The Peninsular electoral law of June, 1890, was adapted to Cuba and Puerto Rico at the suggestion of Sagasta, who, in the exposition to the Queen Regent, which accompanied the project of autonomy, stated:  That the inhabitants of the Antilles frequently complained of, and lamented the irritating inequalities which alone were enough to obstruct or entirely prevent the exercise of constitutional privileges, and he concludes with these remarkable words:  " ...  So that, if by arbitrary dispositions without appeal, by penalties imposed by proclamations of the governors-general, or by simply ignoring the laws of procedure, the citizen may be restrained, harassed, deported even to distant territories, it is impossible for him to exercise the right of free speech, free thought, or free writing, or the freedom of instruction, or religious tolerance, nor can he practise the right of union and association.”  These words constitute a synopsis of the causes that made the Spanish Government’s tardy attempts at reform in the administration of its ultramarine possessions illusive; that mocked the people’s legitimate aspirations, destroyed their confidence in the promises of the home Government, and made the people of Puerto Rico look upon the American soldiers, when they landed, not as men in search of conquest and spoliation, but as the representatives of a nation enjoying a full measure of the liberties and privileges, for a moderate share of which they had vainly petitioned the mother country through long years of unquestioning loyalty.

The royal decree conceding autonomy to Puerto Rico was signed on November 25, 1897.  On April 21, 1898, Governor-General Manuel Macias, suspended the constitutional guarantees and declared the island in state of war.  A few months later Puerto Rico, recognized too late as ripe for self-government by the mother country, became a part of the territory of the United States.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 58:  The slaveholders were paid in Government bonds (schedules), redeemable in ten years.  They lost their labor supply, and had neither capital nor other means to replace it.  Their ruin became inevitable.  An English or German syndicate bought up the bonds at 15 per cent.]

[Footnote 59:  See Part II, chapter on Finances.]

PART II

THE PEOPLE AND THEIR INSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER XXVII

SITUATION AND GENERAL APPEARANCE OF PUERTO RICO

The island of Puerto Rico, situated in the Atlantic Ocean, is about 1,420 miles from New York, 1,000 miles from Havana, 1,050 miles from Key West, 1,200 miles from Panama, 3,450 miles from Land’s End in England, and 3,180 from the port of Cadiz.  It is about 104 miles in length from east to west, by 34 miles in average breadth, and has an area of 2,970 square miles.  It lies eastward of the other greater Antilles, Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica, and although inferior even to the last of these islands in population and extent, it yields to none of them in fertility.