Referring to conditions in 1763, Mr. Channing states that “never had the colonists felt a greater pride in their connection with the British empire.”  Among the great figures of the pre-revolutionary period in this country, none stands out more clearly than James Otis, of Boston, and Patrick Henry, of Virginia.  In an impassioned address, in 1763, Otis declared that “every British subject in America is of common right, by acts of Parliament, and by the laws of God and nature, entitled to all the essential privileges of Britons.  What God in his Providence has united let no man dare attempt to pull asunder.”  Thirteen years later, the sundering blow was struck.  Patrick Henry’s resolutions submitted to the Virginia House of Burgesses, in 1765, set that colony afire, but at that time neither he nor his associates desired separation and independence if their natural rights were recognized.  It was not until the revolution of 1895 that the independence of Cuba became a national demand, a movement based on realization of the hopelessness of further dependence upon Spain for the desired economic and fiscal relief.  As in the American colonies there appeared, from time to time, individuals or isolated groups who demanded drastic action on the part of the colonists, so were there Cubans who, from time to time, appeared with similar demands.  Nathaniel Bacon headed a formidable revolution in Virginia in 1676.  Massachusetts rebelled against Andros and Dudley in 1689.  From the passage of the Navigation Acts, in the middle of the 17th Century, until the culmination in 1775, there was an undercurrent of friction and a succession of protests.  The Cuban condition was quite the same excepting the fact of burdens more grievous and more frequent open outbreaks.

The records of many of the disorders are fragmentary.  Spain had no desire to give them publicity, and the Cubans had few means for doing so.  The Report on the Census of Cuba, prepared by the War Department of the United States, in 1899, contains a summary of the various disorders in the island.  The first is the rioting in 1717, when Captain-General Roja enforced the decree establishing a government monopoly in tobacco.  The disturbances in Haiti and Santo Domingo (1791-1800) resulting in the establishment of independence in Haiti, under Toussaint, excited unimportant uprisings on the part of negroes in Cuba, but they were quickly suppressed.  The first movement worthy of note came in 1823.  It was a consequence of the general movement that extended throughout Spanish-America and resulted in the independence of all Spain’s former colonies, excepting Cuba and Porto Rico.  That the influence of so vast a movement should have been felt in Cuba was almost inevitable.  As disorder continued throughout much of the time, the period 1820-1830 is best considered collectively.  The same influences were active, and the same forces were operative for the greater part of the term.  The accounts of