ssured, the
victim outbids the rogues, and exemplary punishment follows!

Flour of a good commercial quality sells at present in Boston for six
dollars per barrel. Why should it cost fourteen dollars in Havana and
other ports of Cuba? Because Spain demands a tax of one hundred per
cent. to be paid into the royal treasury upon this prime necessity of
life. This one example is sufficient to illustrate her policy, which
is to extort from the Cubans every possible cent that can be obtained.
The extraordinary taxation imposed upon their subjects by the German
and Austrian governments is carried to the very limit, it would seem,
of endurance, but taxation in Cuba goes far beyond anything of the
sort in Europe. Spain now asks us to execute with her a "favorable"
reciprocity treaty. Such a treaty as she proposes would be of very
great benefit to Spain, no doubt, but of none, or comparatively none,
to us. Whatever we seemingly do for Cuba in the matter of such a
treaty we should do indirectly for Spain. She it is who will reap all
the benefit. She has still upon her hands some fifty to sixty thousand
civil and military individuals, who are supported by a miserable
system of exaction as high and petty officials in this misgoverned
island.

It is for the interest of this army of locusts in possession to keep
up the present state of affairs,--it is bread and butter to them,
though it be death to the Cubans. Relieved of the enormous taxation
and oppression generally which her people labor under in every
department of life, Cuba would gradually assume a condition of thrift
and plenty. But while she is so trodden upon, so robbed in order to
support in luxury a host of rapacious Spaniards, and forbidden any
voice in the control of her own affairs, all the treaty concessions
which we could make to Spain would only serve to keep up and
perpetuate the great farce. Such a treaty as is proposed would be in
reality granting to Spain a subsidy of about thirty million dollars
per annum! This conclusion was arrived at after consultation with
three of the principal United States consuls on the island. Cuba
purchases very little from us; she has not a consuming population of
over three hundred thousand. The common people, negroes, and Chinese
do not each expend five dollars a year for clothing. Rice, codfish,
and dried beef, with the abundant fruits, form their support. Little
or none of these come from the United States. The few consumers wear