In connection with his management of the police force, the whole attitude of justice was changed. No person was presumed innocent until his guilt was proved, but on the contrary his guilt was presumed unless he could beyond the shadow of a doubt prove his innocence; and if he had been unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of one of the legion of sycophants from the court of Spain who hung around the palace of the Captain-General, seeking their own aggrandizement, his chances of having an opportunity to prove himself innocent were very small. Tacon encouraged rather than discouraged his subordinates in acts of injustice, and did not care to what lengths they went if they kept the people quiet. He roared at his officers, and demanded that they be vigilant against his enemies, and they were thoroughly cowed by him. To satisfy him, they invented accusations and thrust just men into prison, or had them condemned to death. A curious result of this regime, and one which shows how some good will often work out of the basest evils, was that thieves and banditti were much less active than under any other Captain-General. The long arm of Tacon reached out to subdue them, to fall upon the guilty as well as the innocent. Tacon is said to have stated his own position in these words: "I am here, not to promote the interests of the people of Cuba, but to serve my master, the king." The press was muzzled, and the local ayuntamientos were deprived of their rights, and became merely the means for the collection and distribution of the funds of the municipalities. The prisons were overcrowded with Tacon's victims, and it became necessary to lodge some of the political prisoners in the dungeons of castles. Nearly 600 people, against whom there was no formal accusation, and about whom no treason could be proved, were lodged in cells and dungeons. No private citizen was safe, and no one had any personal liberty. In spite of the lack of a free press, pamphlets denouncing the rule of Tacon were constantly being written, printed and circulated. One, entitled "_Cuba y su Gobierno,_" contained the following assertions: "With the political passions of Spaniards and Cubans excited; the island reduced from an integral part of the monarchy to the conditions of a colony, and with no other political code than the royal order, conferring unlimited power upon the chief authority; the country bowed down under the weighty tyranny of military commissions established in the capitals of the eastern and western departments; with the prisons filled with distinguished patriots; deprived of representation in the Cortes; the ayuntamientos prohibited the right of petition; the press forbidden to enunciate the state of public opinions; closed the administration of General Don Miguel Tacon in the island of Cuba, the most calamitous, beyond a question, that this country has suffered since its discovery by the Spaniards."