be grounds for an exception to this general rule. The Spanish customs regulations have not only been applied with harshness, but in the case of some of the British ships, and doubtless of some of the ships of other nations, which have been thus fined, these regulations have been enforced in a manner which is at variance with international comity. It is, therefore, to be feared that discussions are likely to ensue, the tendency of which cannot fail to be to disturb the friendly relations between Spain and foreign powers.

Her Majesty's government believe that the representatives of some other powers at Madrid are fully sensible of this unsatisfactory state of things. And it is possible that they may have reported cases of the enforcement of fines which have occurred to the ships of various powers. Numerous cases have already occurred to British shipping. In one instance, owing to the accidental omission in the ship's manifest of twelve barrels of olive oil shipped at an Italian port for an English port, a fine of nearly £500, or ten times the duty payable on olive oil, was enforced on the vessel touching at a Spanish port for some more cargo. The utmost concession obtained from the Spanish government was a remission of half the fine.

In another instance a fine of over 2,000 pesetas was inflicted on account of the weight of cargo being in Ibralian instead of Spanish kilograms, and a further fine of over 12,000 pesetas was levied in consequence of the steamer having discharged in excess of the weight stated in the bill of lading. In spite of various representations to the Spanish government, no remission of these fines has been obtained.

In a third instance, the vessel was compelled by stress of weather and want of coal to enter a Spanish port, where the custom-house authorities seized some small articles belonging to the officers and crew and fined the ship, in the sum of about £90, on account of the above articles not being in the ship's manifest, and the Spanish government justified the action of the customs authorities on the ground that this vessel was in the transit trades. These proceedings are held to be contrary to the comity of nations.

In a fourth instance a fine of $1,450 was imposed for the accidental omission from the manifest of one item of the cargo, and this liable only to a low duty. A remission of half the fine only was obtained.

In a fifth instance the steamer was fined 1,500 pesetas for not having the manifest presented and certified at the neighboring port to a quarantine station where it had been detained, although the captain proceeded on his voyage without so doing with the full authority of the civil governor. Moreover, the British vice-consul was held responsible for these fines, and ordered to deposit 1,000 pesetas within twenty-four hours. The Spanish government maintained their position in the affair, but their definitive decision has not yet been received.

In a sixth instance à ship has been declared liable to a fine of about $850 on account of the captain turning English tons into kilograms, at the mistaken rate of two pounds to the kilogram!

In a seventh instance a fine of over 12,000 reals was imposed on account of a ship carrying extra anchors and chains not in the manifest, but required by English law! In an eighth instance a fine of about £1,134 was inflicted because by a clerical error the Spanish consul in England had stated the number of some barrels at two thousand, whereas the true number of two hundred was accurately stated in the manifest!

The foregoing are instances out of many cases, and are referred to as illustrative of the manner in which these fines are levied by the Spanish custom-house authorities.

No. 560.]

No. 399.

General Sickles to Mr. Fish.

UNITED STATES LEGATION IN SPAIN, Madrid, March 27, 1873. (Received April 16.) SIR: I have the honor to forward herewith an official copy of the act for the immediate emancipation of slavery in Porto Rico, passed on the 22d instant by a unanimous vote of the National Assembly. It sel dom happens that one has the privilege of recording with so much satis faction the end of a long and stubborn contest, in which avarice, prejudice, and pride had to be subdued.

Singularly enough, this bill, brought in before the abdication of the King, and which in its preliminary stages had twice commanded a de

cisive majority in a monarchical Congress, was in serious danger of defeat after the proclamation of the republic. The explanation of a circumstance so anomalous is to be sought, not in the indifference or hostility of the republicans, but in the conflicts between the assembly and the executive which immediately followed the inauguration of the new form of government.

I have heretofore pointed out the remarkable prominence given to the affairs of Cuba and Porto Rico in the deliberations of the Congress of 1872-73. If, as I believe, the emancipation act now passed was conspicuous among the immediate causes which led to the abdication of the King, it likewise had the good fortune to be made the occasion of a reconciliation among the hostile elements in the National Assembly, which enabled that body to terminate its labors in harmony with the executive power and with public opinion.

After the defeat of the amendment proposed by Mr. Garcia Ruiz, which was an attempt to substitute for the original bill a scheme of gradual emancipation, the opposition abandoned all hope of defeating the measure by legitimate means. It was then determined to leave the assembly without a quorum when the final vote should be taken. Although it appeared that the number of deputies willing to record themselves against the bill was comparatively small, there was reason to apprehend that enough might be disposed to absent themselves from the chamber to defeat its passage, for the want of the requisite attendance under the rules. I have annexed a report of the speech of Mr. Garcia Ruiz. I cannot convey to you in any other manner so just a notion of the spirit and degree of hostility shown toward the United States by the speakers on the slavery side of the chamber. This gentleman is the sole representative in Congress of a republican sect known as unitarians. He was the only man in Spain of liberal opinions who entered the "League." His speech, denounced by the liberal party and praised by the reactionists, added no vote besides his own in favor of the prolongation of slavery.

The fate of the measure had been the subject of several conversations between Mr. Castelar and myself, in the last of which the minister expressed grave doubts of its passage, and even suggested that I should advise you in advance of its probable failure, assuring you, however, of the prompt and decisive action of the Cortes Constituyentes on the whole subject of colonial reform in June next. Declining the unwelcome task of repeating explanations of past failures and promises of future action, I urged his excellency to insist on a decisive vote, in which the government and its supporters at least would show their fidelity to the bill, and absolve themselves from responsibility for its defeat.

On the 21st instant, the minister of state addressed the assembly in a speech of remarkable directness and strength, a synopsis of which is translated in Appendix C, showing the grave international aspects of the question, repelling the charge of unwarrantable interference on the part of the United States, and admonishing the chamber of the conse quences that would follow the loss of the measure. When Mr. Castelar rose to speak, his effort was regarded as a mere demonstration due to his own consistency as a public man, and in which he might, perhaps, decorate the grave of the bill with a few garlands of eloquence. When he resumed his seat, such was the profound impression made by his most convincing and persuasive appeal that it was evident he had carried the house with him, and the triumph of emancipation was assured.

A conference followed between Mr. Labro, a prominent deputy from Porto Rico, and the leading opponents of the measure, which resulted

in an agreement upon several amendments not affecting the principle of immediate emancipation. The next day the bill passed with entire unanimity in a full house, accompanied by manifestations of enthusiasm and joy peculiar to this impressionable and ardent race. Representatives of all parties joined in telegraphic communications to Cuba and Porto Rico, advising their friends in those islands to accept emancipation in the same spirit in which it had been proclaimed by the National Assembly. The government was asked to telegraph the text of the act to its representatives abroad, so that it might be communicated to foreign powers. And it was resolved to place a memorial tablet in the wall of the chamber, with an inscription commemorative of the event.

Already the effect of these incidents on the broader question of emancipation in Cuba is evident and irresistible. The powerful slave-interests in that island, always represented here by agents of consummate ability and address, is now preparing the way to enable it to shape the action the Cortes Constituyentes must inevitably take to complete the work of emancipation in Spanish territory. Assuming that the present act will be faithfully executed in Porto Rico, in a way calculated to avoid conflicts which would inure to the advantage of the slave-holders in Cuba, and that the republican government will allow a fair expression of the public opinion of both islands on the whole question of colonial reform, I venture to anticipate that during the present year slavery will cease in the Antilles, and with it must fall the whole fabric of arbitrary rule which has so long oppressed those remnants of Spanish power in America.

I have, &c.,

D. E. SICKLES.

[Appendix C.-Translation.]

Synopsis of the speech of Don Emilio Castellar, minister of state, in favor of immediate emancipation in Porto Rico, delivered in the national assembly, March 21, 1873.

[From La Gaceta de Madrid, March 22, 1873.]

Mr. Castellar began by stating that his friend, Mr. Bona, had pledged him to speak in this debate, although, for his own part, he would have preferred to remain silent, believing that action and not oratory was required from the ministers' bench. From the heights of the opposition benches he had formerly surveyed the realm of the ideal, but now, down in the government seats, he saw nothing but hard realities that did not readily yield to the adornments of oratory. He neither proposed, nor wished, to make a speech, but simply to make a few remarks on the subject under discussion in relation to its foreign aspects, from which point of view, as minister of state, charged with all the foreign relations of the Spanish nation, he was compelled to regard it. As for his own personal convictions and record in this matter, they were known to all. No public man could lay just claim to consistency or steadfastness who was not true to the legiti mate convictions born of the progressive stages of his career. How did these begiu? Among free peoples the first stage in public life was in the press and the club. By those means ideas were born, and grew, and became convictions. The tribune came next, and from its heights the same ideas and convictions should be repeated as had been learned in the previous stage. And from the rostrum the public man passes to the government, where he should strive to realize all that he had heretofore proclaimed and defended. This was his duty, and if mistaken or unsuccessful, his conscience and the judgment of history would bear witness to the rectitude of his purpose.

Who among them did not know the pledges that bound the minister of state and the whole government of the republic? He begged the chamber to pardon him if he cited his own abolition record in order to show how impossible it was for him to do otherwise than obey his antecedents. He said:

"I, gentlemen, when little more than a child, began public life, and my first speech. at twenty-one years of age, was in favor of emancipation. I passed afterward from the press to a professor's chair, where I devoted myself to the study of the first five centuries of Christianity. Three great problems met me-the decadence of the ancient world, the rise and spread of Christianity, and the inroads of the barbaric

hordes. Well, then, gentlemen, in my lectures delivered during those five years, I attributed all, absolutely all these to the influences of slavery. I said the ancient world fell, for it possessed not the virtue of labor, and because it gave itself up to the ignomy of servitude. I said the Christian religion, this religion that so comforts the soul-this religion, shorn of its dogmas and of the traditions of man's intercourse with his fellow-man and with his Creator-this religion is, in fine, the religion of the slave. The Jewish race prepared the way for it by grand apocalypses, which are the epics of servitude, epies written by the banks of the river that flowed in a stranger's land, beneath the willows of Babylon, by hands heavy with the manacles of bondage. Christ is of the royal lineage of the old kings of the enslaved race who have fallen; he is the conqueror of the oppressor, and if his cradle be the cradle of toil, his scaffold is the scaffold of the slave; it is the scaffold already red with the blood of Spartacus and his thirty thousand comrades. And in like manner, if Christianity be the spiritual religion that by its dogmas links man with God, in its social aspect it is the religion of the bondman. And when, in visions of the mind, I beheld those vast inroads of the barbaric hosts upon the Babylon of the west, fallen beneath the blasting bolts of the eloquence of him of Patmos-and fallen before human conscience-when I beheld the northern hordes break in upon the feastings of the pagan city and cast her ashes to the wind, I said, surely they are sent as destroying angels; they are the bondmen, the descendants of those hapless ones hunted down, made captive, carried to the arena; they are the sons of the gladiators, come to prove by this, their terrible vengeance, that God's justice shines on forever through all the pages of history. [Applause.] "Afterward, deputies, whenever I have endeavored to study political and social problems, I have ever found them connected with the slavery question; and I said-not with reference to the Spanish middle class alone, but to the generality of the middle classes of Europe-it is a question of caste with us all to reach a radical and immediate solution of the problem of servitude, because the middle classes, who to-day make laws and govern, who to-day guide our social structure, alike under traditional monarchies and under parliamentary governments, these middle classes are the descendants of the helots, the pariahs, the slaves and the bondmen; and if we seek the ashes of our fathers, we find them in the tombs, rock-hewn by the toil of the slave; and I said the whole problem and task of modern civilization has been the molding of the ancient bondman into a freeman and independent citizen." [Applause.] From the halls of the university he had passed to the halls of Congress, where he had advocated, and would ever advocate, immediate emancipation. None could forget how he had opposed Mr. Moret's law of 1870, because he deemed it futile, and because it did not grapple with and solve the problem; and none could forget how, on the memorable night when the vote of confidence in the Zorrilla ministry was carried almost by acclamation, he had defended the very measure now under discussion, and how he had declared that this measure was an evident necessity of the situation, and how it was besought and demanded of them by the opinion and the spirit of the age. He had contrasted these solemn pledges with his own conscience; what, then, should be said of him if to-day he were to deny his record and his convictions, and not support the law now pending. But no; he would advocate the measure with all his powers; he demanded its approval by the chamber; he appealed to the patriotism of the conservatives not to delay the inevitable result of this deliberation, lest they should draw down disaster and calamities on Spain and her Antilles. Democracy, and even the republic, were impossible without a sincere and loyal understanding between the liberal parties of Spain, and this law of immediate emancipation was the ground on which they had met and could meet in common. Had not the republicans coalesced with their opponents of the government, fusing all differences in one common aspiration? They had given the measure their loyal support. He, as one of the leaders of his party, had occupied an exceptional and unusual position toward the radical party during its long-continued crisis, for its whole tenure of power had been nothing save one lingering crisis, even as the present government of the republic is but a crisis. He and his colleagues had opposed the radical ministry in nothing, but had rather sought to strengthen its hands. Though sometimes unable to give it his vote, and even sometimes compelled to vote adversely, he had, nevertheless, maintained silence, save when he could aid the radical government with his voice and vote. Few knew how great a risk he had run in taking this course. He ran a risk from his own side, because he was resolved, at all hazards, to restrain his party from giving battle in the field; and he had run a still greater risk, for what he held and believed to be impossible might have, after all, been proved possible-a great risk, had it turned out that monarchy was, in reality, compatible with liberty and democracy; but he had preferred to run the chance of seeing his life-long convictions overthrown by the peaceful logic of facts rather than behold Spain plunged into the disastrous gulf of revolution. "Gentlemen," he said, "if I did this, if I dared unpopularity in obedience to my conscience, and if I resolved to oppose no obstacles to the perfect compatibility of liberty with monarchy, I now, from this seat, remind you of my record, and beseech you, in the name of the country, that you in turn will offer no obstacle to the compatibility of authority with a republic." [Applause.]

Mr. Castelar then entered on the subject-matter of his speech. The most serious arguments, he said, that had been used in reference to this measure of abolition related to the slavery question as viewed from the point of view of its bearings on Spain's foreign relations. Calummy, both within and without the walls of Congress, had assailed and blackened those who obeyed only the promptings of humanity and patriotism till it had become scarcely possible to pass through the thick cloud of infamous acensations heaped upon these upright men, as though to suffocate them; these slanders that seemed born of the foul air that rose from the festering sores deep in the heart and on the brow of their beloved country-the plague-spots of slavery! [Applause.]

It was his duty to declare that upon the slavery question there had been absolutely no foreign influence brought to bear. He was the better able to say this since, feeling that on him could rest no responsibility, he had studied all the documents in the archives of the ministry of state for many years back, in reference to this matter, in order that he might form his own free and unbiased judgment; and he must declare that the late cabinet had defended, with the utmost dignity, the honor, the autonomy, and the independence of the country. But why should not the whole truth be steadfastly faced and accepted in such a matter? Was the question of slavery, perchance, a purely national question, wherein the nation was absolute master of its sovereignty and its destinies? Who thought and held thus was in error. Slavery was an international question, and could not be otherwise. He would not now urge an idea he had frequently sketched, and still maintained, that certain institutions could not exist, and certain popular changes take place, save when they were universal in their action. But even when the telegraph and the railway were unknown, this synchronism of history, so to call it, still existed, and all the great movements and transformations of society took place in unison. Nay, more: a learned writer contended that the movements of Europe and of Asia coincided; and these again with those of America, even before America was known, and proved it by the historical monuments of all ages, as if one human spirit pervaded the whole planet. Had not all feudal Europe been stirred at once; and had not the tenth century witnessed the universal rise of guilds and communities? Had not feudalism fallen at one and the same instant throughout all Europe? Were not Louis XI, Ferdinand V, and Maximilian of Austria in truth one spirit, diversely personified? Who had at the same time discovered the mariner's compass, the printing press, and the telescope through which to dominate the earth? And when the discovery of America came to complete this epic of achieve ment, did not the Reformers, too, arise? Were not Henry VIII, Philip I, Charles V, and Philip II the same personifications of absolutism? Had not the liberal movements of Europe, the rising of the middle classes, the fall of kings, and the suppression of the Jesuits been simultaneous? What did all this tend to show? That great issues are not altogether national, and that all the grand problems of humanity have an international relation. "I remember." he said, "when I spoke in this very chamber of the influence our revolution of September would exert in all the problems of Europe, and how it was said, 'this Castelar is a poet, and dwells ever in the realms of the ideal. What! does he not tell us that our modest bridge of Alcolea, that our little revolution. which, like all our revolutions, is merely a change of the men in power; that even this is to influence all Europe and transform the whole world? And, nevertheless, gentlemen, glance at what has happened since. The temporal power of the Popes has fallen; the Empire of France and its Emperor have fallen; the republic exists already in France and in Spain; Germany has attained unity, and all Europe has been transformed since our cannon thundered at Alcolea!" [Applause.]

Why was this, he asked? This synchronism of history would almost seem to prove the defeat of the materialists and the triumph of the idealists, like himself, for it showed the unity, the identity, and almost the divinity of the human mind. The slavery issue is one of these questions, and can be no less than international, because the true evangelical spirit that separates the eighteenth century from the nineteenth is the spirit of liberty and equal rights. And so it came to pass, one day, that the French convention proclaimed this great principle of equal rights, and a poor negro, who had risen from the abyss of bondage and degradation to the sublime height of the convention, arose and said, “You have declared the unity and equality of human rights, and the liberty of the human mind. I have a mind, thoughts, and speech like yourselves. I feel a soul within me, I have a conscience and reason, and yet I am not free; your boasted principles are but a lie." And there in that session, that grea" convention, which, though sometimes steeped in crime, had more than once risen to the heights of ideal right, that great convention arose and said, “We will not dishono. ourselves by debating this ;" and they abolished slavery. "I have often described and pictured the scene that then took place; the doors were flung open as if by unseen hands, the negroes entered and embraced the men of the convention, and falling at their feet they wept, and to me it seemed that those sacred tears blotted out forever the blood stains from the hands of the French convention." [Applause.] And from that day nothing could stay the tide of emancipation from sweeping like a powder train along the earth. Yet a man, whose genius was styled supernatural by