History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics: Being a Political, Historical, and Statistical Account of the Island, from its First Discovery to the Present TimeBallou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
History
History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics: Being a Political, Historical, and Statistical Account of the Island, from its First Discovery to the Present Time
Ballou, Maturin M. (Maturin Murray)
Cuba -- Description and travel; Cuba -- History
Present condition of Cuba--Secret treaty with France and
England--British plan for the Africanization of the island--Sale of
Cuba--Measures of General Pezuela--Registration of
slaves--Intermarriage of blacks and whites--Contradictory
proclamations--Spanish duplicity--A Creole's view of the crisis and
the prospect.
Cuba is at present politically in a critical and alarming condition, and
the most intelligent natives and resident foreigners live in constant
dread of a convulsion more terrific and sanguinary than that which
darkened the annals of St. Domingo. Those best informed of the temper,
designs and position of Spain, believe in the existence of a secret
treaty between that country, France and England, by which the two latter
powers guarantee to Spain her perpetual possession of the island, on
condition of her carrying out the favorite abolition schemes of the
British government, and Africanizing the island. Spain, it is supposed,
unable to stand alone, and compelled to elect between the loss of her
colony and subserviency to her British ally, has chosen of the two evils
that which wounds her pride the least, and is best calculated to secure
the interests of monarchical Europe. All the recent measures of the
Captain-general Pezuela are calculated to produce the conviction that
the Africanization of Cuba has been resolved upon; and, if his alarming
proclamation of the third of May has been somewhat modified by
subsequent proclamations and official declarations, it is only because
the Spanish government lacks the boldness to unmask all its schemes,
while the Eastern war prevents France and Great Britain from sending
large armaments to Cuba to support it; and because the national vessels
and troops destined to swell the government forces in the island have
not all arrived. But for the existence of the war in the East, the
manifestoes of the captain-general would have been much more explicit.
As it is, they are sufficiently bold and menacing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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