58 Cuba. 



notwithstanding the large sum paid by this country for its suppression, 

 the slave-trade still flourishes and extends in the island of Cuba. Twenty 

 thousand negroes are computed to be annually landed in its various 

 harbours, the advantages of cheap labour being thus secured to the 

 Spanish planter by this evasion of the treaty, and the connivance of the 

 authorities of the island. The most recent returns of the market value 

 of slave labour prove, that the negro who, in Jamaica, is of the value of 

 95/., in the island of Cuba is worth not more than 48Z. 5 and from these 

 views it is apparent that the slave-trade is now carried on with vigour ; 

 that the treaty for its abolition has been virtually violated by the repre- 

 sentatives of the cabinet of Madrid j and that the acceptance of the sum 

 of four hundred thousand pounds by Ferdinand, in 1819, is a gross fraud 

 upon the English government. 



The extent to which piracy is carried on round the shores of Cuba, is 

 another most weighty grievance to the West India possessions of England. 

 For the last ten years, the island of Cuba has had a government of 

 robbers, and an unnavigable sea j numbers of our merchant vessels 

 have been captured, hundreds of our seamen have been murdered, and 

 millions of British property plundered, burnt, or sunk into the sea. 

 Restitution should now be demanded from the cabinet of Madrid for this 

 vast spoliation of British property ; for a systematic absence of all force 

 for the protection of the seas, adjoining the territory of one power, is an 

 injury to another, whose shipping are not to be plundered, to enrich a 

 country degenerated to a den of pirates and felonious slave dealers. 

 Neither individuals nor nations must profit by their own wrong. The 

 pirates of Cuba are the subjects of Spain j and it is consistent with the 

 laws of nations, and the present settlement of Greece is an immediate 

 precedent for it, that a country which no longer can repress piracy and 

 disorder, shall not continue to have an independence injurious to itself and 

 dangerous to the neighbouring nations. For the last ten years, the go- 

 vernment of England has been at the expence of guarding the piratical 

 shores of Cuba : this cost is not to be continued in perpetuity, only that 

 the revenues may be transmitted to Madrid without the expence of go- 

 verning the island j and it is now time that, in justice, humanity, and 

 good policy, this remnant of her disappearing power should fall from the 

 hands of superannuated Spain. Whether by force or purchase the island 

 of Cuba ought now to revert to the government of England, and though 

 some return for its possession would more befit the magnanimity and 

 power of this country, still, at all hazards, the military occupation of 

 Cuba by a superior power, is now indispensable to the security, prosperity, 

 and value, of all the adjoining islands. It has indeed been considered an 

 impolitic omission in the treaty of Paris, that this island was not then 

 secured, in return for the immense debt contracted by the clearance of the 

 troops of France from Madrid, and the restoring of the crown of Spain 

 to its present " beloved" possessor. 



It is erroneously supposed, that the government of the United States 

 watches with a jealous eye the chances for the possession of Cuba. 

 The people of that country are well enlightened upon the subject of 

 colonial dominions j they know that their own territory is now too large j 

 that in their immense possessions in Florida and Louisiana, they possess 

 the future independent sources of all the productions of the torrid zonej 

 that the possession of a single island is not worthy of the expense of 



