While the Spanish settlements in the Pacific Ocean were threatened by great armaments fitted out by rival nations, they were at the same time attacked by a singular and more formidable hostility, which originated in the defects of a severe and contracted policy. The association and the enterprises of the buccaneers, if they did not in the first instance benefit geography, tended at least to familiarise European seamen with the navigation of the Pacific Ocean, and gave an air of facility to undertakings which had before been regarded as difficult in the extreme.

The despotic administration of the Spanish colonies in the West Indies incurred the very evils which it sought to avoid. Even the Spaniards themselves felt oppressed by the numerous restrictions which were placed on trade; and gave stealthy encouragement to foreign interlopers, who supplied them at an easier rate with articles which could not be legally procured without paying enormous exactions. English traders soon made their appearance in these seas; and, as the Spanish authorities on the one hand treated them as enemies, or even as pirates, while on the other they were invited by the profits of a contraband trade, they soon learned to adopt the precaution of going well armed.

The cruelties of the Spaniards to the native inhabitants of Cuba terminated in the depopulation of that fine island.