And, that there may be no doubt of the wilfulness with which the Cuban authorities disregard their solemn obligations, it is a notorious fact, that in a country where passports and police abound in every direction, so that a negro cannot move from his own home, upwards of a hundred were landed in the last year, 1852, from one vessel, at a place only thirty-five miles from the Havana, and marched in three days across the island to--where do you think ?--to some Creole's, or to some needy official's estate?
no such thing; but, as if to stamp infamy on Spain, at the highest step of the ladder, they were marched to the Queen Mother's estate.

If this be not wickedness in high places, what is?
The slave trade flourishes luxuriantly here with the connivance of authority; and what makes the matter worse is, that the wealth accumulated by this dishonesty and national perjury is but too generally--and I think too justly--believed to be the mainspring of that corruption at home for which Spain stands pre-eminent among the nations of the earth.

I will now give you a sketch of the cruelties which have been enacted here; and, although an old story, I do not think it is very generally known.
When General O'Donnell obtained the captain-generalship of Cuba, whether his object was to obtain honours from Spain for quelling an insurrection, or whether he was deceived, I cannot decide; but an imaginary insurrection was got up, and a military court was sent in every direction throughout the island.

These courts were to obtain all information as to the insurrection, and, of course, to flog the negroes till they confessed.

Unfledged ensigns would come with their guard upon a plantation, and despite the owner's assurance that there was no feeling of insubordination among the negroes, they would set to work flogging right and left, till in agony the poor negro would say something which would be used to criminate some other, who in turn would be flogged till in agony he made some assertion; and so it went on, till the blood-thirsty young officer was satiated.