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Many of them owned a thousand Africans each, and the institution, as an arbitrary power as well as the means of wealth, was ever dear to the Spanish heart. Former and subsequent Captains-General not only secretly encouraged the clandestine importation of slaves, after issuing an edict prohibiting it, but profited pecuniarily by the business.
In the meantime, under numerous and often-changed captains-general, the island of Cuba increased in population by free emigration from Spain, and by the constant cruel importation of slaves from Africa.
This circumstance gives birth to a diversity of interests, in the same country, between the people of the interior and those who inhabit the coasts. To form an accurate idea of those vast provinces which have been governed for ages, almost like separate states, by viceroys and captains-general, we must fix our attention at once on several points.
The concentration of civil and military power in the hands of the captains-general ceased, but party spirit began to show its disturbing influence. The press, hitherto muffled by political and ecclesiastical censors, often went to the extremes of abuse and personalities.
Until the year 1813 the captains-general of Puerto Rico had the superintendence of the revenues. The capital was the only authorized port open to commerce. No regular books were kept by the authorities. A day-book of duties paid and expended was all that was considered necessary.
In many houses of Florence there are many pictures in perspective by the hand of the same man, for the adornment of couches, beds, and other little things; and in Gualfonda, in particular, on a terrace in the garden which once belonged to the Bartolini, there are four battle-scenes painted on wood by his hand, full of horses and armed men, with very beautiful costumes of those days; and among the men are portraits of Paolo Orsino, Ottobuono da Parma, Luca da Canale, and Carlo Malatesti, Lord of Rimini, all captains-general of those times.
It was the first time I had been punished since I had been in the service. Farewell, now, to the sergeant's stripes, on which I had reckoned so surely! "The first days in prison were very dreary. When I enlisted I had fancied I was sure to become an officer, at all events. Two of my compatriots, Longa and Mina, are captains-general, after all.
The fact is, that this gentleman, bred up under the despotic Captains-General, accustomed to their arbitrary proceedings, to the mal-administration of colonial law, and the absence of everything like fair trial, cannot brook any limitation to his power, and has demonstrated his desire, if not to establish an independent sway, at least to act solely according to his will and pleasure.
As a partial revenge on the Cubans for wishing liberty the Spanish captains-general have at times pardoned some hundreds of these rascals and set them free to prey on the people; while, in retaliation, the insurgents adopted some of the methods of the Nañigos and carried on a guerilla warfare that neither troops nor trochas could abate.
Indeed, from all that I have seen or heard, there is but little reason to hope that his Excellency the President has any intention to govern this province on any other system than that of the Captains-General, under the old Portuguese government; that is to say, rather according to his own will than in conformity with the dictates of justice or equity.
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