Page:Messages of the President of the United States on the Relations of the United States to Spain (1898).djvu/111

 82 All provisions of a legal character, emanating from the colonial parliament or the courts, shall be compiled under the name of colonial statutes in a legislative collection, the preparation and publication of which shall be intrusted to the Governor-General as head of the colonial executive power.

Until colonial statutes shall have been published in due form the laws of the Kingdom shall be considered applicable to all matters that are to be acted upon by the insular government.

When the present constitution for the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico shall have been approved by the Cortes of the Kingdom, it shall not be modified otherwise than by a law and at the request of the insular parliament.

The provisions of the present decree shall be enforced in their entirety in the Island of Puerto Rico; but in order to adapt them to the population and the nomenclature of that island they shall be published in a special decree for Puerto Rico.

Contracts relative to public services common both to the Antilles and the Peninsula that are in course of execution shall continue in their present form until their termination, and shall be governed in all respects by the conditions of the contract. With regard to contracts that have not yet begun to be executed, but have been already agreed upon, the Governor-General shall consult the central Government or the colonial chambers, if necessary, and the definitive form in which they shall be concluded shall be determined by common consent between the two governments.

In order to accomplish with the greatest rapidity possible, and with the least interruption of the services, the transition from the present system to that which is created by this decree, the Governor-General, when he shall think that the proper time has arrived, shall, after consulting the central Government, appoint the Government secretaries to whom reference is made in article 45, and with them shall conduct the interior government of the Island of Cuba until the insular chambers shall have been constituted.

The secretaries appointed shall cease to hold their offices when the Governor-General shall take his oath of office before the insular chambers, when they shall immediately be replaced by the Governor with persons who, in his opinion, most fully represent the majorities of the chamber of representatives and of the council of administration.

The manner of meeting the expenditures occasioned by the debt which now burdens the Spanish and the Cuban treasury, and that which shall have been contracted until the time of the termination of the war, shall form the subject of a law wherein shall be determined the part payable by each of the two treasuries and the special means of paying the interest thereon, and of the amortization thereof, and, if necessary, of paying the principal.

Until the Cortes of the Kingdom shall decide this point, there shall be no change in the conditions on which the aforesaid debts have been contracted, or in the payment of the interest and amortization, or in the guarantees of said debts, or in the manner in which the payments are now made.

When the apportionment shall have been made by the Cortes, it shall be for each one of the treasuries to make payment of the part assigned to it.

Engagements contracted with creditors under a pledge of the good faith of the Spanish nation, shall in all cases be scrupulously respected.

Done at the Palace, this 25th day of November, 1897.

2em

President of the Council of Ministers.