An event in the last year of the administration of Las Casas gave rise to festivities of a memorable character. When the war between Spain and the French Republic broke out, General D. Gabriel Aristizabal, who operated in Hayti, did not want the ashes of Columbus to be lost during the ensuing disturbances. It seemed more appropriate, too, that they should not remain in the place where he had been slandered and persecuted and where the villain Bobadilla had put him in fetters, but in the island that had always smiled upon him. On the fifteenth of January, 1796, there entered into the port of Havana the warship _San Lorenzo_, carrying the casket. It was received by Governor Las Casas and General Araoz, the bishops Penalver and Tres Palacios, and between two lines of soldiers was carried to the cathedral, where it was deposited in a humble niche. Though the first city of the island did not then raise a monument to Columbus it was done by a much smaller town, Cardenas, which for this act alone deserves to be mentioned.
The inscription upon the stone, under which the remains of Columbus found rest, reads:
D. O. M. Clares Heros. Ligustin. CHRISTOPHORUS COLUMBUS A Se, Rei Nautic. Scient. Insign. Niv. Orb. Detect. Araque Castell. Et Legin. Regib. Subject. Vallice. Occub. XIII Kal. Jun. A.M. DVI Cartusianor. Hispal. Cadav. Custod. Tradit. Transfer. Nam. Ipse Praescrips. IN HISPANIOLAE METROP. ECC. Hinc Pace Sancit. Galliae Reipub. Cess In Hanc V. Mar. Concept. Imm. Cath. Ossa Trans. Maxim. Om. Frequent. Sepult. Mand. XIV. Kal. Feb. A. Md. C. C. X. C. V. I. HAVAN. CIVIT Tant. Vir. Meritor. In Se Non Immen. Pretros. Exux. In Optat Diem Tuitur. Hocce Monum. Erex. Praesul. Ill. D. D. Philippo Iph Trespalacios Civic AC Militar. Rei. Gen. Praef. Exme D.D. LUDOVICO DE LAS CASAS
When the administration of Las Casas came to an end, the municipality of Havana called a testimonial meeting for the sixteenth of December, 1796, which gave proof of the high esteem in which the extraordinary man was held by the people. Four years after his retirement, on the nineteenth of November, 1800, he died of poison. He had not escaped criticism by those who saw in his enforcement of forgotten laws and in many of his new ordinances the manifestation of an arbitrary spirit; but it was universally conceded that during his government Cuba reached a high-water mark in her development. Though the corruption and degradation of the court at Madrid had a baneful influence upon the Spanish colonies, the island which had enjoyed the blessings of his rule and caught a breath of the spirit of such men as Arango and Montalvo could never again be contented unquestioningly to accept the dictates of that court. The flood of new liberal ideas which, coming from France, swept over the whole world, could not be turned back at el Morro. They found their way into the hearts and the minds of the people and slowly but surely taught them to see where their ultimate salvation lay.