here were, however, some even in the first generation who were
exceptions to this rule, who loved Cuba for her own sake, who wished to
identify themselves permanently with her, and who wished to see her
developed to the greatness and the splendor for which her natural
endowments seemed to them to have designed her. In the second generation
the number of such was of course greatly multiplied, and in succeeding
generations their increase proceeded at a constantly increasing ratio.
Thus by the end of the first century of Cuban history the great majority
of residents of the island regarded themselves as Cubans rather than as
Spaniards. They were Spaniards in race and tongue, and they were ready
to stand with the peninsular kingdom and the rest of its world-circling
empire against any of other tongues and races. But while thus to the
outside world they were Spaniards, to Spain itself and to the people of
the peninsula they were Cubans; differentiated from Spain much more than
the Catalonian was from the Castilian, or the Andalusian from the
Navarrais.

This sentiment of differentiation, and of insular individuality, was
naturally strengthened by the treatment which the peninsular government
accorded to the island. The Cubans were made to feel that Spain regarded
them as apart from her, just as much as they themselves so regarded her.
They felt, too, that she was treating them with injustice and with
neglect; that instead of nourishing her young plantation and giving it
the support of her wealth and strength she was drawing upon it for her
own nourishment and support. They would have been either far more or far
less than human if they had not thus been incited to a certain degree of
resentment and to an assertion of independence.

In brief, it was with the Cubans even at that early day as it was with
the British colonists in North America a century and a half later;
though indeed the Cubans determined upon separation from the mother
country at a comparatively earlier date than the people of the Thirteen
Colonies, or certainly much longer before their achievement of that
independence. We know that the British colonists were dissatisfied and
protesting for nearly a score of years before their Declaration of
Independence, but that down to within a few months of the latter
transcendent event scarcely any of them thought of separation from
England. Lexington and Concord, and even Bunker Hill, were fought not
for independence but