countenanced the sending of supplies of every kind to the rebels,
and if American diplomacy had not again and again made
representations against Weyler’s ruthless policy. Canovas so
fully comprehended the necessity of averting American intervention
that he listened to the pressing demands of secretary Olney
and of the American minister in Madrid, Hannis Taylor, and
laid before the Cortes a bill introducing home rule in Cuba on
a more liberal scale than Maura, Abarzuza and Sagasta had
dared to suggest two years before. Canovas did not live to see
his scheme put into practice, as he was assassinated by an
anarchist at the baths of Santa Agueda, in the Basque Provinces,
on the 9th of August 1897. The queen-regent appointed General
Azcarraga, the war minister, as successor to Canovas; and a
few weeks later President McKinley sent General Woodford as
representative of the United States at the court of Madrid. At
the end of September 1897 the American minister placed on
record, in a note handed by him at San Sebastian to the minister
for foreign affairs, the duke of Tetuan, a strongly-worded protest
against the state of things in Cuba, and demanded in substance
that a stop should be put to Weyler’s proceedings, and some
measures taken to pacify the island and prevent the prolongation
of disturbances that grievously affected American interests.
Less than a fortnight after this note had been delivered, the
Conservative cabinet resigned, and the queen-regent asked
Sagasta to form a new administration. The Liberal government
recalled Weyler, and sent out, as governor-general of Cuba,
Marshal Blanco, a conciliatory and prudent officer, who agreed
to carry out the home-rule policy which was concerted by Señor
Moret and by Sagasta, with a view to obtain the goodwill of
the president of the United States. If things had not already
gone too far in Cuba, and if public opinion in the United States
had not exercised irresistible pressure on both Congress and
president, the Moret home-rule project would probably have
sufficed to give the Cubans a fair amount of self-government.
All through the winter of 1897–1898 the Madrid government
took steps to propitiate the president and his government, even
offering them a treaty of commerce which would have allowed
American commerce to compete on equal terms with Spanish
imports in the West Indies and defeat all European competition.
But the blowing up of the American cruiser “Maine” in the port
of Havana added fuel to the agitation in the United States
against Spanish rule in Cuba. When Congress met in Washington
the final crisis was hurried on. Spain appealed in vain to
European mediation, to the pope, to courts and governments.
All, with the exception of Great Britain, showed sympathy for
the queen-regent and her government, but none were disposed
to go beyond purely platonic representations in Washington.
At last, on the 20th of April 1898, when the Spanish government
learned that the United States minister, General Woodford,
had been instructed by telegraph to present an
ultimatum demanding the cessation of hostilities
in Cuba, with a view to prepare for the evacuation
War with the
United States.
of the island by the Spanish forces, Sagasta decided to give
General Woodford his passports and to break off official
relations with the United States. It was an open secret that
this grave decision was not taken at the cabinet council presided
over by the queen without a solemn protest by Señor Moret
and the ministers of war and marine that the resources of Spain
were totally inadequate for a struggle with the United States.
These protests were overruled by the majority of the ministers,
who invoked dynastic and monarchical considerations in favour
of a desperate stand, however hopeless, in defence of the last
remnants of the colonial empire of Spain. Reckless as was
the course adopted, it was in touch with the feelings of the
majority of a nation which had been to the very end deceived
by the government and by the press not only in regard to its
own resources, but also in regard to those of the United States
and of the colonists in arms in Cuba and in the Philippine Islands.
The sequel is soon told. The Spanish fleet in the Far East
was defeated in Manila Bay by Admiral Dewey. Admiral
Cervera’s squadron was destroyed outside the Bay of Santiago
de Cuba by the American fleet under Admirals Sampson and
Schley. All communication between Spain and her colonies
was thus cut off. An American expedition landed near Santiago,
and the Spanish garrison surrendered after a fortnight’s show
of resistance. Very shortly afterwards, at the end of July,
Spain sued for peace through the mediation of French diplomacy,
which did not obtain much from President McKinley. It was
agreed that hostilities should cease on sea and, land, but that
Spain should evacuate Cuba and Porto Rico pending the negotiations
for a peace treaty which were to begin in Paris at the end
of September 1898. In the meantime Manila and its garrison
had surrendered to the Americans. The agreement of the 9th
of August, signed by M. Cambon, the French ambassador in
Washington, in the name of Spain, clearly stipulated that her
rule in the New World must be considered at an end, and that
the fate of the Philippines would be settled at the Paris negotiations.
Unfortunately, Spain indulged in the illusion that
America would perhaps respect her rights of sovereignty in
the Philippine Islands, or pay a considerable sum for their
cession and recognize the debts of Cuba and of the Philippines.
The American commission, presided over by secretary Day
in Paris, absolutely refused to admit the Spanish contention
that the United States or the new administration in Cuba and
the Philippines should be saddled with several hundred million
dollars of debts, contracted by the colonial treasuries, and
guaranteed by Spain, almost entirely to maintain Spanish rule
against the will of the Cubans and Filipinos. Spain could not
help assenting to a treaty by which she renounced unconditionally
all her rights of sovereignty over Cuba and Porto Rico and ceded
the Philippine and Sulu Islands and the largest of the Marianne
Islands in consideration of the payment of four millions sterling
by America. Thus ended a struggle which only left Spain
the Carolines and a few other islands in the Pacific, which she
sold to Germany in 1899 for £800,000, and a couple of islands
which were left out in the delimitation made by the Paris peace
treaty of the 12th of December 1898, and for which America
paid £20,000 in 1900.
The consequences of the war and of the loss of the colonies were very serious for Spanish finance. The national debt, which consisted before the war of £234,866,500 of external and internal consols and redeemable debts, and £24,250,000 of home floating debt, was increased Financial and Political Reorganization.by £46,210,000 of Cuban and Philippine debts, which tion the Cortes had guaranteed, and by £60,000,000 of debts contracted at a high rate of interest, and with the national guarantee, to meet the expenses of the struggle with the colonies and of the war with the United States. These additional burdens rendered it necessary that taxation and the budget should be thoroughly reorganized. Sagasta and the Liberal party would gladly have undertaken the reorganization of Spain and her finances, but the issue of the war and the unavoidable peace treaty had so evidently damaged their popularity in the country and their credit at court, that the government seized the pretext of an adverse division in the Senate to resign. The Liberals left office after having done all that was morally and materially possible, considering the extremely difficult, indeed inextricable, situation in which they found the country in October 1897. The task of reorganization was confided by the queen-regent to Señor Silvela, who had been universally recognized as the leader of the Conservatives and Catholics after the death of Canovas del Castillo. Silvela endeavoured to unite in what he styled a Modern Conservative party the bulk of the followers of Canovas; the Ultramontanes, who were headed by General Polavieja and Señor Pidal; the Catalan Regionalists, whose leader, Duran y Bas, became a cabinet minister; and his own personal following, of whom the most prominent were the home secretary, Señor Dato, and the talented and energetic finance minister, Señor Villaverde, upon whose shoulders rested the heaviest part of the task of the new cabinet. Silvela lacked the energy and decision which had been the characteristics of Canovas. He behaved constantly like a wary and cautious trimmer, avoiding all extreme measures, shaking off compromising allies like the Ultramontanes and the Regionalists, elbowing out of the cabinet
