Page:Messages of the President of the United States on the Relations of the United States to Spain (1898).djvu/107

 78 It shall likewise be their duty to obtain special information with regard to all matters of a purely local nature which principally affect the colonial territory; and in this sense they may decide concerning administrative organization end division, whether territorial, provincial, municipal, or judicial; concerning public health, both on sea and land; concerning public credit, banks, and the monetary system.

These powers are to be understood as not interfering with those belonging, in connection with the same matters, according to law, to the colonial executive power.

It shall likewise be the duty of the insular parliament to prepare the regulations for the execution of those laws enacted by the Cortes of the Kingdom that shall be expressly confided to it. In this sense it specially belongs to it (and it may do so at its very first meeting) to decide concerning electoral procedure, the preparation of the census, the qualifications of electors, and the manner in which elections shall be held; but its decisions shall in nowise affect the rights of citizens as they are recognized by the electoral law.

Although the laws relating to the administration of justice and the organization of the courts are of a general character, and therefore obligatory upon the colony, the Colonial Parliament may, subject to them, adopt such rules or propose to the Central Government such measures as may facilitate the entrance, retention, and promotion in the local courts of the natives of the Island, or of those who practice the legal profession there. The Governor-General in council shall exercise the powers which, as regards the appointment of legal officers, subordinates, and assistants, and as regards other matters connected with the administration of justice, are now exercised by the ministry of the colonies so far as the Island of Cuba is concerned.

It shall be an exclusive power of the Insular Parliament to prepare the local budget both of expenditures and receipts, and to prepare that of the receipts necessary to meet the portion of expense of the national budget which is payable by the Island.

To this effect, the Governor-General shall lay before the Chambers, before the month of January of each year, the budget for the following fiscal year, divided into two parts, the first of which shall contain a statement of the receipts necessary to meet the expenses of sovereignty; the second, the expenditures and receipts which properly belong to the colonial administration.

Neither of the chambers shall deliberate concerning the colonial budget without having definitely passed upon the portion relating to the expenses of sovereignty.

It shall be the duty of the Cortes of the Kingdom to decide what are to be considered, from their nature, as obligatory expenses inherent in sovereignty, and also to fix every three years the amount thereof and the receipts necessary to meet them, the Cortes having always the right to change this provision.

The negotiation of treaties of commerce affecting the Island of Cuba, whether they are dune to the initiative of the insular government or to that of the central Government, shall always be conducted by the latter, assisted in both cases by special delegates, duly authorized by the colonial government, the conformity of which treaties to what has been agreed upon shall be shown when they are laid before the Cortes of the Kingdom.

These treaties, if they shall be approved by the Cortes, shall be published as laws of the Kingdom, and as such they shall remain in force in the territory of the Island.

Treaties of commerce in the negotiation of which the Insular Government shall not have taken part shall be communicated to it when they shall become laws of the Kingdom, in order that it may, within three months, declare whether it desires to adhere to their stipulations or not. In case of its desiring to adhere to them the Governor-General shall publish a statement to that effect in the Gazette as a colonial statute.

It shall further be the duty of the Insular Parliament to prepare the tariff and to designate the duties to be paid on goods, both when imported into the territory of the Island and when exported therefrom.

By way of transition from the present régime to that for which provision is hereby made, and without prejudice to what may be agreed upon at the proper time by the two Governments, commercial relations between the Peninsula and the Island of Cuba shall be governed by the following provisions:

(1) No duty, whether of a fiscal character or not, and whether established for imports or exports, shall be differential to the detriment of insular or peninsular productions.

(2) A list of articles of direct national origin shall be prepared by both Governments, for which articles there shall be established by common consent a differential duty on those similar to them of foreign origin.

In another similar list, prepared in the same manner, those productions of insular origin shall he determined which are to receive privileged treatment when imported into the Peninsula. The rate of the differential duties shall likewise be determined.

This differential duty shall in no case exceed, for both origins, 35 per cent.