il,
1838, like his predecessors and successors made no secret of receiving
seventeen dollars per head,--that is one doubloon,--on every slave
landed. Other officials spent their fees on themselves or hoarded them
for a fortune to be enjoyed on returning home to Spain, but Tacon
expended his in beautifying Havana and its environs. That the home
government secretly fostered the slave trade, notwithstanding the
solemn treaty entered into with Great Britain, no one pretends to
deny.

The coolie system, which was latterly substituted for that of the
importation of Africans, was commenced in 1847, but it was only
slavery under another form, being in point of humanity even more
objectionable. Fully seventy per cent. of the Chinese coolies died
during the eight years they were bound by their contract to serve
their masters! Even after that period was completed, unjust laws and
schemes were adopted to retain their services whenever the planters
desired it; but the truth is, the planters, after a thorough
experience, were generally glad to get rid of the Mongolians. All of
them were decoyed from home under false pretenses and large promises,
and only arrived in Cuba to find themselves virtually slaves. But
there was no help for them. They were thousands of miles from China,
in a land of whose language they knew nothing, and so they were
obliged to submit. If after their term of service expired they
succeeded in reaching Havana, or other Cuban cities, and by becoming
fruit peddlers or engaging in any other occupation tried to earn
sufficient money to carry them back to their native land, they still
were brutally treated by all parties, and were ever at the mercy of
the venal police. On the plantations they received perhaps a little
more consideration than the blacks, simply because they were less
tractable and more dangerous on account of their greater degree of
intelligence and keener sense of the wrong done them. The planter,
always short of laborers, has heretofore been willing to pay the
shipping-agencies four hundred dollars for a newly-arrived coolie,
whose services he thus secured for eight years, the coolies at the
expiration of the period to receive a mere nominal sum, out of which
they have mostly been cheated by some means or other. The whole
business of coolie importation is vile beyond measure, and must have
included in its aggregate over three hundred thousand Chinese. There
are still believed to be some sixty thou