In an exhaustive review of the trouble between Spain and her Cuban possessions, published in 1873, the Edinburg Review said: 

“It is well known that Spain governs the island of Cuba with an iron and bloodstained hand.  The former holds the latter deprived of civil, political and religious liberty.  Hence the unfortunate Cubans being illegally prosecuted and sent into exile, or executed by military commissions in time of peace; hence their being kept from public meeting, and forbidden to speak or write on affairs of state; hence their remonstrances against the evils that afflict them being looked upon as the proceedings of rebels, from the fact that they are bound to keep silence and obey; hence the never-ending plague of hungry officials from Spain to devour the product of their industry and labor; hence their exclusion from public stations, and want of opportunity to fit themselves for the art of government; hence the restrictions to which public instruction with them is subjected, in order to keep them so ignorant as not to be able to know and enforce their rights in any shape or form whatever; hence the navy and the standing army, which are kept in their country at an enormous expenditure from their own wealth, to make them bend their knees and submit their necks to the iron yoke that disgraces them; hence the grinding taxation under which they labor, and which would make them all perish in misery but for the marvelous fertility of their soil.”

CHAPTER XIII.

The massacre of the Virginius officers and crew.

Excitement in the United States over a Spanish Outrage of Twenty-five Years Ago—­The Virginius a Blockade Runner—­Severity of the Spanish Court Martial—­Insolence to the American Consul—­ Indignation in the United States—­Negotiations Between Washington and Madrid—­Settlement an Unsatisfactory One to Most People—­No Just Retribution Ever Made.

It was less than twenty-five years before the destruction of the Maine, that another vessel whose crew met its fate in a Spanish port in Cuba was the subject of as intense public interest in the United States as that created by the catastrophe of 1898.  The hopeful progress of the Cuban revolution of 1868-78 had stimulated their friends in the United States to aid the insurgents in every way possible, by money, men and the munitions of war.  Filibustering was constant and scarcely discouraged by the people of the United States, in spite of the protest of Spain.  It was as a result of this condition that the terrible affair of the Virginius occurred.