In 1882 an event occurred which for a time seemed likely to draw England into the controversy. Three Cuban patriots, Maceo, Rodriguez, and a third whose name is not of record, escaped from custody while they were being transferred from one penal colony in Spain to another. They hastened to gain English territory, and fled to Gibraltar. One of the rights sacred to the English government was the right of asylum. This the Spanish government proceeded to ignore. The Spanish consul notified the English authorities that the fugitives must be returned to Spain, and suggested as a method which would be productive of the least trouble that at a time and place agreed upon they be sent across the border, whereupon the Spanish authorities could apprehend them without difficulty and the controversy would be happily ended. Through some misapprehension on the part of the British officials, this was done. But the end was not yet. The British government, when it learned of the occurrence, promptly demanded the return of the men to British soil, under the right of asylum. The Spanish government exhausted all its arguments in vain. Great Britain stood firm, but when Spain had surrendered two of the fugitives, the matter was finally dropped and the fate of the third one was left to the mercies of Spain.
The history of Cuba was from this time on, until rebellion finally flamed into the war in which, with the aid of the United States, she gained her independence, one of petty persecutions, and retaliation by continuous uprisings, small in character but indicative of the smouldering fire. These were frequently aided by filibustering expeditions sent by the Cuban Junta in New York.
In 1885 a revolt took place in the provinces of Santa Clara and Santiago, always the hotbed of rebellion. The rebellion was quickly suppressed, but its leaders, and a large number of other Cubans, who were merely under suspicion of complicity, were executed without trial. One of the leaders, General Vidal, was banished from Cuba, but, when he was about to leave for Jamaica, under an arrangement made with the Spanish authorities, he was brutally murdered by hired assassins.
Meanwhile the administration of justice in Cuba would have been almost ludicrous if it had not been tragic. The Spaniards openly practiced the most egregious frauds at the polls, and by all the chicanery known to corrupt politics kept the Creoles from the participation in the government which Spain had so glibly promised them. One of the interesting methods to prevent the voting of the poor in Cuba was the prohibition under a law passed on December 12, 1892, of bona fide citizens from exercising the right of suffrage unless they paid the sum of five dollars in taxes. This law applied to black and white alike, and was prohibitive so far as the greater number of the former were concerned.