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Spanish Story of the Treaty of Zanjon: Spain--his

We have given the Cuban indictment of Spain on this subject, not in detail but in substance and full force, and that there may be fair play, we present the Spanish side, and are enabled to do it on the highest authority. We have from one in the confidence of the Spanish government and zealous and able in the defense of Spain--his country--this summary:

Article 3d. the only political condition set forth in the treaty says: The Spanish government will promulgate in Cuba the laws in vigor in Porto Rico. Two months less two days after Maceo left Cuba, all the laws were enforced, and since then, following the pace of the liberal and democratic reform in Spain, both Cuba and Porto Rico are to receive liberal laws exactly like those of Spain. The Island is represented by sixty-four senators and deputies, the enfranchisement being given to those paying $25.00 taxes down to those who pay only $5.00, until the Home Rule bill was voted just before the Revolution started.

The Spanish minister recently communicated to his government the desire that there should be placed in convenient form, and translated into English, the test of the various legal enactments showing the true character of the laws relative to Cuba adopted within the years since the treaty of El Zanjon, and the assistant colonial secretary has addressed to His Excellency, Don Enrique Dupuy de Lome, a statement, from which we quote the essential points of the defense with which Spain confronts the public opinion of the world: STATEMENT BY THE ASSISTANT COLONIAL SECRETARY OF SPAIN. Since the conclusion of the peace at El Zanjon the political regime of Cuba has been entirely transformed, such full liberty having been established, and so generous a policy of assimilation having been introduced there, that no other example could certainly be cited of so much having been done by any mother-country for its colonies in so short a space of time. I say this in reference to the laws, and this, surely, has nowhere been more eloquently recognized than in the address of the Junta of the Autonomist party to the people of Cuba at the commencement of the insurrection. The law of July 4th, 1870, declared that children born after that date, of parents who were slaves, those who had already, or should subsequently, reach the age of sixty years, and those who had served, or assisted, the troops during the insurrection in Cuba, were free. They all remained under patronage, the patron having the rights of a guardian until the emancipated person had reached the age of twenty-two years. In the capitulation of El Zanjon, the insurgents stipulated only for the freedom of those slaves who had served in their ranks.

The law of February 13th, 1880, put an end to slavery in the island of Cuba, declaring all, without distincton, to be free. The patronage was to last for five years, and to be discontinued from the expiration of the fifth until the eights year (1888), when it was to be entirely abolished. Two years, however, before that time had expired, the negroes were set at liberty by the decree of October 7th, 1886, which declared the patronate terminated. The last vestige of slavery was thus obliterated. It thus appears that, in this highly important point, the laws enacted for Cuba granted more than had been called for by the capitulation of 1878, and that what was offered by that instrument was carried out before the time therein provided for had expired.

CONSTITUTION.