§ THE EARL OF CLARENDONsaid, he wished to take that opportunity of communicating to their Lordships the contents of a despatch from Her Majesty's Consul General at the Havannah, which had arrived so recently that they had not been included among the papers already presented to their Lordships. As it had often been his painful duty—as it had been that of other Members of the House—to call attention to the negligent manner in which the treaties between Spain and this country, with reference to the slave trade, had been carried out, he had now great satisfaction in stating that since the appointment of the last Captain General of Cuba a marked improvement in the mode of executing the treaties had been apparent; regulations of the most useful kind had not only been adopted, but carried into effect; a system for the registration of slaves had been established throughout the island; and all officials who were found to be connected with the traffic in slaves were immediately removed. The Consul General stated that, under the orders that had been issued, he understood that nearly all the most recently imported Africans bad been released from slavery, and that the officer who was employed by the Spanish Government in this service had displayed great energy and activity in the performance of his duty by tracing and following up the negroes brought over, and releasing them. The despatch stated—
I have no hesitation in acquainting your Lordship that these energetic measures cannot fail to have a most salutary effect, and that the Government are determined to enforce the observance of the treaties.Since that, another despatch had been received, which stated that three district Governors of the island of Cuba had been removed from their districts, and were then under trial in consequence of not having carried out their orders with due effect. 1535 He was sorry to say that in consequence of the state of affairs in Spain the Governor General of Cuba (the Marquess of Pezuela) had been recalled; but General Espartero had given the best evidence of his intention to act in the same spirit by appointing General Concha to the important office of Governor General of Cuba. He could assure their Lordships that no efforts on the part of Her Majesty's Government would be wanting to secure a continuance of the good measures which had been adopted, and he had every reason to hope, from his knowledge of General Espartero, that he would take the same course. Before he sat down he would mention another matter which he thought well deserved public notice. For some months past there had been a report which, he was sorry to say, was very generally believed in the United States, notwithstanding all the forms of contradiction that had been given to it, that it had been for some time past the fixed intention of Her Majesty's Government to Africanise the island of Cuba and establish a black republic there, which it was considered would be most dangerous to the tranquillity of the Southern States; and that rumour had been made the pretext for all those bucaneering expeditions against Cuba which he believed the President and Government of the United States were most earnest in their endeavours to put a stop to. He had been asked whether such a treaty was not in existence, or whether negotiations had not been entered into for the formation of such a treaty; but his answer was, that the first rumour he ever heard on the subject came from the other side of the Atlantic; that they had never made any other application to the Government of Spain than for the faithful observance of the treaties to put down the slave trade which the United States, just as much as themselves, were bound to assist in. The report in question had obtained so much ground in America that he thought it his duty, on the last opportunity which he would have of bringing the subject before the House this Session, to give this formal contradiction to the report.