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TO THE
PETERBORO, February 14, 1873.
My Dear Friends:
The pamphlet, entitled "Slavery in Cuba," which your letter promised me, has, at last, come. I have read it with interest.
You ask me to write an article in behalf of the Cuban cause. But I am getting too old to write for the press. Moreover, it is enough for me to say that I am still the friend of that cause - as much so as I was when, a few years ago, I gave largely and repeatedly to the Cuban Aid Association in New York, and as much so as I was when an article from my pen, in behalf of that cause, was published in the N.Y. Sun.
As I view it, our Government should, long ago, have conceded belligerent rights to the Cubans struggling for freedom from the yoke of Spain and from the yoke of Slavery. Then, too, if this concession bad not resulted in such freedom, our Government should have united with other Governments to put an end to that infernal type of Slavery which Spanish power upholds in Cuba, and to the wholesale murders which this power persists in perpetrating there.
The world is too far advanced in a rational civilization and in an all-comprehending fraternal religion, that it should any longer be allowable for the nations to stand still whilst one of them continues to indulge in the horrid crimes of which, if they were ever guilty, they have thoroughly repented. If Spain will not cease from her singular and superlative wickedness, the other nations should make common cause against her, and stay her enslaving and murderous hand.
The Heavenly Father has placed the whole world in the care of the whole world, the whole human family in the care of the whole human family. The conventional or human arrangement, whereby a nation is left to govern itself, is wise; but it does not exempt the nation from the world's supervision. If such nation, instead of governing its subjects rationally, shall sink into the madness of enslaving and slaughtering them, then must the other nations fall back upon their original right, and come again under their original obligation, to rescue this outraged portion of their fellow-men.
What, however, has unhappy Cuba been, for ages, but a slave-pen and a slaughter-house? It is emphatically high time that the nations should spread over her the wing of mercy, even if, in doing so, they should have to override both national and international law. Intervention in such a case is backed by the higher law of the Great God and of aggregate mankind.
Far better, however, than this will it be if Spain - now, thank Heaven! a Republic - shall be so imbued with the spirit of her Castelar and her other high-souled orators and leaders, as to deal fraternally and lovingly with all the races of Cuba.
Your Society, in its great work of enlightening and directing the public sentiment, will need money to pay printers and lecturers. I trust that many will contribute to supply this need.
Please hand your Treasurer the enclosed draft for a couple of hundred dollars.
Go on, and stop not till your great work is done !
Your friend,
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