“The Creoles, no doubt, would be very glad to see Cuba annexed to the United States, and many of them ardently desire it.  It would relieve them from many great burdens they now bear, open their commerce to the world, rid them of a tyrannical government, and allow them to manage their own affairs in their own way.  But Spain derives from the possession of Cuba advantages too great to be relinquished.  She extracts from Cuba a revenue of twelve millions of dollars; her government sends its needy nobility, and all for whom it would provide, to fill lucrative offices in Cuba—­the priests, the military officers, the civil authorities, every man who fills a judicial post or holds a clerkship is from old Spain.  The Spanish government dares not give up Cuba if it were inclined.

“Nor will the people of Cuba make any effort to emancipate themselves by taking up arms.  The struggle with the power of Spain would be bloody and uncertain, even if the white population were united, but the mutual distrust with which the planters and the peasantry regard each other, would make the issue of such an enterprise still more doubtful.  At present it would not be safe for a Cuba planter to speak publicly of annexation to the United States.  He would run the risk of being imprisoned or exiled.”

Of course, if Cuba were to be annexed to the United States, the slave trade with Africa would cease to be carried on as now, though its perfect suppression might be found difficult.  Negroes would be imported in large numbers from the United States, and planters would emigrate with them.  Institutions of education would be introduced, commerce and religion would both be made free, and the character of the islanders would be elevated by the responsibilities which a free government would throw upon them.  The planters, however, would doubtless adopt regulations insuring the perpetuity of slavery; they would unquestionably, as soon as they were allowed to frame ordinances for the island, take away the facilities which the present laws give the slave for effecting his own emancipation.

Letter L.

English Exhibitions of Works of Art.

London, July 7, 1849.

I have just been to visit a gallery of drawings in water-colors, now open for exhibition.  The English may be almost said to have created this branch of art.  Till within a few years, delineations in water-colors, on drawing paper, have been so feeble and meagre as to be held in little esteem, but the English artists have shown that as much, though in a somewhat different way, may be done on drawing-paper as on canvas; that as high a degree of expression may be reached, as much strength given to the coloring, and as much boldness to the lights and shadows.  In the collection of which I speak, are about four hundred drawings not before exhibited.  Those which appeared to me the most remarkable, though not in the highest department of art, were still-life