I Do Not Speak Of The Introduction Of Wines At The Port Of The Havannah, Which Amounted (According To The

Registers of the custom-house), in 1803, to 40,000 barrels; in 1823, to 15,000 pipas and 17,000

Barrels, to the value of 1,200,000 piastres; nor of the introduction of 6000 barrels of brandy from Spain and Holland, and 113,000 barrels (1,864,000 piastres) of flour. These wines, liquors and flour are consumed by the opulent part of the nation. The cereals of the United States have become articles of absolute necessity in a zone where maize, manioc and bananas were long preferred to every other amylaceous food. The development of a luxury altogether European, cannot be complained of amidst the prosperity and increasing civilization of the Havannah; but, along with the introduction of the flour, wine, and spirituous liquors of Europe, we find, in the year 1816, 1 1/2millions of piastres; and, in the year 1823, 3 1/2 millions for salt meat, rice and dried vegetables. In the last mentioned year, the importation of rice was 323,000 arrobas; and the importation of dried and salt meat (tasajo), for the slaves, 465,000 arrobas.

The scarcity of necessary articles of subsistence characterizes a part of the tropical climates where the imprudent activity of Europeans has inverted the order of nature: it will diminish in proportion as the inhabitants, more enlightened respecting their true interests, and discouraged by the low price of colonial produce, will vary the cultivation, and give free scope to all the branches of rural economy. The principles of that narrow policy which guides the government of very small islands, inhabited by men who desert the soil whenever they are sufficiently enriched, cannot be applicable to a country of an extent nearly equal to that of England, covered with populous cities, and where the inhabitants, established from father to son during ages, far from regarding themselves as strangers to the American soil, cherish it as their own country. The population of the island of Cuba, which in fifty years will perhaps exceed a million, may open by its own consumption an immense field to native industry. If the slave-trade should cease altogether, the slaves will pass by degrees into the class of free men; and society, being reconstructed, without suffering any of the violent convulsions of civil dissension, will follow the path which nature has traced for all societies that become numerous and enlightened. The cultivation of the sugar-cane and of coffee will not be abandoned; but it will no longer remain the principal basis of national existence than the cultivation of cochineal in Mexico, of indigo in Guatimala, and of cacao in Venezuela. A free, intelligent and agricultural population will progressively succeed a slave population, destitute of foresight and industry. Already the capital which the commerce of the Havannah has placed within the last twenty-five years in the hands of cultivators, has begun to change the face of the country; and to that power, of which the action is constantly increasing, another will be necessarily joined, inseparable from the progress of industry and national wealth - the development of human intelligence. On these united powers depend the future destinies of the metropolis of the West Indies.

In reference to what has been said respecting external commerce, I may quote the author of a memoir which I have often mentioned, and who describes the real situation of the island. "At the Havannah, the effects of accumulated wealth begin to be felt; the price of provisions has been doubled in a small number of years. Labour is so dear that a bozal negro, recently brought from the coast of Africa, gains by the labour of his hands (without having learned any trade) from four to five reals (two francs thirteen sous to three francs five sous) a day. The negroes who follow mechanical trades, however common, gain from five to six francs. The patrician families remain fixed to the soil: a man who has enriched himself does not return to Europe taking with him his capital. Some families are so opulent that Don Matheo de Pedroso, who died lately, left in landed property above two millions of piastres. Several commercial houses of the Havannah purchase, annually, from ten to twelve thousand cases of sugar, for which they pay at the rate of from 350,000 to 420,000 piastres." (De la situacion presente de Cuba in manuscript.) Such was the state of public wealth at the end of 1800. Twenty-five years of increasing prosperity have elapsed since that period, and the population of the island is nearly doubled. The exportation of registered sugar had not, in any year before 1800, attained the extent of 170,000 cases (31,280,000 kilogrammes); in these latter times it has constantly surpassed 200,000 cases, and even attained 250,000 and 300,000 cases (forty-six to fifty-five millions of kilogrammes). A new branch of industry has sprung up (that of plantations of the coffee tree) which furnishes an exportation of the value of three millions and a half of piastres. Industry, guided by a greater mass of knowledge, has been better directed. The system of taxation that weighed on national industry and exterior commerce has been made lighter since 1791, and been improved by successive changes. Whenever the mother-country, mistaking her own interests, has attempted to make a retrograde step, courageous voices have arisen not only among the Havaneros, but often among the Spanish rulers, in defence of the freedom of American commerce. A new channel has recently been opened for capital by the enlightened zeal and patriotic views of the intendant Don Claudio Martinez de Pinillos, and the commerce of entrepot has been granted to the Havannah on the most advantageous conditions.

The difficult and expensive interior communications of the island render its own productions dearer at the ports, notwithstanding the short distance between the northern and southern coasts.

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