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The Cause of Cuba

Cuba is Governed by Spain for Spain--Cubans are Taxed to Protect Spain--Impolicy Prepared for Revolution--Rebellion Forced by Misgovernment--Public Papers as Testimony--A Ruler of Spain Polite to General Grant About Cuban Independence.

STRIPPED of detail, the cause of Cuba is that the government is not in the hands of the Cubans, and the powers of the authorities are not directed to promote the interests of the people who are identified with the Island. The Cubans are a secondary consideration all the time--the Spaniards the first. The present race of Cubans have no more rights a Spaniard is bound to respect, than had those naked children found four centuries ago among the flowers, living on sweet potatoes and the fruit that covered the trees and the fish that glittered in the streams almost as brilliantly as the birds whose plumage flashed in the foliage, and in the masses of radiant bloom that overhung the rivers and spread over the valleys and adorned the slopes of the mountains to their peaks. It did not enter into the spirit of the Spaniards then, that Cuba was for the Cubans, and it does not now. They have never thought of it from that day to this.