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English Failure in the West Indies: Havana

Here is a lesson in political economy profound as the picturesque in history from the same hand is brilliant; and the sketch of Havana which follows is very striking and true, and has application to the Cuban policy. Havana is a city of palaces, a city of streets and plazas, of colonnades and towers, and churches and monasteries. We English have built in these islands as if we were but passing visitors, wanting only tenements to be occupied for a time. The Spaniards built as they built in Castile; built with the same material, the white limestone that they found in the new world as well as in the old. The palaces of the nobles in Havana, the residence of the governor, the convents, the cathedral, are a reproduction of Burgos or Valladolid, as if from some Aladin's lamp the Castilian city has been taken up and set down again upon the shores of the Caribbean Sea. The buildings are on the old massive model, and however it may be with us and whatever the eventual fate of Cuba, the Spanish race has taken root there, and is visibly destined to remain. They have poured their own people into it. In Cuba alone there are ten times as many Spaniards as there are English and Scotch in all our West Indies together, and Havana is ten times the size of the largest of our West Indian cities.

Froude touched the torment of the Island when he said: "A few years since the Cubans born were on the eve of achieving their independence like their brothers in Mexico and South America. Perhaps they will yet succeed. Spanish, at any rate, they are to the bone and marrow, and Spanish they will continue." Here we strike an error, and the mistakes of this writer are rock-built. The Cuban is not the Spaniard. He is an evolution. He has been taught the value of liberty in a hard school, and when he has the force to accomplish it, he is prepared for enfranchisement and Republican government. (Froude, writing of the Union Club in Havana, and startled by the names of gentlemen there that represented the grand old houses of Spain, this which is an example of accuracy occurs: The house of Columbus ought to be there also, for there is still a Christophe Colon, the direct linear representative of the discoverer, disguised under the title of the Duque de Veragua. A perpetual pension of $20,000 per year was granted to the great Christophe and his heirs for ever as a charge on the Cuban revenue. It has been paid to the family through all changes of dynasty and forms of government and is paid to them still. But the Duque resides in Spain and the present occupation of him, I was informed, is the breeding and raising bulls for the Plaza Toros at Saville.) It is the forced conclusion of this historian that the English did well by Havana when they abandoned it after they captured it in 1762, and he goes on "the Spaniards have done more to Europeanize their islands than we have with ours. They have made Cuba Spanish--Trinidad, Moninica, St. Lucia, Granada, have never been English at all, and Jamaica and Barbadoes are ceasing to be English. Cuba is a second home to the Spaniards, a permanent addition to their soil. We are as birds of passage, temporary residents for transient purposes with no home in our islands at all. Once we thought them worth fighting for, and as long as it was a question of ships and cannon, we made ourselves supreme rulers of the Caribbean Sea; yet the French and Spaniards will probably outlive us there." Then comes the point that the French and Spaniards in the West Indies will probably "Remain as Satellites of the United States." And next we have, page 293, this powerful testimony from one certainly not disposed to flatter us:

The opinion in Cuba was and is, that America is a residuary legatee of all the islands, Spanish and English equally, and that she will be forced to take charge of them in the end, whether she likes it or not. Spain governs unjustly and corruptly; the Cubans will not rest till they are free from her, and if once independent, they will throw themselves on American protection. The most comprehensive and apt testimony of all is this, pages 316 and 317: THE AMERICANS ARE THE FREEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD; BUT IN THEIR FREEDOM THEY HAVE TO OBEY THE FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF THE UNION. AGAIN AND AGAIN IN THE WEST INDIES MR. MOTLEY'S WORDS CAME BACK TO ME: "TO BE TAKEN INTO THE AMERICAN UNION IS TO BE ADOPTED INTO PARTNERSHIP." To belong to a crown colony of the British Empire, as things stand, is no partnership at all. It is to belong to the power which sacrifices, as it has always sacrificed, the interest of its dependencies to its own. The blood runs freely through every vein and artery of the American body corporate. Every single citizen feels his share in the life of his nation. Great Britain leaves her crown colonies to take care of themselves, refuses what they ask, and forces on them what they had rather be without. If I were a West Indian, I should feel that under the stars and stripes I should be safer than I was at present from political experimenting. I should have a market in which to sell my produce where I should be treated as a friend; I should have a power behind me and protecting me, and I should have a future to which I could look forward with confidence. America would restore me a home and life; Great Britain allows me to sink, contenting herself with advising me to be patient. Why should I continue loyal when my loyalty was so contemptuously valued? But I will not believe that it will come to this.

The English historian goes on to declare that the planters of the West Indies ceased to be useful to England, and adds:

We practiced our virtues vicariously at their expense; we had the praise and honor, they had the suffering. They begged that the emancipation might be gradual; our impatience to clear our reputation refused to wait. Their system of cultivation being deranged, they petitioned for protection against the competition of countries where slavery continued. The request was natural, but could not be listened to, because to grant it might raise infinitesimally the cost of the British workman's breakfast. They struggled on, and even when a new rival rose in the beet-root sugar, they refused to be beaten. The European powers, to save their beet-root, went on to support it with a bounty. Against the purse of foreign governments the sturdiest individuals cannot compete. Defeated in a fight which had become unfair, the planters looked and looked in vain to their own government for help. Finding none, they turned to their kindred in the United States; and there, at last, they found a hand held out to them. The Americans were willing, though at a loss of two millions and a half of revenue, to admit the poor West Indians to their own market. But a commercial treaty was necessary; and a treaty could not be made without the sanction of the English government. The English government, on some fine-drawn crotchet, refused to colonies which were weak and helpless, what they would have granted without a word, if demanded by Victoria or New South Wales, whose resentment they feared.

There could not be a more destructive denunciation of the British colonial system or a more admirable presentation of the advantages that we possess. We have room for states, and Cuba is at the gates of the Gulf that is our southern boundary, and belongs, in spite of Spanish monopoly, to our commercial system. No Englishman could speak with higher authority on this subject than James Anthony Froude, and no one has uttered more weighty words for the cause of the annexation of Cuba to the American Union. This is the policy of patriotism.

The following extract, from a message of President John Quincy Adams, notes the state of public interest in Cuba at the time Spain was losing her great colonies on the continent: