Such collections of wild Indians or negroes are called Palenques, and the men composing it are known as Apalencados. When more than seven are congregated, it is a Palenque. The pursuit and suppression of these is under the superintendence of an official, appointed for the purpose, and of a tribunal called a consulate.
"If the expedition be considered one of extreme danger, special rates of reward are offered. In that case, extirpation is probably determined on; but such cases have rarely happened.... The great Palenque of the Cristal remains as much a mystery as ever; and some even doubt if the Spanish Government does not leave it purposely as a kind of safety valve for the discontented, for no expedition of importance enough to reduce it has ever been undertaken, although small parties are annually formed in Baracoa, who hover about it and capture a great many negroes. Common report says that the settlement is high up on an elevated plateau, only approachable by one pass, which is fortified by overhanging rocks, kept ready to hurl on the invaders, and strictly guarded by wary sentinels; and, that on this plateau, whose inhabitants are said to amount to many hundreds, grain, tobacco, &c. are grown sufficient for their wants. It is further hinted that some whites have more dealings with the Apalencados than they would wish generally known, and supply them with clothes and necessaries unattainable in the Palenque."
Spaniards are generally admitted to be much kinder slave-masters than most Americans. Were we to give implicit credence to the Countess Merlin, which her enthusiasm for her own countrymen and womanly partisanship prevent our doing, we must believe Havana the very paradise of slaves. "The humanity of the generality of the laws and regulations of the Spaniards in the particular of slavery," says Mr Taylor, "contrast favourably with that of some of the States of the American Union." M. Marmier considers the houses of the Havanese to be "the El Dorado of slaves, the plantations their purgatory." But all three authorities agree in preferring the condition of the slaves to that of the emancipados—slaves captured by our cruisers and liberated in the Havana, or confiscated by the Cuban authorities in some rare moment of zeal and good faith. These are hired out to taskmasters with a view of their being taught some trade, which they very seldom manage to learn; and, meanwhile, they drag on in bondage from year to year, often worse treated than slaves, because, as Mr Taylor says, the emancipado belongs to nobody, whilst the slave has an owner who is interested, to a certain extent, in not destroying his animal. It is the free black, in short, in these cases, who gets least victuals, hardest work, and most whip. Mr Taylor is rather good upon this head, and quotes with considerable effect the report of the Sugar and Coffee Planting Committee, printed by order of the House of Commons, and of which he received a copy in Ceylon, just as he was writing his book. The document, he says, singularly confirmed the impressions he had received five to eight years previously, during his residence in Cuba, as to the shameful manner in which the treaties respecting slavery are evaded in that colony. It shows how the emancipados are virtually sold (hired out for terms of years) in an underhand manner, for the profit of the Spanish Government and officials; how his Excellency the captain-general supplied the Gas Company, of which the chaste and tender-hearted Christina is the chief shareholder, with dark-complexioned lamp-lighters at five gold ounces a-head; how Mrs O'Donnell, (now Countess of Lucena) lady of the captain-general of that name, procured herself a snug little income by the labour of four hundred emancipados, transferred to the paternal care of the Marquis de las Delicias, chief judge, of the mixed court(!) and one of the greatest slave-holders in Cuba—all these statements being given upon the undeniable authority of a letter from the British consul-general Crawford, read by the chairman of the Committee above referred to. And there would be no difficulty in producing equally reliable authority for a host of similar iniquities, incredible to persons unacquainted with the atrocious immorality of Spanish colonial administration, with the insatiable greed of certain high personages in Spain, and with the immense fortunes amassed by Cuban captains-general. "It is said," says Consul-general Crawford, as quoted by Mr Taylor, "that upwards of five thousand of those unfortunate wretches (the emancipados) have been resold at rates of from five to nine ounces, by which upwards of six hundred thousand dollars have been made in the government-house, one-sixth of which was divided amongst the underlings, from the colonial secretary downwards." "I heard the other day," says Mr Taylor, "of a grand new ingenio having been set up by Queen Christina, with every latest improvement; behold the secret!" He makes bold to believe that not a few of the five thousand "unfortunate wretches," spoken of by Mr Crawford, might be found doing duty in the queen-mother's plantation and sugar-mill. A very probable hypothesis. There can be no doubt, however, that the means by which the estate is worked, and the gas-lamps lighted, would bear investigation quite as well as the mode of acquisition of the funds invested in them by the enormously wealthy widow of the Well-beloved Ferdinand.
Those recent visitors to Cuba who have written of what they there saw, have in few instances done more than glance at the subject. They have either treated it superficially, like M. Marmier, who, in his love of locomotion and eagerness to get afloat again, dismisses the Pearl of the Antilles in three or four hasty chapters; or, like Mr Taylor, their opportunities of investigation have been limited to a small portion of the island. Mr Madden's little volume is of a special and statistical class; and, as far as it goes, we think well of it, notwithstanding the attack made upon it by Mr Taylor, who is shocked at the faulty spelling of Spanish words and names, and who laughs at Mr Madden for deprecating the annexation of Cuba to the States, which he (Mr Taylor) inclines to advocate. Madame de Merlin's work is much more copious and comprehensive than any of the three above named; but if her sketches of Havanese society and manners are pleasing and characteristic, her descriptions of scenery vivid, and her retrospective historical chapters careful and scholarly, on the other hand she is frequently biassed, when touching on matters of greater practical importance, by the joint prejudices of a Frenchwoman and of a Spanish Creole; whilst her sex necessarily precluded her from acquaintance with various phases of Spanish colonial life, and from exploring those wilder districts, an account of which is essential to the completeness of a work on Cuba professing thoroughly to describe the island and its motley population. For such a work there is abundant room; and of such a one, in this century of intelligent and enterprising travellers, we confidently hope before long to welcome the appearance.
ONWARD TENDENCIES.
TO AUGUSTUS REGINALD DUNSHUNNER, ESQ. OF ST MIRRENS.
My Dear Dunshunner,—Is it too great a liberty to inquire into the nature of your present avocations, or to ask if you are occupied with any magnificent scheme to take the public mind by storm? You have of late maintained so mysterious and obstinate a silence, that your friends are becoming anxious regarding you. Like Achilles, son of Peleus, you seem to be sulking in your tent, whilst all the rest of the Greeks are abroad in the clear sunlight, making head against the Trojan army, and skirmishing in the front of their ships. We miss you, and the public miss you. Your red right arm was wont to be seen far in front of the battle fray, and, at the moment when the political strife is hottest, we cannot afford to lose the countenance of our bravest champion. I hope there is no Briseïs in the case? If so, tell us which of the Free-Traders has wronged you, and the damsel shall be immediately restored, with a corresponding recompense of plunder.
The fact is, Dunshunner, that we are in a devil of a scrape. Matters have not turned out exactly as we anticipated; and, although we are endeavouring to maintain the attitude of perfect confidence, I need not disguise from you my conviction that Free Trade has proved an utter failure. Of course you will keep this to yourself. We cannot venture to let it be publicly known that we have lost faith in our own nostrums; and we are doing all we can, by means of mitigating the tenor of the trade circulars, to keep the great body of the manufacturers, who of late have shown certain symptoms of revolt, at least neutral and reasonably quiet. Our friend Skinflint of the Importationist is fighting a most praiseworthy battle, and every one must admire the pluck which he has exhibited under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. He has had not only to defend the general policy of Free Trade, but to maintain that his own predictions have been fulfilled to the very letter—a task which most men would have considered rather arduous, seeing that figures are entirely against him, and that all the facts which have occurred are directly in the teeth of his prophecies. But Skinflint is an invaluable fellow to lead a forlorn-hope. He can prove to you that an unfulfilled prophecy is quite as good as one which has been accomplished, and he is truly superb upon the subject of the natural limits of capital. Political economy, as you know, has long been my favourite study; but I fairly confess to you that, with all my reading and acquired knowledge, I cannot cope with Skinflint. He has gone so deep into the science—he has dived so profoundly not only through the water but the mud, that to follow him is absolutely impossible; and—to pursue the metaphor—you can only ascertain the whereabouts of this unrivalled professor of the art of sinking, by the dirt which ascends to the surface, and the rising of the fetid bubbles. At present he has as much work on his hands as might stagger the stoutest Stagyrite. The farmers, the millers, the sugar-refiners, the shipowners—yea, the very delegates of the working-men—all are at him! You may conceive what a breadth of buckler and how many folds of brass are necessary to shelter him against such a multitude of weapons; yet still Skinflint combats on. I wonder if he is descended from the Berserkars, who, in consequence of abstaining from ablutions, succeeded at length in rendering their hides invulnerable?
The farmers—poor devils!—are entirely up the spout. I will admit that I am sorry for that; but my sorrow arises from no maudlin compassion for their misfortunes. You are aware that I never had any sympathy with things bucolic. I always considered the towns as the proper habitations for mankind, and have maintained the opinion that the sooner we could get rid of the country the better. What man of common sense cares one farthing for cows, or buttercups, or sheep? Are we in the nineteenth century to pin our faith to the Georgics, or to babble in senile imbecility about green fields? What care I about purling brooks? They may be useful for a dye-work, or as the means of motive power, but otherwise they are entirely superfluous; and we may thank those idiots, the poets—who, by the way, are perfectly useless, for not one of them pays Income Tax—for having created a false impression about them. I cordially agreed with Cobden, that the sooner we could lay Manchester side by side with the valley of the Mississippi, the better; and, had it not been for the obtuseness of those pig-headed scoundrels, the Yankees, who, forsooth, have got a crotchet in their heads about maintaining their own miserable industry, the job would have been done long ago. Had Jonathan acted by us fairly, as he was in honour bound to do—had he demolished his mills, blown out his furnaces, shut up his mines, and passed an Act of Congress to inflict the penalty of death upon any presumptuous loafer who should attempt to manufacture a single article in the United States, my life upon it that at the present moment we should have been driving a roaring trade! But the infatuated blockhead wont have our goods, and is actually heightening his tariffs to restrict their admission still further! The German ninny-hammers and pragmatical Spaniards are doing the same thing; and, in consequence, our whole anticipations have been violently frustrated. Perhaps you see now why I am sorry for the farmers. My regret is, that their power of purchase has decreased—that they can't buy from us as formerly—and that, in short, the home market is going to the mischief. Personally, I am connected with an exporting house; and yet I must acknowledge candidly that business is anything but brisk. We have overdone the thing in trying to get up an enormous increase of exportations; and the consequence is, that we have caused a glut in many of the foreign markets. It is not impossible that, before a healthy demand is restored, new competitors may step in, and our grand staple of calico, upon which the prosperity of Britain entirely depends, go down to a further discount. These are gloomy anticipations, but I cannot quite banish them from my mind. I look forward with considerable apprehension to the time when we shall fairly have eaten up the farmers. Of course, when that arrives, we must look out for another class to devour; and, according to my view, the Fundholder is the next in order. He will make a hideous row when he finds himself marked out for general mastication, but no doubt we shall, somehow or other, contrive to stifle his cries. His fate is perfectly natural. In all cases of shipwreck, when the supplies of provisions are exhausted, the fattest individual of the crew is selected for the sustenance of the rest. It would be absurd to pitch upon a lean victim; for the amount of suffering is the same in either case, and the economical principle is to secure the largest amount of supply. Of course he must be dealt with gently. We have the high authority of Seneca for supposing that gradual phlebotomy is an easy manner of death; and we shall not put an end to him in a hurry. He is unquestionably a full-blooded animal; and, when tapped, will yield as readily as a barrel of October.
All this, however, is mere anticipation; and doubtless you have already in your own mind maturely considered our prospects. What presses upon us most immediately, is the chance of a speedy dissolution of Parliament, and a new general election. I strongly suspect that the Whigs cannot hope to remain in office long. With all my regard for that party, I must admit that they are a shocking bad set, in so far as business is concerned, and their exclusiveness is really quite insufferable. Had they reconstructed the Cabinet upon a liberal footing, by taking in half-a-dozen of us original Free-Traders, there might have been no occasion for any dissolution until the expiry of the seven years. Our demands were not extravagant. Cobden would have done the business of the War-Office in a highly creditable manner. Bright would have been too happy to go out as Governor-General of India, and look after the growth of cotton. Joseph Hume is at least as fitted for the situation of Chancellor of the Exchequer as Sir Charles Wood; or if Joseph is rather too ancient, why not our undaunted M'Gregor? He is the only man alive who can improvise a budget at a quarter of an hour's notice. I myself should have been happy to have served in a subordinate capacity. Williams, Walmsley, or Kershaw, would gladly have relieved Earl Grey from the trouble of looking after the colonies; and I really think that, with such an infusion of new talent, the Government might have gone on swimmingly. Of course, we should have put an end at once to that ridiculous Protestant howl about Papal aggression, which is directly opposed to the spirit of Free Trade, and to the liberal tendencies of the age. Black cattle are admitted duty free; and I can see no reason why a cardinal should be considered contraband, merely on account of a slight peculiarity in the colour of his legs. Let him call himself anything he pleases—what need we care? Protestantism, my dear Dunshunner, is about the only obstacle in the way of our becoming perfect cosmopolitans. Why should we, of all people on the earth, affect eccentric distinctions? Luther was a sad fool. If he had played his cards properly, he might have been a bishop or a cardinal, or anything else he chose, and we should have been spared the trouble of this hubbub about a matter which seems to me of no earthly consequence. But our friend Lord John is, as you know, as obstinate as a whole drove of pigs, and will always take his own way. And a very nice mess of it he has made this time, to be sure!