Page:Vol 5 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/604

584 support them. Soon after came an offer from Cuba of twenty-five pesos for any prisoner surrendered for service on plantations and elsewhere. The government accepted the bid, while seeking to protect the victims to a certain extent under the formality of contracts for their term of service, pay, and treatment. The first batch consigned to this servitude numbered more than three hundred. At Habana the Mexican consul inquired into the case, however, and the federal government, in April 1849, issued a decree against such consignments. The Yucatecs advanced humanitarian reasons in defence, alleging that servitude even more severe must be preferable to starvation or to death, to which marauding rebels were amenable. The contract fee was but a fair compensation for a small portion of the ill inflicted by the prisoners. This argument prevailed, and the traffic was limited only by the number of captives obtainable. In order to affirm her control in the province, the republic insisted on a proportion of the federal revenue, offering instead a monthly allowance of $16,000; but the effort of the agent to collect it roused such serious opposition that it had to be modified, with loss of the subsidy, however.

At the time of the greatest dejection among the white men in the autumn of 1849, they were relieved by a change of tactics on the part of their opponents, who raised the siege of Tihosuco and Saban, abated their vigilance in the south, and fell back mainly on