"England never signed such a peace before, nor, I believe, any other power in Europe."
Granville, then, on his deathbed, exclaimed:
"The country never saw so glorious a war or so honorable a peace," and Bute, roused to defend it against some opponents in Parliament, uttered these words significant of the high esteem in which he held himself and whatever services he rendered England as favorite of the king:
"I wish no better inscription on my tomb than that I was its author."
It is needless to say that the effect of this document upon Spain was of quite a different nature. For it practically checked for all time her ambitions for maintaining supremacy in the world her discoverers and explorers had once claimed under her colors. Cuba, of course, rejoiced at the prospect of the restitution of Havana. Lord Albemarle, suffering from the strain of the siege and the climate, as no less from the realization that he would never be able to reconcile the Cubans to a recognition of his authority, had left early in the year 1762 and Sir William Keppel occupied his post. The peace was ratified at Paris on the tenth of February, 1763, and the people began to look forward with impatience to the arrival of a new governor from Madrid and to the debarkation of the British. In spite of the harassing situation which they had endured during the rule of the enemy they had not been idle, but planned many improvements and reforms which they promised themselves to execute as soon as the British domination would end. They had learned, too, to appreciate the advantages of free trade; for during the British occupation no less than nine hundred merchant vessels entered the harbor and not a few cargoes of negroes were landed.
CHAPTER VI
The changes which the island underwent during this time were far-reaching. The British occupation had established a direct contact with the world outside of Spain, which was bound to broaden the narrowly provincial viewpoint of the residents of the colony. For the nobles to whom large tracts of land had been granted in the earlier days of the colony had never permanently resided there but only came over for a short time to occupy their winter residence in Havana and for another brief season to show themselves in all their old-world aristocratic splendor on their haciendas. The great majority of the people, descendants of the adventurers and the poor immigrants of the pioneer period, had acquired the habits of country people so engrossed in their fields, their live stock and the daily labors required to make these possessions profitable, that they had lost any desire to seek the stimulating influence of city life. The cities themselves, Havana not excepted, had a provincial aspect and offered little attraction to the foreign traveler who did not come there exclusively on business. Nevertheless they left a pleasant memory with many a casual visitor. A Frenchman, who spent some time in Havana about the year 1745, set down his impressions, which with other letters and memoirs of travel were edited by Pierre Jean Baptiste Nougaret and published in Paris in 1783 under the title: "Voyages interessans dans differentes Colonies francaises, espagnoles, anglaises, etc." In these reminiscences of Havana some twenty years before the British occupation, he draws a picture of the city, which it is interesting to compare with what other writers have to say of the Havana of 1762. He writes:
HAVANA, FROM CABANAS
"Beautiful for situation" indeed is the Cuban capital, whether it be used as a point from which to view the sea and land, or be itself looked upon from some neighboring or distant height. This view, from the grounds of the great Cabanas fortress, shows the central portion of the city, with the notable public buildings clearly discernible, and nearer at hand the waters of the inner harbor, where occurred in 1898 the memorable and mysterious tragedy of the Maine.