"The slavery question met with political difficulties of an even graver character in the rapid progress made by the ideas of the abolitionists, which inflamed and inspired those foreign nations who had filled their own colonies with slaves. Imprudent exaltation of the republican ideals of France finally led the children of Hayti to rise in a horrible revolution. A race of men that had come to the coasts of America not in royal vessels and clad in steel to plant standards with the sign of Redemption, but locked up in the stench of a closed hold, the body naked and in chains, to irrigate with their sweat and blood the land of slavery, rose in defence of the natural laws, demolished the banner at the sight of which the most powerful nations of Europe had trembled, and conquered the outraged rights of humanity. One should think that the beam of light which radiated through all the sea of the Antilles would have dissuaded the Cubans and the government from promoting African colonization on the island of Cuba; nevertheless a lamentable error, though based upon the best intentions, caused Cuba to invite that evil and Spain filled the island with African slaves." It may seem incongruous that a man of D. Francisco de Arango's liberal ideas should have been instrumental in securing for Cuba from the court at Madrid a privilege which the enlightened humane viewpoint of his time began to consider a disgrace. But as pointed out in a previous chapter, this measure was resorted to by Arango only as a temporary expediency. As soon as the immediate shortage of hands was relieved, he himself recommended the substitution of free white labor for negro slavery. For the enormous influx of negroes as compared with the very minimum increase of white inhabitants began even then to fill with vague apprehensions for the future of Cuba's population those most earnestly concerned with the welfare of the island. To the Spaniards of Florida the great percentage of negroes was repulsive. More than five hundred Floridians, who in 1763 had come to Cuba to escape British rule, returned to their old home in 1784. When after the reign of terror in Santo Domingo French refugees settled in Cuba, they, too, were opponents of the slave traffic and their influence contributed no little towards changing the attitude of the Spaniards towards negro slavery.