EDUCATION AND RELIGION.
Education is woefully backward on the island. In the absence of recent statistics it is estimated that not one-tenth of the children receive lettered education of any kind, and even among the higher classes of society, liberal education is very far from being universally diffused. A few literary and scientific men are to be found both in the higher and middle ranks, and previous to the revolution, the question of public instruction excited some interest among the creole population.
At Havana is the royal university with a rector and thirty professors, and medical and law schools, as well as an institution called the Royal College of Havana. There is a similar establishment at Puerto Principe, in the eastern interior, and both at Havana and Santiago de Cuba there is a college in which the branches of ecclesiastical education are taught, together with the humanities and philosophy. Besides this there are several private schools, but these are not accessible to the masses. The inhabitants can scarcely be said to have any literature, a few daily and weekly journals, under a rigid censorship, supply almost all the taste for letters in the island.
To show how little liberty of opinion the newspapers of Cuba enjoy, we quote a decree issued by General Weyler, formerly Captain-General of the island:
Don Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, Marquis of Tenerife, governor-general, captain-general of the Island of Cuba, and general-in-chief of this army.
Under the authority of the law of public order, dated the 23rd of
April, 1870.
I Order and Command,
1st. No newspaper shall publish any news concerning the war which is not authorized by the staff officers.
2nd. Neither shall be published any telegraphic communications of a political character without the authority given by the secretary of the governor general in Havana, or by the civil officers in the other provinces.
3rd. It is hereby forbidden to publish any editorials, or other articles or illustrations, which may directly or indirectly tend to lessen the prestige of the mother-country, the army, or the authorities, or to exaggerate the forces and the importance of the insurrection, or in any way to favor the latter, or to cause unfounded alarm, or excite the feelings of the people.