Such is the infirmity of human nature that few individuals can be safely trusted with despotic power; accordingly we find no Captain-General whose administration will bear the test of rigid examination. Indeed, the venality of a majority of these officials has been so gross as to have passed into a proverb. It is not to be expected that officers from Spain should consult the true interests of the Cubans; they are not sent hither for that purpose, but merely to look after the revenue of the crown, and to swell it to the very uttermost. The office of Governor-General is of course a brilliant prize, for which there are plenty of aspirants eagerly struggling, while the means by which a candidate is most likely to succeed in obtaining the appointment presupposes a character of an inferior order. This official knows that he cannot count on a long term of office, and hence he makes no effort to study the interests or gain the good-will of the people over whom he presides. He has a twofold object only in view: namely, to keep the revenue well up to the mark, and to enrich himself as speedily as possible. The princely salary he receives--fifty thousand dollars per annum, with a palace and household attendants supplied--is but a portion of the income which, by a system of peculation, he is enabled to divert to his private coffers. As a rule, the Captain-General comes out to Cuba a poor man, and returns a rich one, however brief his term of office.
Occasionally during the lapse of years a true and patriotic man has filled this important post, when the remarkable elements of prosperity contained within the limits of this peerless land were rapidly developed and advanced. Such an one was Don Luis de las Casas, whose name is cherished by all patriotic Cubans, as also is that of Don Francisco de Arrango, an accomplished statesman and a native of Havana. He was educated in Spain, and designed to follow the law as a profession. This man, being thoroughly acquainted with the possibilities of the island and the condition and wants of his countrymen, succeeded in procuring the amelioration of some of the most flagrant abuses of the colonial system. In his argument for reform before the home government, he told them that serious dissent permeated every class of the community, and was bid in return to employ a still more stringent system of rule. To this Arrango replied that force was not remedy, and that to effectually reform the rebellious they must first reform the laws. His earnest reason carried conviction, and finally won concession. By his exertions the staple productions of the island were so much increased that the revenue, in place of falling short of the expenses of the government as his enemies had predicted, soon yielded a large surplus. He early raised his voice against the iniquitous slave trade, and suggested the introduction of white labor, though he admitted that the immediate and wholesale abolition of slavery was impracticable. This was the rock on which he split, as it regarded his influence with the Spaniards in Cuba, that is, with the planters and rich property holders. Slavery with them was a sine qua non. Many of them owned a thousand Africans each, and the institution, as an arbitrary power as well as the means of wealth, was ever dear to the Spanish heart. Former and subsequent Captains-General not only secretly encouraged the clandestine importation of slaves, after issuing an edict prohibiting it, but profited pecuniarily by the business. It was owing to his exertions that the duty on coffee, spirits, and cotton was remitted for a period of ten years, and that machinery for the sugar plantations was allowed to be imported into Cuba from the United States free of all duty.