We must not wonder, however, at the circumstance that this was not universally recognized at first, but that year after year some of the wisest and best of Cuban patriots strove merely for reforms in government under continued and perpetual union with the Spanish crown, and that they even deprecated and opposed all efforts at independence. We must not wonder, even, that so late as the War of Independence some of the foremost Cuban statesmen, who yielded precedence to none in purity of purpose and in sincere devotion to what they regarded as the best interests of the island, were willing and even proud to be known as Autonomists and to essay the impossible task of trying to make an Autonomist government successful. The Cubans of to-day, with vision cleared of the red glare of war and of the mists of misapprehension, doubtless understand what the conditions were at that time and appreciate the motives, however mistaken they proved to me, of the Autonomists. American readers, with less vision and comprehension of Cuban affairs, should equally understand the matter when they are reminded that the Cuban Autonomists were merely following the example of some of the men whom Americans most delight to honor. For precisely the same conditions prevailed, only to a much wider extent, in the Thirteen Colonies at the beginning of the American Revolution, when Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Jay were American Autonomists, inexorably opposed to independence. Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill were fought not for independence but for autonomy under the British Crown and in perpetual union with the British Empire. When the First Continental Congress met in the spring of 1774 there was no word, at least, of independence. On the contrary, according to some of the very foremost members of that historic body, the idea of independence, at least in the Middle and Southern colonies, was "as unpopular as the Stamp Act itself." Not only did that Congress complete its course without saying a word for independence, but it adopted an address to the people of Great Britain declaring that the reports which had got abroad that the Colonies wanted independence were "mere calumnies," and that nothing was desired but equality of rights with their fellow subjects in the British Isles. The Second Colonial Congress met after Lexington and Concord and just before Bunker Hill. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were members of it. But they spoke no word for independence. Instead, Jefferson drafted a declaration, which Congress adopted, to the effect that the Colonies had "not raised armies with designs of separating from Great Britain and establishing independent states"; and in other addresses which the same Congress adopted after the battle of Bunker Hill it was explicitly stated that the Colonists were loyal to the British Crown, that they wished for lasting union with Great Britain, and that they had taken up arms not to