Unhappily, however, this baneful influence has thus far
succeeded in defeating the efforts of all liberal-minded men in Spain to
abolish slavery in Cuba, and in preventing the promised reform in that
island. The struggle for political supremacy continues there.
The proslavery and aristocratic party in Cuba is gradually arraigning
itself in more and more open hostility and defiance of the home
government, while it still maintains a political connection with the
Republic in the peninsula; and although usurping and defying the
authority of the home government whenever such usurpation or defiance
tends in the direction of oppression or of the maintenance of abuses,
it is still a power in Madrid, and is recognized by the Government.
Thus an element more dangerous to continued colonial relations between
Cuba and Spain than that which inspired the insurrection at Yara--an
element opposed to granting any relief from misrule and abuse, with
no aspirations after freedom, commanding no sympathies in generous
breasts, aiming to rivet still stronger the shackles of slavery and
oppression--has seized many of the emblems of power in Cuba, and,
under professions of loyalty to the mother country, is exhausting the
resources of the island, and is doing acts which are at variance with
those principles of justice, of liberality, and of right which give
nobility of character to a republic.
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