Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/255

Rh for war, or for peaceful union, it is not yet possible to say.

Cuba is also at the present moment a field of combat for the powers of light and of darkness, and seldom, indeed, are they seen on earth to stand so close to each other, or in stronger contrast.

On the dark side stand the church and the state; the state with its rule of violence and despotism—(Spain blindly governing her distant colonies by deputies, over whom the mother-country can have no control, and who deny to the creoles all right of self-government); the church, which exists merely in pompous ceremonial, and is deficient in all spiritual life. On the night side lies prominently slavery, which exists in Cuba in its worst form; and the slave-trade with Africa, which is said to be of daily occurrence, although not openly. The government of the island receives bribes from the slave-traders, and shuts its eyes to the thousands of slaves who are annually landed on the island. Nay, it is asserted that it is privately not unwilling to see the island filled with wild Africans, because the dread of the unrestrained power of these, if they should one day emancipate themselves, restrains the creoles from rebellion against a government which they cannot do other than hate. Government oppresses the slave-owner, the slave-owner oppresses the slave, and knows no other means of subjecting him but the whip and the chain. The sugar-planters not unfrequently work their slaves harder than beasts of burden, and require from them a greater amount of labour than human nature can sustain. In the prison-walls of the bohea the slaves live like brute beasts; no Saviour is preached to them, and the only pleasures which are allowed to them—and that often in the scantiest measure, are those of the animal. Wild tumults have been sometimes the evidence of the cruelty of oppression, and of the savage spirit and power of the