“The last number in the Verdad has a searching analysis of the Statistical Report of the Island of Cuba for 1847, which it says, the Government in the ‘inscrutable wisdom of colonial omnipotence’ suppressed. –The figures are quoted, showing the number of White, Free Colored, and Slaves in the census of 1841, compared to the Census of 1847, showing a Diminution of 108,872 slaves in those years. — It will be seen, says the New York Tribune…, if La Verdad has quoted correctly the Government returns, that this blotting out of a ninth part of the population of this Island has not resulted from war, pestilence, or emigration. —The real explanation is, that the colored race exists in a state of slavery and hardship unfavorable to life, and the country is still less favorable to increase than the cities, on account of the greater severity of labor, the capacity of females to proportion to men, and, the stinted and inferior quality of food, the harsh exposure, and the want of useful sleep .. the horrid slaughter made by the military commission of the Government of Cuba, in which eight or ten thousand negroes were murdered in Matanzas and Cardenas alone….” (Liberator, August 11, 1848, pg 2)
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