The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1898-10-26
@attbmam & Journal.
ARTHUR ROPES. General Editor.
The Cuban Debt.

The recent discussions of the peace
commissioners at Paris, according to
the dispatches from the French capital,
have turned on the question of the
assumption of the Cuban debt by the
United States. The American commits
sioners decline utterly to consider the
Cuban debt question. The United
States does not propose to annex Cuba,
or to accept the sovereignty of the
island. 81 that the argument OF the
Spanish commissioners that national
debt goes with the sovereignty does
not apply in this case, even if the gen.
eral proposition cited by the Spaniards
were conceded. But what is the Cuban
debt aud why, on any grounds what
ev should the United States or the
Cuban republic that may be erected on
the ruins of Spanish sovereignty, as
sumo the alleged Cuban debt? AS to
what the Cuban debt is the New York
Tribune says:
Strictly speaking, Cuba has no debt
That is to say, no debt has been contracted
by the Cuban people for their own benefit.
Many years ago the Spanish government,
finding an item in its accounts which 1t
could not conveniently dispose OF in any
other way, arbitrarily charged it against
Cuba, and thus created Cuban debt.
That debt has since been augmented by
miscellaneous additions, chiefly Of military
expenditures. 1t is creditably stated that
the costs of ars in Africa and the Philip
pines have been charged against Cuba.
Certainly the cost Of suppressing the vari
Gus Cuban rebelions has, and so it is to be
presumed, have been the costs of wsging
the last war against the insurgents and of
the disastrous war with this country Last
year the amount of the debt thus created
was over $3.50, 900, 900. At the present time
it is probably not far from $500 900, 900. 1t
represents chiefly the cost Of keeping Cuba
in subsection to Spain. Practically none of
it represents benefits conferred upon Cuba
and now enjoyed by that island. 1t is
therefore Cuban debt in name only. In
fact, it is a Spanish debt, contracted by
Spain for her own benefit.
Had this debt been created in max
ing harbor improvements, in build
ing railways or constructing good high
ways in Cuba, or in other forms of in
ternal improvement or development of
Cuban resources, there might be reas-
on and justice in the proposition that
this debt should pass with the sover-
eighty of the island. But in view of
the we'll known facts of the creation
and the piling up of this alleged debt,
neither "Cuba Libre" nor the United
States can be under any moral or legal
obligations to relieve Spain of this bur-
den-no more than to recoup her for
the fleet Dewey sent to the bottom of
Manila bay or the ships of Cerveras
squadron that Schley and his compat-
riots riddled with shot and shell and
pushed on to the rocks of the southern
Cuban coast. To assume this debt is
to pay back to Spain what it has cost
her to enslave, ruin and depopulate
Cuba, fight the Philippine insurgents
and mal-administer her affairs in gen.
eral. The principle of international
law that applies in the case is thus
stated by a recognized authority:
"Where despotcal government has
contracted debts against a nation at
tempting to recover its liberties, obliga-
tions entered into to subjugate the
people must be regarded as per-
tanning to the government alone, and
not as resting upon the people," This
is good reasoning and ought to be good
law. 1t places the financial burden of
Spain for her offenses against the rights
of men where it belongs, on the
shoulders of the great criminal herself.
Spain cannot seriously expect to be re-
leved of the consequences of her own
folly. Her appeal for help and SYM
patty is sheer bluff. The stand of the
American commissioners is we'll taken.
The command of the American people
is, Stick!