The third of these issues was that of the tariff. Commercial relations between Cuba and the United States were naturally intimate and important to both countries, and afforded scope for almost endless discussions concerning and manipulations of tariff duties. It was in the power of the United States to enhance or to depress the prosperity of Cuba, by the adjustment of tariff rates. To admit Cuban sugar, not to mention tobacco, freely or at a low duty, into the American market meant prosperity for the island. To place a high tariff rate upon it meant hard times if not disaster in Cuba. During the period between the Ten Years' War and the War of Independence in Cuba, such tariff changes very seriously affected the economic and also the political condition of Cuba; and the final withdrawal of the reciprocity arrangement which had opened American markets to Cuba was one of the chief provoking causes of the final revolution in the island. That revolution would doubtless have come, in any case, but it was measurably hastened and exacerbated by the economic distress which was thus precipitated upon the island, and against which it was realized there could be no assurance until Cuba was an independent nation with full power to regulate and control her own commerce and her own economic system. Even then, as we shall see, for a time the island was involved in economic distress because of the unwillingness of certain sordid interests in the United States to perform the most obvious and indisputable moral duty of that country toward its neighbor. There are few passages which the friendly historian must more regret to record in the story of Cuban-American relations than that of the delay of the American Congress to enter into proper commercial reciprocity with Cuba as soon as the independence of that island was established.
We shall see in these pages why it was necessary, from the very beginning, for Cuba to be entirely freed and divorced from all political connection with Spain, and why all the various proposals of autonomy were essentially and inevitably unacceptable. Such proposals were repeatedly made, by the Spanish government, but they were invariably either consciously or unconsciously delusive. The story of Spain's promises to Cuba is a story of broken promises, and of disappointed hopes. Nor is that to be wondered at by those who take into consideration the circumstances in which the promises were made. When the impossible is promised, the promise is doomed to non-fulfilment. Spain was in an impossible position. In order to pacify Cuba she had to promise her reforms, autonomy, liberty. But in order to maintain herself at home she had to repudiate those promises. Their fulfilment in the West Indies would have been disastrous in the Iberian Peninsula. While Spain was a reactionary monarchy at home, she could not practice liberal and progressive democracy in her colonies. Even when her monarchy became constitutional, and even during the brief periods of her republican government, the full concession of Cuba's demands would have been incompatible with her domestic status. There was an irreconcilable conflict between the European system--even European republicanism--and the American system. Spain was compelled for the sake of her Peninsular integrity and tranquillity to adhere to the former, while Cuba would be and could be contented with nothing short of the latter. Such were the terms of the problem which arose in the early part of the Nineteenth Century. Its only possible solution was in the complete separation of the two countries, and the complete independence of Cuba.