LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

affairs. Many of the improvements that had been introduced in Spain by Minister Ori were through D. Campillo's efforts now applied to the colonies in America. Among these valuable innovations were the regulation of the revenues, the reduction of import and export duties, and the distribution of the realenzes or royal patrimonies. But equally important was the creation of royal commissions to inquire into the state, the resources and needs of the provinces, and to organize industry and commerce upon a sound and equitable basis.

      On the other hand it cannot be denied that powerful influences were at work to secure privileges for private corporations, which in a measure threatened to undo what those commissions attained. The organization which came into being in Havana in the year 1740 under the name Real Compania de Comercio under the patronage of the Virgin del Rosario, was such a corporation and it seems doubtful whether the privileges it enjoyed and the profits that accrued from them did not outweigh the advantages which were promised to the colony. The company was given a general monopoly, including the exclusive right of exportation of tobacco and sugar; it had the right of importation of articles of consumption in the island without paying custom on goods imported into the interior. Of course, it pledged itself on its part to render the community certain services which should not be underestimated. It was to build in its dockyards vessels of war and of trade; to supply the warships anchored in the harbor with provisions for their crews; to furnish ten armed vessels for the persecution of contraband; and for the transportation of the country's products to the port of Cadiz; to bring from Spain the ammunition needed in Cuba; to provision the garrison of Florida; and to furnish articles of equipment to the weather-side fleet.

      The Captain-General himself was given the office of Juez conservador (judge conservator). The first president of the company was D. Martin de Aroztegui. The organizers had at first counted upon a capital of one million pesos, but it barely exceeded nine hundred thousand. Each share was valued at five hundred duros (dollars) and eight shares were required to entitle the holder to a vote in the general conventions. There were at first five directors in all, but they were gradually reduced to two only. Some historians had warm praise for the work of the company, among them Arrate, who with many others was preoccupied by the economic interests and the commercial progress of the community. But there is no doubt that at the end it did not bring about the results that had been expected. During twenty years of its existence Cuba derived no tangible benefit. The importation of goods from Spain did not amount to more than three vessels annually. The exports amounted to less than twenty-one thousand arrobas of sugar (a weight of twenty-five pounds of sixteen ounces each).

      Governor Guemez was not oblivious to the dangers forever menacing the security and the peace of the island. He made great improvements on the batteries of el Morro; he had parts of the city walls, which ran from la Tenaze to Paula, demolished, and rebuilt of better material; he had the walls on the inland side re-enforced so as to offer greater resistance in case of attack by enemies. To all these improvements the citizens of Havana contributed generously; they furnished ten thousand peons (day-laborers) and as many beasts of burden to do the work. Guemez also built factories in the parish of El Jaguey on the other side of the bay and established the first powder magazine on the coast. During the latter part of his administration, in the year 1743, the town of Guanabacoa received its charter. The following year, 1744, is memorable in the history of Cuba as the year when the first postal service was organized. Thus the governorship of D. Guemez proved for the island a period of great civic and material progress and prosperity. The peace it enjoyed during the earlier years was, however, to be seriously disturbed later on.

      For even towards the end of the administration of D. Martinez de la Vega clouds had arisen upon the political horizon of Europe which had begun to cast their shadows over the colonies. The slave-trade sanctioned by the famous Assiento agreement gave rise to more and more serious tension between the governments of England and of Spain. In order to execute that part of the Treaty of Utrecht which related to the importation of negro slaves into Spanish America, the British government had encouraged the formation of a company, the Compania de la Mar del Sud, or South Sea Company, which was to act as agent of the assientists. It consisted of men holding the large national debt of Great Britain and had received a grant for the exclusive trade of the South Seas. But since Spain was in possession of a great proportion of the coast in that part of the world and had so far enjoyed a monopoly of its trade, the South Sea Company derived no benefit from that grant, unless the commercial activity of Spanish America could be paralyzed. The slave-trade with its clandestine opportunities for contraband, offered the South Sea Company possibilities to undermine Spanish trade. The slavers, as the slave-carrying vessels were called, being protected by passports issued by their contractors, were not slow in getting into communication with those elements in the Spanish colonies that placed their personal profit above their duty to the country under the protection of which they lived, and had no difficulty in delivering cargoes of divers merchandise while they unloaded their human freight. Moreover they never returned to Europe in ballast, but carried a correspondingly large cargo of West Indian goods of which they disposed in European ports.

      Spain had repeatedly entered complaints against these scandalously dishonest operations upon the coasts of Spanish America, but Great Britain was then not in the mood to concern herself with problems of international ethics. The enormous profits that the trade in negro slaves had brought to investors in that enterprise had dimmed their sense of honor. Queen Anne herself had in a speech to the parliament boasted of having secured to the British a new market for slaves in Spanish America. A considerable part of the population of Jamaica lived exclusively on the profits of this traffic between the Spanish-American harbors. The vessel which the British according to the Assiento were allowed to send annually to Portobello was soon followed at a certain distance by a fleet of smaller ships that approached the harbor at night and replaced the cargo that had been unloaded by day. Frequently the slavers would appeal to the human feelings of the officials in Spanish-American ports and with stories of shipwreck and damages sustained in hurricanes induce them to desist from the customary inspection of every foreign vessel. The effect of these manoeuvers was the complete extinction of Spanish commerce. While the tonnage of the fleet of Cadiz had formerly reached sixteen thousand, it was reduced at the beginning of the eighteenth century to two thousand.

      But the reclamations of Spain were not heeded. Great Britain, then in a mad fever for the acquisition of wealth, was intoxicated with the rich profits it was deriving from the operations in the West Indies and other parts of Spanish America. It not only wished to continue these, but it also tried to bring about war between the two countries. As Guiteras says, and Bancroft expresses the same ideas in his second volume of his "History of the United States," the war which was on the point of breaking out was not about the right to cut the timber of Campeche in the Bay of Honduras, nor because of the difference between the King of Spain and the South Sea Company, nor about the disputed frontiers of Florida. All these questions could have been easily settled. The sole aim and end was to compel Spain to renounce her right of inspecting or examining suspected merchant vessels that cruised in the Antilles, in order that Great Britain might extend her insidious operations.

      After much deliberation on both sides, an instrument was drawn up and signed, in which the mutual claims for damages sustained in the overseas commerce were balanced and settled. The king of Spain demanded from the South Sea Company sixty-eight thousand pounds as his share of their profits, in the slave-trade; on the other hand he paid to the British merchants as indemnity for losses caused by unwarranted seizures the sum of ninety-five pounds. The question with regard to the boundaries of Florida was also disposed of; it was agreed that both nations were to retain the land then in their possession, until a duly appointed commission should determine the exact boundaries, which meant that Great Britain would hold jurisdiction over the country to the mouth of St. Mary's River.

      The discussion about this agreement in the British parliament did not add to the glory of the United Kingdom. Walpole spoke in favor of its acceptance, saying "It requires no great abilities in a minister to pursue such measures as make a war unavoidable. But how many ministers have known the art of avoiding war by making a safe and honorable peace?" The Duke of Newcastle, not credited with too much intelligence, opposed the measure. William Pitt, Pulteny and others sided with him. The opposition finally triumphed. Bancroft says of this disgraceful termination of a conference intended to seek equitable solution of a most harassing international problem:

Скачать книгу