§ MR. O'KELLYsaid, that, before the Bill was read a second time, he wished to call the attention of the House to the conduct of the Government as regarded General Maceo. He had hitherto refrained from characterizing that conduct 1551 as it deserved, in consequence of the undertakings given by the Under Secretaries of State for the Colonies and Foreign Affairs that justice would be done in the case. He would remind the House that that gentleman escaped from Cuba to Gibraltar, where he expected to enjoy liberty and protection under the British flag. He was, however, seized by the agents of the British Government, and, without any process or form of law, handed over to what was to him a foreign and hostile Government. Although 10 months had elapsed since he (Mr. O'Kelly) first brought the question before the House, General Maceo still remained in prison. The contention of Her Majesty's Government, that the Spanish Government were not a party to what might be called the kidnapping of Maceo. was disproved by the Papers relating to the seizure. One of those Papers contained a letter from a high official, in which Maceo was described as a felon—a man who had been condemned by the tribunals of his country to some punishment, which he was undergoing at the time in question. But in the Papers actually presented to the House, the phrase, which declared that the Spanish Government had re-claimed this man as a felon, was eliminated, and for it was substituted the euphemistic translation that "Maceo was suffering imprisonment," notwithstanding the fact that it was upon the false statement that Maceo was a felon that the authorities at Gibraltar gave him up to the Spanish Government. Her Majesty's Government, however, deliberately avoided grappling with the difficulty, and stated that the Spanish Government did not make any misstatement, but that the fault lay wholly with the officials at Gibraltar. That was disproved by the Papers laid upon the Table; and, therefore, it was dishonest that the Government should try to hide their own misconduct by punishing some officials for what was, after all, a mistake into which the latter were led by the misrepresentations of the Spanish Consul, while they passed over others who were more to blame. The conduct of two Police Inspectors at Gibraltar was as bad as could be; and anyone who compared the evidence given before the Court of Inquiry would come to the conclusion that those men, if not guilty of perjury, came perilously near it. Further, the Spanish 1552 Government had admitted the weakness of their case by letting go two of the men taken prisoners with Maceo. When Her Majesty's Government accepted the compromise of the Spanish Government, they stated, in palliation of the act, that they had made such terms with the latter that Maceo would be treated with the consideration due to his rank, and they gave it to be understood that he would be held only on parole of some kind. But the fact was that Maceo had been sent to one of the worst places in Spain for a man born in the tropics, a place where he complained of suffering from the cold in the middle of July. On the 14th of July, Maceo wrote him (Mr. O'Kelly) a letter complaining how bitterly he was suffering from the cold at that period of the year. The Spanish Government, moreover, munificently supplied him with 1s. 3d. a-day to support himself, his wife, and his nephew, who was depending on him. The fact was, the British Government had handed this man back into a position worse than slavery. It would not be in his (Mr. O'Kelly's) power to take a Division on the matter now; but when the House met again next Session, if Maceo was still in prison, he would ask the House to say whether the Government could continue to submit to the indignity of having a man taken from under their flag by misrepresentation, without taking such measures as they would be justified in doing to restore this man to the liberty of which they had deprived him.