At the close of his discourse, which was incontrovertibly a masterpiece, Señor Castelar was surrounded by numerous colleagues, and warmly congratulated. His speech established among other welcome things that the orator-minister was no atheist. His remarks breathed the truest Christianity. Next it was manifest that Spain, Republican as Monarchical, would not, without a bitter struggle, cede one inch of territory over which the national flag floated. Those who were interested in the retention of slavery in the colonies were the holders of slave property, and the deputies who had lived there and shaken the pagoda-tree to some purpose, and who, now that they were back in Spain, had a grateful recollection of what they owed to slavery. Those gentlemen predicted that the immediate emancipation of the negro would be the ruin of the colonies, and would inevitably lead to their loss by the mother-country. The Ministry of King Amadeus originally brought in the measure for the abolition of slavery in Porto Rico, preliminary to the introduction of another to get rid of the system in Cuba. The chief argument against the measure was that it was due to intriguing on the part of American politicians, whose object was to smooth the way to the ultimate incorporation of the Antilles with the United States. The sincerity of American friendship is suspected by Spaniards. They know that Uncle Sam has a longing eye on the islands in the Caribbean Sea; and has already tried to negotiate Spain out of her American possessions. Spain, recollecting this keenly, mistrusts him. And Señor Castelar, whilst acquitting his predecessors in office of having acted at the suggestion of the United States, let it be very plainly understood that this Republic would fight that other and greater and aggrandizing Republic to her last man and last dollar, before she would consent to the abandonment of one square foot of soil. The vested rights of slave-owners would not suffer completely, for the bill embraced a proposition to pay them an indemnity equivalent to eighty per cent. of the value of their live chattels. Forty per cent. of this was to be guaranteed by the mother-country, and forty by the enfranchised colony, so that twenty per cent. was the comparatively small pecuniary sacrifice the inheritors of an odious system would have to make to conscience. Whether the manumission of the bondsman in Cuba, which was bound to come, would hasten the independence of that island--or, what was more likely, its annexation to the United States--I am not competent to pronounce. Ultimately, it is the conviction of the wise and experienced that the Queen of the Antilles must achieve her independence; but it will be less on account of abolition than for reasons geographical, climatic, and military. The ocean rolls between Spain and the sunny cluster of isles, the climate is deadly to the Spanish soldier, and the Spanish army cannot afford a perpetual depletion.