THE

NEW YORK QUARTERLY.

JULY, 1853.

THE CUBAN QUESTION.

MR. SOULE has chosen a difficult task as his share of the honors and responsibilities which fall to the prominent supporters of the new administration. The mission to Madrid was offered to him, it is fair to assume, in accordance with his wishes, and in consequence of a peculiar fitness for the post which he, as well as the cabinet of President Pierce, supposed that he possessed. Peculiar, his qualifications certainly are; but whether their peculiarities constitute fitness, can be more safely decided a year hence than now. The general surprise expressed in this country, as well as in Cuba, Madrid, Paris and London, that a gentleman who had publicly avowed so much sympathy with the revolutionary party in the queen of the Antilles, and such an unqualified desire to see her become a part of this republic, should have been chosen to represent us at the court of Spain at this particular juncture, must be received by Mr. Soulé as an unmistakable warning that his mission cannot be regarded as one of ordinary diplomatic routine. He has assumed his position, knowing all its difficulties, and conscious, it must be, that the eyes of the civilized world will be upon him. There is, consequently, for him no prospect of a mere perfunctory discharge of duty. If he do not do some great thing, he must at least produce some remarkable and beneficial effect, or secure some great advantage, else he will stand humiliated, if not disgraced, before the world. There is no moderate success for him he must succeed brilliantly or fail ingloriously. It is possible that Her Most Christian Majesty may relieve him promptly of his self-imposed responsibility, and send him home

again to advocate the absorption of her fairest possession into the widening area of the Model Republic. Spain, degenerate as she is, has, and dares to show, a certain testiness which is at least a substitute for spirit; and the course which she has taken towards England and France she may certainly follow towards this country with more reason, and, perhaps, with equal safety. Her statesmen, however, cannot fail to see that a refusal to receive Mr. Soulé would give additional acerbity to the ill feeling which exists against Spain in some portions of the United States; that it would necessarily and naturally increase a hundred-fold his desire to see Cuba taken from her hands; and that his peculiar constituents-the citizens of Louisiana, would, in revenge for the supposed insult to their distinguished Senator, be more than ever ready to afford material aid and comfort to those who propose to hasten the 'manifest destiny' of the fair island. Mr. Soulé will evidently be more harmless at Madrid than at New Orleans. Removed from contact with the people, who are wont to seek dangerous excitement from the fire of his eloquence and the pungency of his satire, he will be obliged to curb the flow of his rhetoric within the strait and artificial channels of diplomatic correspondence. The waves of the wide Atlantic will roll between him and the combustible materials which the flash of his eye might light into a consuming blaze of sympathy for Cuba; and the swarming spies who do the bidding of the Queen-Mother will, hour by hour, report to her all that he does, and almost what he thinks. Spain can well afford to suffer a little abatement of dignity to have Mr. Soulé securely shut up in Madrid for four whole years.

Whoever holds the place to which he has been appointed, will find his diplomatic duties increased and complicated by relations which did not exist, or which, at least, were not known to exist when the Spanish Mission was under consideration by the Cabinet at Washington. That very adroit and slippery gentleman, General Santa Anna, has evidently taken advantage of Spain's memory of two invasions, and her apprehensions of another which might prove more successful, and which would certainly be more formidable than its predecessors. Although it would be difficult to overrate Spanish selfconfidence, it is yet hardly credible that Spain and Mexico seriously suppose that an offensive and defensive alliance between them would protect for a week one foot of continental or insular land which this Republic thought it right or politic to appropriate; but the peculiar auspices under which Gen.

Santa Anna recently assumed the government of Mexico, leave little room for doubt that Spain intends to give all possible encouragement to Mexico in any difficulty which may arise between her and her powerful neighbor. The motive is palpable to the dullest touch. Spaniards, and others than Spaniards, are possessed with the idea that the annexation of territory is our passion. Food for this passion Spain thinks that we must have; and hoping that if a quarrel can be created between us and Mexico, our appetite may be whetted into ravenousness, and our longings diverted from Cuba to the land of Montezuma, she, from the instinct of self-preservation which tempted the Russian mother to cast her children to the wolves, seeks to make her rebellious daughter the sacrifice which shall enable her to avoid, or at least to put off, the evil day when Cuba shall fall into our yawning, insatiable jaws. Hence Santa Anna sailed from Havana to Vera Cruz, cheered and lauded by the journals of the former place-journals which exist but to utter the will of the supreme authority of the place, whose every line is closely read by the suspicious eyes of relentless censors, and whose every thought is but an emanation from a knot of officials which nightly assemble in the palace of the Captain-General. Hence the fond expressions of parental interest for Mexico, the elaborate setting forth of the claims of consanguinity, and the detailed enumeration of the ties of common interest between the two countries with which those journals teemed when the thrice honored, thrice defeated Mexican hero sailed, to take once more, and for the last time, the first place in his forgiving country. But are Spanish ministers so ignorant of Shakspere as not to have heard of an appetite which grows by what it feeds on? If our last war with Mexico were a war for conquest, can Spain not see that the acquisition of Texas created the craving which the absorption of New Mexico satisfied but for a time? Judging us as Spain evidently does, can she consistently doubt that if we had failed in obtaining New Mexico, we would be less eager than she believes us to be for her wealthy island; and must she not be forced to the conclusion, that if we annex Mexico itself, we will find in that act both the stimulus and the justification for the speedy appropriation of Cuba? Surely, if we own from Cape Florida all around to Cape Catoche, if the Gulf of Mexico become but an inland sea in our possessions, we have additional reasons for desiring that the key, nay, the very door, lock and all, of that sea, should not be in the hands of another and a jealous power. Spain, by throwing Mexico to us, may

possibly postpone the fate of Cuba for a little while, but she will make it only the more certain.

If we may judge from the recent tone of the prominent journals of England, the soi-disant, ci-devant mistress of the seas has become utterly indifferent to the fate of the island which is the only existing cause of the continuance of the slave trade. The London Times, in an article upon the presentation of a petition from the ladies of Kingston, Jamaica, made the following remarkable admissions, couched in language equally remarkable, though not uncharacteristic. "Here," says the Thunderer, "are two islands which in situation, in fertility, in population, and in the capital invested upon them, present no great inequality. But in their political relations they are widely different. The one has the supreme blessedness to belong to the most powerful, the most enlightened, the most vigorous, the most self-denying State in the world-a State which has the largest mercantile and the largest Royal navy; which undertakes the most readily any enterprise for profit, for duty, or for honor, and at this moment can show half a dozen large fleets to one maintained by any other State; yet that, with such resources, while it is protecting allies, conquering enemies, pursuing pirates, or watching kidnappers in any part of the globe, it is meanwhile surrendering large branches of its revenue. Such is the powerful master to which one of these islands is so fortunate as to owe its allegiance. The other island is almost the last remaining possession of a blighted empire and a dotard goverment. It is tied to a State which possesses neither physical nor mental force; which exhibits every thing in decay -its dynasty, its nobility, its army, its navy, its merchants, its revenue, its credit and its character-every thing broken, withered, corrupt, as the dreary emblems in a picture of Time or of the vanity of human desires. The favored island in this comparison belongs to the great and noble British Empire, and the other to the effete, impotent and inglorious Kingdom of Spain. The former gains by its splendid alliance utter ruin; the latter, by its disgraceful connection, palmy prosperity. The one is Jamaica, the other, Cuba." This article, which was evidently prepared with great care, and as an expression of the incipient tendency of a large and influential portion of the public of England, puts Spain into outlawry, for the secret encouragement which she gives to the slave trade (admitted by the Times to be the cause of the wealth of the island-all that stands between Spain and bankruptcy), and closes in the following ominous terms: "Spain has her choice. She may control Cuba-she may relin

quish Cuba-or she will be dragged down by Cuba into a terrible companionship of her sure calamity. The day will come in Cuba-the day of revolution-the day of annexation, and if Spain does not stand clear by that time, she will suffer the usual fate of an accomplice."

In parenthesis, we may ask what is the meaning of the last clause of this last sentence. Cuba is to be revolutionized; Cuba is to be annexed-to the United States, of course; and Spain, if not clear of the taint of the slave trade, is to share the fate of her colony. Who is to annex Spain for her complicity in the negro traffic? England? So it would seem. Stranger things have happened. When Cuba is annexed to this Republic, as the Times says it must be, Spain will be bankrupt; and what then will be the fate of the British holders of the Spanish bonds? England, "the most powerful, the most enlightened, the most vigorous, the most self-denying State in the world," is nevertheless not famous for "protecting allies, conquering enemies, pursuing pirates or watching kidkappers" for nothing. If she do make herself the grand special constable of the world, it is usually "for a con-sid-e-ra-tion ;" and that she contrives to be pretty well paid for her universal philanthropy, let her boast that the sun never sets upon her dominions testify.

England is just now in a paroxysm of Anti-slavery. Uncle Tom is the black Juggernaut which overrides and crushes all considerations of truth, justice, and consistency. Mrs. Stowe, who has gone to seek honor abroad for having sown discord at home, is the divinity of the hour, the Cynthia that rules the constantly ebbing and flowing tide of British sympathy. England, always the black man's friend, (his mistaken friend,bear witness the hapless island of Jamaica), is now the black man's champion, and foams at the mouth with very rage for fight. Just now it suits her leading journal to countenance the charge that in the American population of Cuba is found the real obstacle to her annexation to this country, because, forsooth, it is certain that when Cuba becomes part and parcel of the United States her slave trade must cease at once and for ever. American planters, American overseers, American capitalists, American ship-owners, captains, crews, merchants, storekeepers and men of business in every degree, says this hightoned authority, form the increasing staple of Cuba, and find in Spain a just medium between authority and no authority; enough of a name to shelter crime, and not enough to repress it. This is but an unscrupulous, unfounded assertion,