Castillo. As lawyer, orator, scholar, writer, he had no superior if
indeed a peer in Cuba. It was the inscrutable tragedy of a great career
that he identified himself with the Autonomist movement. He was Minister
of Finance. The Minister of Justice was Antonio Govin, also one of the
original Autonomists, a man of great courage and ability, who on the
failure of the Autonomist regime left Cuba and settled in the United
States. Francisco Zayas, an accomplished educator, was made Minister of
Instruction. Laureano Rodriguez, a Peninsular Spaniard, was Minister of
Agriculture, Labor and Commerce. Eduardo Dolz, a Reformist, was also a
member, who was supposed to be the special representative of the Spanish
crown. Two other men, not Ministers but high in Autonomist councils,
Senors Amblard and Giberga, were regarded by the Spanish party as
traitors who were really in league with the Revolutionists. Blanco swore
in these Ministers, addressed them with an exhortation to support
autonomy and to suppress the revolution, and gave them as the watchword
of their administration "Long live Cuba, forever Spanish!"

For a few days the glamor and the illusion lasted. Some inconspicuous
revolutionists yielded to Spanish blandishments and surrendered; to whom
the honest and chivalrous Blanco granted in good faith the amnesty which
he had promised. Some Cuban refugees returned from the United States.
The Autonomists--the few who still remained; for the majority had by
this time joined the Revolutionists, gone into exile, or been
imprisoned--declared their adherence to the new order of affairs and
professed satisfaction with it. Apparently they accepted at face value
the explanations which were voluminously put forth by the government, to
the effect that the system was practically identical with that of
Canada, under which that country had long been contented, loyal and
prosperous. Technically, no doubt, there was a tolerably close analogy
between the two. It was quite true that the powers reserved to the
Spanish crown in Cuba through the Governor-General were similar to those
reserved to the British crown in Canada through the Viceroy. But the
decisive factor in the case, which the Autonomists apparently ignored,
was this, that while in Canada it was an unwritten but unbroken law
that the crown did not exercise its powers save in accordance with the
will of the people, it was morally certain that in Cuba the Spanish
crown would exercise its