The United States, whose hands were soon busied by the outbreak of their own Civil War, dropped the Cuban proposal, and the whole question remained in abeyance for some considerable time. Meanwhile matters had reached an unendurable pitch. It was almost impossible for a Cuban to obtain justice, and the Governor and his Spanish satellites continued their systematic methods of bribery and corruption. Yet money was plentiful in the island, where the commercial class had been immensely swelled by numerous American and English fortune-hunters, who had purchased large estates from impoverished Cubans, and had started sugar and tobacco-growing on an improved system in various parts of the island. In 1865, the Cubans, driven to despair by the vexatious treatment of their rulers, addressed a petition to Queen Isabella II., which bore not less than 20,000 signatures, and implored Her Majesty to consider the pitiable condition into which Spain's most splendid possession had fallen, and to send out a Commission to inquire into the abuses which rendered their lives unendurable, and prevented them from earning an honest living for themselves and their children. Not the least of these abuses were capricious and questionable management of the Banca Espanōl, the only bank in the island. In answer to this petition, the Junta created a body of twenty-two Cuban commissioners and twenty-two Spanish, which original number, however, was unjustly increased by the admission of a perfect army of Spanish nobles and officials. The Cuban members, thus left in a minority, were not very hopeful of obtaining much benefit from the Commission. They made a sensible proposal for the gradual diminution of the taxes, especially those connected with the export trade, and submitted a plan for the gradual emancipation of the slaves. One of their principal schemes for diminishing taxation,--by the substitution of a direct tax on the total revenue, instead of the existing vexatious system of indefinite and capricious taxes on the export and import trades,--was rejected, or rather it was turned against their real interests. The Custom House duties were cunningly diminished, and the tax on the total revenue of the island raised from five to ten per cent,--a clear case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, which exasperated the island population beyond measure. The arrangement of the question of the abolition of negro slavery was also eminently unsatisfactory. A decree provided that newly-born slave children should be considered free, and that all slaves over fifty years of age should be immediately emancipated. I have elsewhere pointed out the unfortunate results of this system. The slave trade continued in Cuba up till 1886, and during that time, notwithstanding all the treaties signed between England and Spain, several hundred thousand African negroes are said to have been imported into Cuba, and sold with the connivance of the officials, who levied a