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290 H. L. Janes to the royal exchequer and disagreeable to Her Catholic Majesty. The opportunities presented by the nature of the respective positions on the map of colony and mother-country for delaying practically at will the settlement of claims of Cuban origin against the Spanish government were almost always too tempting to be neglected by Spanish statesmen. A protest handed by our consul in Havana to the captain-general was referred to Washington, which informed Madrid. Madrid must await a direct report from Havana before it could consent to take up a discussion of the case. Regarding the particular case we have in hand, however, Spanish diplomacy acted with unwonted despatch and incisiveness. On the seventh day of March, 1854, when for the first time it appeared certain that the Black Warrior affair would come into the international arena, the captain-general transmitted official accounts of the seizure of the vessel and cargo to Spain and to the Spanish charge at Washington, who almost immediately on receipt of the Havana correspondence reported to his government on the general political situation in the United States. No one has sought to palliate the extraordinary conduct of our representative at the court of JMadrid during the course of this afifair. Soule was ambitiously exceeding his instructions and busily antagon- izing colleagues and government at Spain's capital. In his eager- ness to force a war and so wrest from Spain the possession of the Pearl of the Antilles, he was advancing claims and preferring charges of such stupendous magnitude that no government could in justice to itself think of entering into a discussion of the matter without being in possession of unusually full official information. Calderon de la Barca's appreciation of this situation is embodied in the instructions transmitted to ]Iagallon on April 13: the Spanish Secretary of State describes the expectant attitude of the Spanish government ; and it may be said, by way of introduction to the passage we quote, that Pezuela's first despatch of March 7 was to be continued by another prepared in time to catch the next monthly steamer, so that a complete report of the proceedings in Havana could have reached the Spanish Department of State only late in the month of April ■} This government has not refused, as Your Excellency will see, nor does it refuse in this nor in any other case, to fulfil the obligations that are imposed by international law and by justice. But to accede without further investigation and with unseemly haste to the extraordinary de- mands of Mr. Soule, presented in these solemn days' in a manner so 'Calderon to Pezuela, April 13, 1854. ^ The Lenten festival in Catholic Spain.