Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 108 of 170 - First - Home
See Centinela De La Plata, September 1822
Number 8; Argos De Buenos Ayres Number 85.)
The island of Cuba as yet contains only one forty-second part of the
population of France; and one half of its inhabitants, being in the
most abject indigence, consume but little.
Its revenue is nearly equal
to that of the Republic of Columbia, and it exceeds the revenue of all
the custom-houses of the United States* before the year 1795, when
that confederation had 4,500,000 inhabitants, while the island of Cuba
contained only 715,000. (* The custom-houses of the United States,
which yielded in 1801 to 1808 sixteen millions of dollars, produced in
1815 but 7,282,000.) The principal source of the public revenue of
this fine colony is the custom-house, which alone produces above
three-fifths, and amply suffices for all the wants of the internal
administration and military defence. If in these latter years, the
expense of the general treasury of the Havannah amounted to more than
four millions of piastres, this increase of expense is solely owing to
the obstinate struggle maintained between the mother country and her
freed colonies. Two millions of piastres were employed to pay the land
and sea forces which poured back from the American continent, by the
Havannah, on their way to the Peninsula. As long as Spain, unmindful
of her real interests, refuses to recognize the independence of the
New Republics, the island of Cuba, menaced by Columbia and the Mexican
Confederation, must support a military force for its external defence,
which ruins the colonial finances. The Spanish naval force stationed
in the port of the Havannah generally costs above 650,000 piastres.
The land forces require nearly one million and a half of piastres.
Such a state of things cannot last indefinitely if the Peninsula do
not relieve the burden that presses upon the colony.
From 1789 to 1797 the produce of the custom-house at the Havannah
never rose to more than 700,000 piastres. In 1814 it was 1,855,117.
From 1815 to 1819 the royal taxes in the port of the Havannah amounted
to 11,575,460 piastres; total 18,284,807 piastres; or, average year,
3,657,000 piastres, of which the municipal taxes formed 0.36.
The public revenue of the Administracion general de Rentas of the
jurisdiction of Havannah amounted:
in 1820 to 3,631,273 piastres.
in 1821 to 3,277,639 piastres.
in 1822 to 3,378,228 piastres.
The royal and municipal taxes of importation at the custom-house of
the Havannah in 1823 were 2,734,563 piastres.
The total amount of the revenue of the Havannah in 1824 was 3,025,300
piastres.
In 1825 the revenue of the town and jurisdiction of the Havannah was
3,350,300 piastres.
These partial statements show that from 1789 to 1824 the public
revenue of Cuba has been increased sevenfold.
According to the estimates of the Cajas matrices, the public revenue
in 1822 was, in the province of the Havannah alone, 4,311,862
piastres; which arose from the custom-house (3,127,918 piastres), from
the ramos de directa entrada, as lottery, tithes, etc. (601,808
piastres), and anticipations on the charges of the Consulado and the
Deposito (581,978 piastres). The expenditure in the same year, for the
island of Cuba, was 2,732,738 piastres, and for the succour destined
to maintain the struggle with the continental colonies declared
independent, 1,362,029 piastres. In the first class of expenditure we
find 1,355,798 piastres for the subsistence of the military forces
kept up for the defence of the Havannah and the neighbouring places;
and 648,908 piastres for the royal navy stationed in the port of the
Havannah. In the second class of expense foreign to the local
administration we find 1,115,672 piastres for the pay of 4234 soldiers
who, after having evacuated Mexico, Columbia and other parts of the
Continent formerly Spanish possessions, passed by the Havannah to
return to Spain; 164,000 piastres is the cost of the defence of the
castle of San Juan de Ulloa.
I here terminate the Political Essay on the island of Cuba, in which I
have traced the state of that important Spanish possession as it now
is. My object has been to throw light on facts and give precision to
ideas by the aid of comparisons and statistical tables. That minute
investigation of facts is desirable at a moment when, on the one hand
enthusiasm exciting to benevolent credulity, and on the other
animosities menacing the security of the new republics, have given
rise to the most vague and erroneous statements. I have as far as
possible abstained from all reasoning on future chances, and on the
probability of the changes which external politics may produce in the
situation of the West Indies. I have merely examined what regards the
organization of human society; the unequal partition of rights and of
the enjoyments of life; the threatening dangers which the wisdom of
the legislator and the moderation of free men may ward off, whatever
be the form of the government. It is for the traveller who has been an
eyewitness of the suffering and the degradation of human nature to
make the complaints of the unfortunate reach the ear of those by whom
they can be relieved. I observed the condition of the blacks in
countries where the laws, the religion and the national habits tend to
mitigate their fate; yet I retained, on quitting America, the same
horror of slavery which I had felt in Europe. In vain have writers of
ability, seeking to veil barbarous institutions by ingenious turns of
language, invented the expressions negro peasants of the West Indies,
black vassalage, and patriarchal protection: that is profaning the
noble qualities of the mind and the imagination, for the purpose of
exculpating by illusory comparisons or captious sophisms excesses
which afflict humanity, and which prepare the way for violent
convulsions.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 108 of 170
Words from 110174 to 111183
of 174507