Everybody's resources have been
wasted and spent uselessly, and many landholders, wealthy but
yesterday, have been ruined if not reduced to misery. The leading
merchants and proprietors, men who were identified with the progress
of the country and had vast resources at their command, after a long
and tenacious struggle have succumbed at last under the accumulation
of misfortunes banded against them."
Such was the situation in 1880.
To relieve the financial distress of the country a series of
ordinances were enacted[59] which culminated in the reform laws of
March 15, 1895, and if royal decrees had had power to cure the
incurable or remove the causes that for four centuries had undermined
the foundations of Spain's colonial empire, they might, possibly, have
sustained the crumbling edifice for some time longer.
But they came too late. The Antilles were slipping from Spain's grasp;
nor could Weyler's inhuman proceedings in Cuba nor the tardy
concession of a pseudo-autonomy to Puerto Rico arrest the movement.
The laws of March 15, 1895, for the administrative reorganization of
Cuba and Puerto Rico, the basis of which was approved by a unanimous
vote of the leaders of the Peninsula and Antillean parties in Cortes,
remained without application in Cuba because of the insurrection, and
in Puerto Rico because of the influence upon the inhabitants of this
island of the events in the neighboring island.
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