"It is not a cause for wonder, therefore, quite apart from special sources of discontent, that Cuba, which, by position is thrown into contact with progressive peoples, should chafe at her leading strings. Without reference to the corruption and cruelty, arrogance, injustice and repression which are alleged against the mother country, without rhetoric and without animosity, we may fairly say that Spain is losing Cuba, perhaps all her colonies, simply because she has not conformed to the standard of the time in the matter of colonial government. If England had not altered her own methods, her colonies would long since have abandoned her as opportunity offered. The wonder really is that Spain has held hers so long; for Cuba, at least, owing to its exceptional fertility and position, has relatively outstripped its declining mother. "There remains the moral of the story. "If we are not mistaken as to the fundamental causes of Spain's colonial weakness, other colonial powers must take warning also, and the United States in particular, if it yields to the temptations, or, as many say, assumes the divinely-ordered responsibilities, of the situation. For its protective system is a derivative of the mercantile system, as the colonial system was. If it becomes a colonial power, but attempts by heavy duties to limit the foreign trade of its colonies, if it administers those colonies through officials of the spoils type, if it fails to enlarge the local liberties and privileges of its dependencies up to the limit of their receptive powers--if, in short, it holds colonies for its own aggrandizement, instead of their well-being--it will be but repeating the blunders of Spain, and the end will be disaster." Colonel Hill has declared that the heavy burdens under which the business world of Porto Rico has been staggering in the past have been almost inconceivable. Something of this has already been said, but it may be well to give Colonel Hill's views, as he is certainly a most competent judge. The colonel says that in the first place there has been a tax on every ship that comes in and goes out. There has been a heavy tax on all articles of impost and a special tax on all articles not enumerated in the tariff. In addition to that, an additional tax of ten per cent. on the bill was added. Each hackman who plied between the port and the town of Ponce had to pay a tax of eight dollars a month. No person could write a letter to an official without first going to the collector and purchasing a certain kind of official paper, for which he must pay fifty cents to one dollar a sheet. The price was regulated by the rank of the official who had to be written to. The effect of all this was rather to increase the number of complaints from citizens than to increase the revenues of the island.