An official statement compiled in 1844 lists a few of the taxes, and gives some interesting figures as to the amounts collected. The Cubans were taxed six per cent. of the selling price, on all sales of real estate, or slaves, and on sales at auction and in shop. They were also taxed on Papal Bulls, and there were brokers' taxes, cattle taxes, shopkeepers' taxes, tax on mortgages, tax on donations, tax on cockfighting, taxes on grants of crosses, insignia or use of uniforms; taxes on promissory notes or bills of exchange, taxes on municipal taxes, taxes on the death of all non-insolvent persons, taxes on investments in favor of the clergy; the church did not escape, for there were taxes on the property of the Jesuits. There were also taxes on sales of public lands, taxes on the establishments of auctioneers, and taxes on everything sold, water canal taxes, and customhouse duties on imports and exports and the tonnage of vessels. Cubans were not only taxed on the sale of lands, but of course on the land itself, and there were state and municipal taxes, and they were taxed on their cattle and all animals whether they kept them or sold them. Passports were taxed, and as Cuba had a large transient population this tax brought in a goodly sum. Public offices were privately sold to the highest bidder. There were taxes on the sale of archives to notaries for the recording of deeds. Small fines were being constantly imposed by grafting officials, and the Captain-General's tribunal exacted a special fee, which brought in large sums. Fees were demanded for marriages, both by the church and the state. There was an inheritance tax; there were tolls imposed on bridges; and large amounts were extorted for the nomination to office of captains of districts, city ward commissaries, and watchmen; gambling was licensed; and there were the taxes on sugar, on pastures, on coffee and tobacco, and on minerals exported. The tax on all crops, except sugar, when gathered was ten per cent. There was a tax of $1.25 on every hundred weight of salt. Government documents were required to be written on special paper, furnished by the government at a high price.
Worse than all this were the restrictions placed on personal liberty. No private individual of a hospitable nature was allowed to give an entertainment to his friends, even a small evening gathering, without obtaining a license, for which he paid. If he neglected to do this he was fined, and sometimes the license was declared invalid on some pretext and he was fined anyway.
No Cuban could move from place to place, or go on even a short journey, without obtaining a license. If a man wanted to make an evening call on a friend, he could not do so unless he carried a lantern, and obtained from each watchman whom he passed permission to proceed. If he failed to comply, he was arrested and fined $8. He could not entertain a guest in his house over night, not even a neighbor, without informing the authorities, under penalty of a heavy fine. The household goods of a Cuban could not be moved from one house to another in the same town without the consent of the authorities, and the penalty for failure in this case was a fine.
The cost of a passport, which was necessary before a foreigner could enter any port in Cuba, and the proceeds of which went into the treasury, was $2. The traveller was also obliged to give security for good conduct, and his baggage was thoroughly searched. Particular care was taken to see that he did not have any incendiary literature, and if he had a Bible, which must have been considered a dangerous book, and which, at any rate, came under the ban of both the church and the government, it was promptly separated from his other effects and seized. Unless he desired to remain in the seaport where he entered, he was required to pay twenty-five cents more for a passport permitting him to visit the interior. It seems to have been difficult enough to get into Cuba, but like the proverbial church fair, it was even more expensive to get out, for the privilege cost $7.50.
Some authorities estimate that the taxes of Cuba averaged in 1850 $38 a head, while in the United States, a republic and the nearest neighbor, they amounted to only about $2. But then the people of the United States were free, and were not paying tribute for the privilege of being governed by royalty. The greater part of these taxes were exacted from the Creoles, for the Spaniards made up only about 35,000 of the population and there were estimated to be 520,000 Creoles at this period.
A large number of families came to Cuba from the Spanish colonies of South America and Mexico, which had gained their independence from Spain, and from Florida and Louisiana when they came into the possession of the United States. These families were, of course, all intensely loyal to Spain, and of the arrogant disposition which naturally prevailed among men of such tendencies as led them to prefer the autocracy of Spain to American democracy. In spite of this increase in their number, the native white or Creole population of Cuba outnumbered the Spanish by more than 10 to 1.
In 1850 among the Cubans themselves there were 50 marquises and 30 counts. These men were in the main wealthy planters who had bought their titles from Spain for sums varying between twenty and fifty thousand dollars. The fundamental reason for this expenditure on their part was not wholly for social prestige but rather to enjoy the greater personal freedom accorded to nobles. These latter could never be tried by ordinary courts but only by tribunals, and they could not be arrested for debt.
Those Cubans who were hoping for better days for Cuba were eager that their children should have opportunities not accorded them. They desired to send them to the United States for education, in the hope perhaps that they might imbibe some of the principles of liberty. But this did not find favor with the Spanish authorities, and it was only by swearing that the children were ill, that the climate did not agree with them, and that they were being sent away for their health, that passports could be obtained to get them out of the country.
Many Cubans were persecuted by officials, high and low, falsely accused, condemned without a hearing; shut up in fortresses without adequate food, without the ordinary comforts of life, in solitary confinement, often in dungeons; and frequently their own people were denied knowledge of their whereabouts. They simply dropped out of sight and were gone. No man knew when he opened his eyes in the morning whether that day might be his last as a free human being—free so far as he might be with the thousand and one restrictions imposed upon him. He was not sure that some enemy, unwittingly made, might not inform upon him for some imaginary action of disloyalty, or that he might not be falsely denounced by hired spies. It was then no wonder that those who loved their country, who had self-respect and affection for their families, longed for freedom from Spain, and lived in the hope of emancipation from what was virtual slavery.
Under the Spanish rule the chief officer of government in Cuba was the Captain-General, who after the promulgation of the decree of May 25, 1825, had absolute authority. Even prior to that time, because of the long distance between Cuba and the mother country, the time consumed for information and instructions to travel back and forth, and the fact that Spain was more or less concerned with her own none too quiet domestic affairs, the Captain-General was very powerful.