.
by the bulk of the party of revolution and
Independence, may be assumed. We think, as
moral certainty. There is hardly less
reason to anticipate that the Spanish govern
ment will hold out with bitter and desperate
persistence in the resolution to coerce, by
military duress the submission of the Cubans
to the absolute sovereignty of Spain. Every
soldier that can be spared from the Peninsula
will be assigned to the execution of this ruth
less purpose. But the more Spanish soldiers
that shall be poured into Cuba for crushing
out the pending rebellion, will only the more
|
lion in the Cuban heart. The Spanish
army must conquer swiftly and decisively, or
its mission of subjugating the Cuban insur-
gents and binding the island indissolubly to
| Spain, will result as disastrously as its vehe-
ment efforts few years ago to plant Spanish
dominion in the little territory of Dominica.
| 1t is not to be questioned that with the revo-
lutionists in Cuba the supreme passion is an
aversion to Spanish authority in any form,
and that consequently their supreme object
is to liberate themselves from Spanish author
ity on any terms not positively suicidal. This
anipathy and this aspiration, there is reason
to believe, pervade nine-tenths of the natives
of the island. No other Spanish American
population, after once experiencing such
feelings, has become reconciled to Spanish su-
premacy. No other Spanish American country
having asserted its independence, has been
recovered and held as an integral part of the
Spanish empire. Spanish Americans,
as the government in Spain must
well know, have been terribly tenacious and
incorporating in their hatred of the
mother country when they have attempted to
throw off her rule and she has attempted to
perpetuate it. And we can preceive no
rational grounds on which it may be argued
that the Spanish Americans of Cuba are an
exception to this general fact. The logical
inference from all this is plain. We must
conclude that no sufficient moral basis of
Cuban adhesion to Spain exists, and that the
question OF the actual retention of the island
under Spanish dominion is a problem of
which the final solution is bound to 60 against
the government of the Peninsula, be it repub-
lican or monarchical. 1t is the sheerest in
fatuation, therefore, for Spain to send one
military expedition after another to Cuba,
with the idea that bayonets may open the
eyes of its disaffected people to the beauty
and righteousness of eternal allegiance to the |
mother country. The landing of reinforce |
ments for the insurgents from the United |
States ought to open the eyes of the Spanish
authorities to the futility and improbable |
ness of their task. The fact that the Ameri-
cans who have gone to Cuba in this character
are mostly from the West, is also of momen-
tous significance The interest which the
West now has in the separation of Cuba from
Spain, and in the commercial and industrial
regeneration of all the West India islands, is
extremely analogous to that which it had at
the commencement of the present century, in
the expulsion of European sovereignty and
occupation from the territories about the
mouth of the Mississippi river. The Western
people never would have been content to
leave these regions in the possession of one
of the European powers. Mr.. Jefferson well
understood this feeling when he took meas
ures for the purchase of Louisiana. He knew
that apart from considerations of national
safety or ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, the producers of the
West would insist on free trade to the mouth,
and through the mouth of the great river. If
there are any statesmen in Spain they cannot
fail to see the analogy between that conjunc-
ture and the present, and to be instructed by
it. The Spanish government could not do
wiser thing than to voluntarily relinquish its
obnoxious rule in Cuba and to establish with
the island, and if possible between the island
and the United States, relations of complete
reciprocity. If the present rulers
in Spain are liberal, as they profess to be, they
will admit that they have no right to tax the |
Cubans in peculiar manner for the benefit of
he Spanssh exchequer and the support of
'warms of Spanish officials. Then,
Why should they persist in e1acting from
Cuba an adhesion in which there is no heart
BY means which can only result in the DESC
alton of the island? And, especially, why ,
should they pursue this course when Cuba,
rec from a sufocating coercion, and COM
nercially prosperous, might be made to con-
ribute infinitely more to the legitimate and
substantial interests of Spain than she does :
It present. English statesmen discovered
nd improved a similar secret with regard to
he United States after the American revolu-
ion. The Spanish government, if wise, will
axe heed and profit from this English ex-
nipple before it is too late.
There has been no election of senator yet I
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