The History of Cuba, vol. 3Johnson, Willis Fletcher
History
The History of Cuba, vol. 3
Johnson, Willis Fletcher
Cuba -- Economic conditions; Cuba -- History
"The Peninsulars (natives of Spain) perhaps, who have come to Cuba to
marry our daughters, who have here their children, their affections and
their property, will they disregard the laws of nature to range
themselves on the side of a government which oppresses them as it
oppresses us, and which will neither thank them for the service nor be
able, with all their help, to prevent the triumph of the independence of
Cuba?
"Are not they as intimately bound up with happiness and interest of Cuba
as those blood-natives of her soil, who will never be able to deny the
name of their fathers, and who, in rising up today against the despotism
of the government would wish to count upon their co-operation as the
best guaranty of their new social organization and the strongest proof
of the justice of their cause?
"Have they not fought in the Peninsula itself, for their national
independence, for the support of the same principles for which we, the
sons of Cuba proclaim, and which, being the same for men in all
countries, cannot be admitted in one and rejected in another without
doing treason to nature and to the light of reason, from which they
spring?
"No, no--it cannot be that they should carry submissiveness to the point
of preferring their own ruin, and the spilling of the blood of their
sons and brothers, to be triumph of the holiest cause ever embraced by
man--a cause which aims to promote their own happiness and to protect
their rights and properties. The Peninsulars who adorn and enrich our
soil, and to whom the title of labor gives as high a right as our own to
its preservation, know very well that the sons of Cuba regard them with
personal affection--have never failed to recognize the interest and
reciprocal wants which unite the two--nor have ever held them
responsible for the perversenesses of the few, and for the iniquities of
a government whose infernal policy alone has labored to separate them,
on the tyrant's familiar maxim--to divide and conquer.
"We, who proceed in good faith and with the noble ambition of earning
the applause of the world for the justice of our acts--we surely cannot
aim at the destruction of our brothers, nor at the usurpation of their
properties; and far from meriting that vile calumny which the government
will endeavor to fasten upon us, we do not hesitate to swear in the
sight of God and of man that nothing would better accord with the wishes
of our hearts, or with the glory and happiness of our country, than the
co-operation of the Peninsulars, in the sacred work of liberation.
United with them, we could realize that idea of entire independence
which is a pleasing one to our minds; but if they present themselves in
our way as enemies, we shall not be able to answer for the security of
their persons and properties, nor when adventuring all for the main
object of the liberty of Cuba, shall we be able to renounce any means of
effecting it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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