Spain was now thoroughly alive to the danger which threatened her future retention of Cuba, and in the face of an emergency she vacillated. Her high officials began to wonder if after all their policy of extreme oppression and suppression had not been in a measure the wrong one to pursue with the Cubans. Roncali, who had been so pleasing to the Peninsulars, or Spanish party in Cuba, and so unpopular with the patriots, was recalled and Don José Gutierrez de la Concha was dispatched to take his place as Captain-General. He took over the affairs of the island on November 10, 1850. Concha was as unwelcome to the Peninsulars as his predecessor had been to their liking. He was a man who had at least some regard for justice, and who, if given a free hand, might have governed Cuba with a degree of wisdom and fairness. He was not a believer in liberty for the Cubans, but at least he had some conception of what constituted equity. He publicly stated his ideal of his office, as "a government of justice" and might have worked out something like a solution of Spain's problems in Cuba, unless, as we think it fair to believe, it was now much too late to quell the revolutionary spirit which had grown to such great proportions; with "a government of force," no matter what its purpose, the Cubans were all too familiar, and they had plainly shown how much they hated it and despised its administrators. RAMON PINTO An early martyr to the cause of Cuban freedom, Ramon Pinto, was born in Cataluna, Spain, in 1802, and engaged in the revolution of 1820-23 in that country. Then he fled to Cuba and became a brilliant writer in behalf of philanthropic works. In 1853 he became director of the Havana Lyceum, and later was a close friend and adviser of Captain-General Concha. In 1855 he was charged with being engaged in a revolutionary conspiracy, was convicted on dubious testimony, and died on the scaffold in March of that year.