that arrived while the siege was going on.  Compared with the enormous losses of life and limb that characterize our war, it is a mere bagatelle; and the magnitude of the prize is to be set off in contrast to the price which it cost.  Some of the regiments employed, however, were destined to suffer severely from the effects of their visit to Cuba; for, being sent to New York, the severity of a North-American winter was too much for constitutions that had been subjected for months to the heats of the tropics.  They were Irishly decimated, losing about nine-tenths of their men.[6]

If we can believe the Spaniards,—­and we see no reason for doubting the substantial correctness of their assertions,—­Lord Albemarle’s government was one of much severity, and even cruelty.  He ruled the Havana with a bundle of fasces, the rods being of iron, and the axe sharp, and which did not become rusty from want of use.  It was enough that a man was “guilty of being suspected” to insure him a drum-head court-martial, which tribunal sent many men to the scaffold, sometimes denying them religious consolations, an aggravation of punishment peculiarly terrible to Catholics, and which seems to have been wantonly inflicted, and in a worse spirit than that of the old persecutors, for it had not even fanaticism for its excuse.  The spirit of the capitulation seems to have been quite disregarded, though its letter may have been adhered to.  There may be some exaggeration in the Spanish statements, too,—­men who are subject to military rule generally looking at the conduct of their governors through very powerful glasses.  It is impossible for them to do otherwise; and the mildest proconsul that ever ruled must still be nothing but a proconsul, even if he were an angel.  Every man thus placed is entitled to as charitable construction of his conduct as can conscientiously be made; but this the English do not appear to understand, when the conduct of men of other races is canvassed.  With their own history blotched all over with cruel acts perpetrated by their military commanders, they set themselves up to judge of the deeds of the generals of other peoples, as if they alone could furnish impartial courts for the rendering of historical verdicts.  Their treatment of some American commanders, and particularly General Butler, is not decent in a people whose officers have wantonly poured out blood, often innocent, in nearly every country under the sun.  There was more cruelty practised by the English in any one month of the Sepoy War than has disgraced both sides of the Secession contest for the two years through which it has been waged.  The English are not a cruel people,—­quite the reverse,—­but it is a fact that their military history abounds more in devilish acts than that of any other people of corresponding civilization.  The reason of this is, that they look upon all men who resist them in some such spirit as the Romans regarded their foes, and as being in some sense rebels.  It is only with those who rebel against other Governments that those who live under the English Government ever sympathize.