For the present, at least, the attempt to rescue the Island of Cuba from the stern despotism of Spain, appears to have totally failed. Lopez has suffered an ignominious death, in a daring enterprise, which, had it succeeded, would have placed him among the heroes and benefactors of mankind; his followers have been dispersed, hunted by bloodhounds, captured, and executed without trial, or transported to Spain to suffer under the relentless maxims of Spanish justice; and so far from being objects of sympathy to their own countrymen, have been classed with Morgan, Lolonois, Roche, Braziliano, Bat, the Portuguese, and others of the bloody buccaniers of Tone, whose sole object was plunder, and whose only means of success, treachery and murder. The drama being closed, and the curtain fallen, we propose briefly to review the plot, the author, the actors, and the incidents; first, however, offering a few preliminary observations.

Our readers all know that Cuba is one of the largest and richest islands of the world, containing about half as many inhabitants as the thirteen British American colonies, when they threw off the yoke of the mother country, and achieved their independence. Owing to influences which it is not our purpose to specify, it took no part with the Spanish colonies on the Continent in their struggle for independence, but remained, and still remains, a dependency of Spain, whose colonial system is a compendium of all the abuses of the worst species of government. While the Queen of Spain is struggling to maintain a waning and precarious authority at home, she exercises a despotic sway in Cuba, administered by petty officers, who govern without control, and almost invariably exhibit the characteristic of every slave when he becomes a master. Abjectly subservient to those above them, they make amends for their bondage by treading on those beneath, and signalize their loyalty to the sovereign by oppressing the people. The inhabitants of Cuba have no constitutional rights; no voice or influence in making their own laws, or choosing their own officers; and in addition to these deprivations, by far the larger portion of them, the Creoles, natives of the island, are excluded from all the high offices, and considered as an inferior race by what are called "The old Spaniards."These are among the grievances they suffer. Connected with and arising from that source, is a train of petty social abuses and mortifications, too tedious to enumerate, and, perhaps, not worth enumerating.

* For the Life of Lopez, see Review for January, 1850.

Now, what did our ancestors do here in these United States, when suffering under the evils of a colonial system, by no means so mortifying and oppressive? They declared themselves independent, and justified their conduct by asserting the great truth, that the people had not only a right to change their government, but also a right to decide when such change became necessary to their prosperity and happiness. On this ground they fought, and on this they triumphed. They wrested the sceptre from kings, and shook the colonial system to its centre. They did more :— they laid the foundation of a great radical change, not only in our ideas of the limits of authority and obedience, but in the very structure of society itself, which is gradually extending to the old world.

Having proclaimed themselves independent, and made good that independence by great sacrifices of blood and treasure, it seems not a little strange and inconsistent, that a people thus circumstanced should withhold all sympathy from those in a similar situation with that they once felt so grievously, and who were at least presumed to be ready to discard a despotism ten times more galling than that which called forth their own resistance. Does it not seem equally strange, that long before it was ascertained whether or not the great majority of Cubans were in favor of independence, and ready to assert it by arms, there should be a hue and cry raised from one end of the Union to the other, against all whose sympathies or services were enlisted in a cause hallowed in the heart of every true lover of freedom? Does it not seem still more strange, that as little sympathy should have been shown for the fate of some hundreds of as gallant men as ever lived; men, many of whom had shed their blood and would have gloried in dying for their country, captured when incapable of resistance, shot down without trial, like dogs without owners, and buried like dogs, not in the heat and excitement of battle, and resistance, but in the cold indignity of cowardly revenge, without being allowed time for repentance, had they been conscious of wrong? And does it not seem strangest of all, that the administrators of a government founded on the right of resistance to wrong or oppression, and that of choosing their own rulers and making their own laws, should have made a treaty which may be, or at least has been, so construed, as to operate in effect as a guarantee to Spain of the right to oppress her colonies, and to place the United States under an obligation to uphold, if not actually assist her in riveting their chains? Further: does it not seem more than strange, a very phenomenon, that this same government, being the champion and exponent of liberty at least in Africa-should not only concede to a foreign state the right to shoot down any of its citizens found on Spanish territory under suspicious circumstances, but actually declare war against them in a proclamation, converting them into feræ naturæ, to be hunted by two-legged and four-legged bloodhounds, and employ its naval force in arresting every attempt to assist a people who it was presumed were about to struggle in a cause hallowed by our own example?

Yet such is actually the case. Following in the wake of England, in this, as in everything else, with abject servility, the present whig administration has not only slily and insidiously, but openly and directly discouraged the progress of liberty everywhere, except among the negroes, and now stands before the world, not as the champion of human rights, but of human wrongs. While shutting its eyes to the gross violation of law in Boston, New-York, Pennsylvania, and all over the north, perpetrated in