Page:Messages of the President of the United States on the Relations of the United States to Spain (1898).djvu/86

 Rh actual want exceeds any estimate I have sent the Department. The distress is simply heartrending. Whole families without clothing to hide nakedness, sleeping on the bare ground, without bedding of any kind, without food, save to such as we have been able to reach with provisions sent by our noble people; and the most distressing feature is that fully 50 per cent are ill, without medical attention or medicine.

If $5,000 could be telegraphed to our honorable consul-general at Havana, blankets, cots, and medicine could be purchased here in the several towns adjacent, and save thousands who must die if to await their being sent from the United States. I have found the civil governor willing to lend every aid in his power; but he admits he can do nothing but assist with his civil officers in expediting relief sent by the United States. The military obstruct in every way possible. The Department will bear in mind the towns I am trying to reach with relief will number over forty.

Consul.

At the time when an autonomic constitution is given to the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico, which intrusts to their own initiative the management and government of their local interests, it is of paramount importance to strengthen constitutional unity, as the staunchest basis on which the integrity of our territory rests.

This aim of all the liberal parties, recognized in principle by the decree of April 2, 1881, has, however, failed of accomplishment in the form to which the people of the Antilles are entitled. They frequently complain of and deplore irritating inequalities which are of themselves sufficient to hamper, if not totally to preclude, the enjoyment of constitutional liberty. Indeed, these liberties, as they are disclosed in the fundamental code, consist of declarations of rights and guarantees that are subsequently sanctioned and developed in a series of organic laws, complements of the constitution, as provided in its fourteenth article, which devolves on special laws "the rules which must secure to the Spaniards reciprocal respect for the rights herein granted, and at the same time determine the civil responsibility and the penalty to which officers of all classes who infringe the rights set forth in Title I must be held liable.

It follows that if, through arbitrary provisions for which no remedy exists, through penalties imposed in the orders of governors-general, or through the omissions of laws of procedure, the citizen may be restrained, molested, or even deported to distant parts of the territory, he finds it impossible to exercise his right to speak, think, and write, or to enjoy freedom of teaching and religious toleration, or to avail himself of the right of meeting and associating.

And yet the whole foundation of modern law rests on the regular and orderly exercise of these rights; therefore, wherever it is limited equality before the law ceases and with it constitutional unity. Then arise these perverted feelings which are carried to the extent of attacking the integrity of the territory. The geographical bond with all its attractions and allurements can not cause that other aspiration to be forgotten, which, while it grows out of the same human instinct, is deeper and more essential.

It is therefore good policy, at all events it is an act of strict justice, to do all that is in the power of the Government, to the end that the Constitution be at once extended in its entirety to the territory of the Antilles, that every vestige of inequality may be removed, and that our legislation be thoroughly revised, so that there can be no Spaniard who, through confusion or error, may lack the protection of the law.

This is certainly the intent of article 89 of the constitution. The provision by which it leaves to the discretion of the governments the time and manner in which the laws are to be applied to the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico does more than grant the authority; it imposes on the Government the duty to publish this decree at the very