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The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898

explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century

Volume I, 1493-1529

Edited and annotated by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson with historical introduction and additional notes by Edward Gaylord Bourne.

Contents of Volume I

Opinions concerning the ownership of the Moluccas. Hernando Colon, Fray Tom?s Duran, Sebastian Caboto, and Juan Vespucci; Badajoz April 13-15, 1524 Letters to the Spanish delegates at the Junta of Badajoz. C?rlos I of Spain; B?rgos, March 21 and April 10, 1524

Letter of authorization to Falero and Magalh?es. C?rlos I of Spain; Valladolid, March 22, 1518 Carta de el-rei de Castella para El-rei D. Manuel. C?rlos I of Spain; Barcelona, February 28, 1519 Instructions to Juan de Cartagena. C?rlos I of Spain; Barcelona, April 6, 1519 Carta do rei de Castella a Fernando de Magalh?es e a Ruy Falero. C?rlos I; Barcelona, April 19, 1519 ... 294 Extracto de una carta de las Indias. 1522. ... 296 De Molvccis Insulis. Maximillianus Transylvanus; Coloniae, 1523. ... 305

Bibliographical Data ... 339 Appendix: Chronological Tables ... 345

General Preface

The entrance of the United States of America into the arena of world-politics, the introduction of American influence into Oriental affairs, and the establishment of American authority in the Philippine archipelago, all render the history of those islands and their, numerous peoples a topic of engrossing interest and importance to the reading public, and especially to scholars, historians, and statesmen. The present work--its material carefully selected and arranged from a vast mass of printed works and unpublished manuscripts--is offered to the public with the intention and hope of casting light on the great problems which confront the American people in the Philippines; and of furnishing authentic and trustworthy material for a thorough and scholarly history of the islands. For this purpose, the Editors reproduce contemporaneous documents which constitute the best original sources of Philippine history. Beginning with Pope Alexander VI's line of demarcation between the Spanish and the Portuguese dominions in the New World , the course of history in the archipelago is thus traced through a period of more than three centuries, comprising the greater part of the Spanish r?gime.

In the selection of material, the Editors have sought to make the scope of the work commensurate with the breadth of the field, and to allot to each subject space proportioned to its interest; not only the political relations, but the social and religious, economic and commercial conditions of the Philippines have received due attention and care. All classes of writers are here represented--early navigators, officials civil and military, ecclesiastical dignitaries, and priests belonging to the various religious orders who conducted the missions among the Filipino peoples. To the letters, reports, and narratives furnished by these men are added numerous royal decrees, papal bulls and briefs, and other valuable documents. Most of this material is now for the first time made accessible to English-speaking readers; and the great libraries and archives of Spain, Italy, France, England, Mexico, and the United States have generously contributed to furnish it.

In the presentation of these documents, the Editors assume an entirely impartial attitude, free from any personal bias, whether political or sectarian. They aim to secure historical accuracy, especially in that aspect which requires the sympathetic interpretation of each author's thought and intention; and to depict faithfully the various aspects of the life of the Filipinos, their relations with other peoples , and the gradual ascent of many tribes from barbarism. They invite the reader's especial attention to the Introduction furnished for this series by Professor Edward Gaylord Bourne, of Yale University--valuable alike for its breadth of view and for its scholarly thoroughness. The Bibliographical Data at the end of each volume will supply necessary information as to sources and location of the documents published therein; fuller details, and of broader scope, will be given in the volume devoted to Philippine bibliography, at the end of the series.

Historical Introduction

The American people are confronted with two race problems, one within their own confines and long familiar but still baffling solution; the other, new, remote, unknown, and even more imperatively demanding intelligent and unremitting effort for its mastery.

In the first case there are some eight millions of people ultimately derived from various savage tribes in Africa but long since acclimatized, disciplined to labor, raised to civilized life, Christianized, and by the acquisition of the English language brought within a world of ideas inaccessible to their ancestors. Emancipated by the fortune of war they are now living intermingled with a ruling race, in it, but not of it, in an unsettled social status, oppressed by the stigma of color and harassed and fettered by race prejudice.

In the other case there are six or seven millions of Malays whose ancestors were raised from barbarism, taught the forms and manners of civilized life, Christianized, and trained to labor by Catholic missionaries three centuries ago. A common religion and a common government have effaced in large measure earlier tribal differences and constituted them a people; yet in the fullest sense of the word a peculiar people. They stand unique as the only large mass of Asiatics converted to Christianity in modern times. They have not, like the African, been brought within the Christian pale by being torn from their natural environment and schooled through slavery; but, in their own home and protected from general contact with Europeans until recent times, they have been moulded through the patient teaching, parental discipline, and self-sacrificing devotion of the missionaries into a whole unlike any similar body elsewhere in the world. They, too, by the fortunes of war have lost their old rulers and guides and against their will submit their future to alien hands. To govern them or to train them to govern themselves are tasks almost equally perplexing, nor is the problem made easier or clearer by the clash of contradictory estimates of their culture and capacity which form the ammunition of party warfare.

What is needed is as thorough and intelligent a knowledge of their political and social evolution as a people as can be gained from a study of their history. In the case of the Negro problem the historical sources are abundant and accessible and the slavery question is accorded, preeminent attention in the study of American history. In the Philippine question, however, although the sources are no less abundant and instructive they are and have been highly inaccessible owing, on the one hand, to the absolute rarity of the publications containing them, and, on the other, to their being in a language hitherto comparatively little studied in the United States. To collect these sources, scattered and inaccessible as they are, to reproduce them and interpret them in the English language, and to make it possible for university and public libraries and the leaders in thought and policy to have at hand the complete and authentic records of the culture and life of the millions in the Far East whom we must understand in order to do them justice, is an enterprise large in its possibilities for the public good.

In accordance with the idea that underlies this collection this Introduction will not discuss the Philippine question of today nor Philippine life during the last half century, nor will it give a short history of the Islands since the conquest. For all these the reader may be referred to recent publications like those of Foreman, Sawyer, or Worcester, or earlier ones like those of Bowring and Mallat, or to the works republished in the series. The aim of the Introduction is rather to give the discovery and conquest of the Philippines their setting in the history of geographical discovery, to review the unparalleled achievements of the early conquerors and missionaries, to depict the government and commerce of the islands before the revolutionary changes of the last century, and to give such a survey, even though fragmentary, of Philippine life and culture under the old r?gime as will bring into relief their peculiar features and, if possible, to show that although the annals of the Philippines may be dry reading, the history of the Philippine people is a subject of deep and singular interest.

In one generation, 1486-1522, the two little powers of the Iberian Peninsula had extended their sway over the seas until they embraced the globe. The way had been prepared for this unparalleled achievement by the courage and devotion of the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, who gave his life to the advancement of geographical discovery and of Portuguese commerce. The exploration of the west coast of Africa was the school of the navigators who sailed to the East and the West Indies, and out of the administration of the trade with Africa grew the colonial systems of later days.

In the last quarter of the fifteenth century the increasing obstructions in Egypt and by the Turks to the trade with the East Indies held out a great prize to the discoverer of an all-sea route to the Spice Islands. Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco da Gama solved this problem for Portugal, but the solution offered to Spain by Columbus and accepted in 1492 revealed a New World, the Indies of the West.

The King of Portugal, zealous to retain his monopoly of African and eastern exploration, and the pious sovereigns of Spain, desirous to build their colonial empire on solid and unquestioned foundations, alike appealed to the Pope for a definition of their rights and a confirmation of their claims. The world seemed big enough and with a spacious liberality Pope Alexander VI granted Ferdinand and Isabella the right to explore and to take possession of all the hitherto unknown and heathen parts of the world west of a certain line drawn north and south in the Atlantic Ocean. East of that line the rights of Portugal, resting on their explorations and the grants of earlier popes, were confirmed.

The documentary history of the Philippines begins with the Demarcation Bulls and the treaty of Tordesillas, for out of them grew Magellan's voyage and the discovery of the islands; and without them the Philippines would no doubt have been occupied by Portugal and later have fallen a prey to the Dutch as did the Moluccas.

King John of Portugal was dissatisfied with the provisions of the Demarcation Bulls. He held that the treaty between Spain and Portugal in 1479 had resigned to Portugal the field of oceanic discovery, Spain retaining only the Canaries; and he felt that a boundary line only a hundred leagues west of the Azores not only was an infringement on his rights but would be a practical embarrassment in that it would not allow his sailors adequate sea room for their African voyages.

Neither in the Papal Bulls nor in the Treaty of Tordesillas was there any specific reference to an extension of the Line around the globe or to a division of the world. The arrangement seems to have contemplated a free field for the exploration and conquest of the unknown parts of the world, to the eastward for Portugal, and to the westward for Spain. If they should cross each other's tracks priority of discovery would determine the ownership.

The suggestion of the extension of the line around the globe and of the idea that Spain was entitled to what might be within the hemisphere set off by the Demarcation Line and its extension to the antipodes does not appear until the time of Magellan, and it is then that we first meet the notion that the Pope had divided the world between Spain and Portugal like an orange.

The Portuguese reached India in 1498. Thirteen years later Albuquerque made conquest of Malacca of the Malay Peninsula, the great entrep?t of the spice trade; but even then the real goal, the islands where the spices grow, had not been attained. The command of the straits, however, promised a near realization of so many years of labor, and, as soon as practicable, in December 1511, Albuquerque despatched Antonio d'Abreu in search of the precious islands. A Spanish historian of the next century affirms that Magellan accompanied d'Abreu in command of one of the ships, but this can hardly be true. Francisco Serr?o, however, one of the Portuguese captains, was a friend of Magellan's and during his sojourn of several years in the Moluccas wrote to him of a world larger and richer than that discovered by Vasco da Gama. It is probable, as the historian Barros, who saw some of this correspondence, sugguests, that Serr?o somewhat exaggerated the distance from Malacca to the Moluccas, and so planted the seed which bore such fruit in Magellan's mind.

The year after the Portuguese actually attained the Spice Islands, Vasco Nu?ez de Balboa, first of Europeans , set eyes upon the great South Sea. It soon became only too certain that the Portuguese had won in the race for the land of cloves, pepper, and nutmegs. But, in the absence of knowledge of the true dimensions of the earth and with an underestimate of its size generally prevailing, the information that the Spice Islands lay far to the east of India revived in the mind of Magellan the original project of Columbus to seek the land of spices by the westward route. That he laid this plan before the King of Portugal, there seems good reason to believe, but when he saw no prospect for its realization, like Columbus, he left Portugal for Spain. It is now that the idea is evolved that, as the Moluccas lie so far east of India, they are probably in the Spanish half of the world, and, if approached from the west, may be won after all for the Catholic king. No appeal for patronage and support could be more effective, and how much reliance Magellan and his financial backer Christopher Haro placed upon it in their petition to King Charles appears clearly in the account by Maximilianus Transylvanus of Magellan's presentation of his project: "They both showed Caesar that though it was not yet quite sure whether Malacca was within the confines of the Spaniards or the Portuguese, because, as yet, nothing of the longitude had been clearly proved, yet, it was quite plain that the Great Gulf and the people of Sinae lay within the Spanish boundary. This too was held to be most certain, that the islands which they call the Moluccas, in which all spices are produced, and are thence exported to Malacca, lay within the Spanish western division, and that it was possible to sail there; and that spices could be brought thence to Spain more easily, and at less expense and cheaper, as they come direct from their native place."

Equally explicit was the contract which Magellan entered into with King Charles: "Inasmuch as you bind yourself to discover in the dominions which belong to us and are ours in the Ocean Sea within the limits of our demarcation, islands and mainlands and rich spiceries, etc." This is followed by an injunction "not to discover or do anything within the demarcation and limits of the most serene King of Portugal."

Las Casas, the historian of the Indies, was present in Valladolid when Magellan came thither to present his plan to the King. "Magellan," he writes, "had a well painted globe in which the whole world was depicted, and on it he indicated the route he proposed to take, saving that the strait was left purposely blank so that no one should anticipate him. And on that day and at that hour I was in the office of the High Chancellor when the Bishop brought it and showed the High Chancellor the voyage which was proposed; and, speaking with Magellan, I asked him what way he planned to take, and he answered that he intended to go by Cape Saint Mary, which we call the Rio de la Plata and from thence to follow the coast up until he hit upon the strait. But suppose you do not find any strait by which you can go into the other sea. He replied that if he did not find any strait that he would go the way the Portuguese took.--This Fernando de Magalhaens must have been a man of courage and valiant in his thoughts and for undertaking great things, although he was not of imposing presence because he was small in stature and did not appear in himself to be much."

Such were the steps by which the Papal Demarcation Line led to the first circumnavigation of the globe, the greatest single human achievement on the sea. The memorable expedition set out from Seville September 20, 1519. A year elapsed before the entrance to the strait named for the great explorer was discovered. Threading its sinuous intricacies consumed thirty-eight days and then followed a terrible voyage of ninety-eight days across a truly pathless sea. The first land seen was the little group of islands called Ladrones from the thievishness of the inhabitants, and a short stay was made at Guam. About two weeks later, the middle of March, the little fleet reached the group of islands which we know as the Philippines but which Magellan named the islands of St. Lazarus, from the saint whose day and feast were celebrated early in his stay among them.

The calculations of the longitude showed that these islands were well within the Spanish half of the world and the success with which a Malay slave of Magellan, brought from Sumatra, made himself understood indicated clearly enough that they were not far from the Moluccas and that the object of the expedition, to discover a westward route to the Spice Islands, and to prove them to be within the Spanish demarcation, was about to be realized. But Magellan, like Moses, was vouchsafed only a glimpse of the Promised Land. That the heroic and steadfast navigator should have met his death in a skirmish with a few naked savages when in sight of his goal, is one of the most pathetic tragedies in history.

The difficulties, however, of approaching the Moluccas by the western route through the straits of Magellan , the stubborn and defiant attitude of the King of Portugal in upholding his claims, the impossibility of a scientific and exact determination of the Demarcation Line in the absence of accurate means for measuring longitude,--all these, reinforced by the pressure of financial stringency led King Charles in 1529 to relinquish all claims to or rights to trade with the Moluccas for three hundred and fifty thousand ducats. In the antipodes a Demarcation Line was to be drawn from pole to pole seventeen degrees on the equator, or two hundred and ninety-seven leagues east of the Moluccas, and it was agreed that the subjects of the King of Castile should neither sail or trade beyond that line, or carry anything to the islands or lands within it. If a later scientific and accurate determination should substantiate the original claims of either party the money should be returned and the contract be dissolved. Although the archipelago of St. Lazarus was not mentioned in this treaty it was a plain renunciation of any rights over the Philippines for they lie somewhat to the west of the Moluccas.

Villalobos left no permanent mark upon the islands beyond giving the name "Felipinas" to some of them, in honor of "our fortunate Prince."

Nearly twenty years elapsed before another expedition was undertaken, but this was more carefully organized than any of its predecessors, and four or five years were absorbed in the preparations. King Philip II, while respecting the contract with Portugal in regard to the Moluccas, proposed to ignore its provisions in regard to other islands included within the Demarcation Line of 1529. In his first despatch relative to this expedition in 1559 he enjoins that it shall not enter the Moluccas but go "to other islands that are in the same region as are the Philippines and others that were outside the said contract, but within our demarcation, that are said to produce spices."

It is clear from the sequel that King Philip intended, as has been said, to shut his eyes to the application of the Treaty of Zaragoza to the Philippines. As they did not produce spices the Portuguese had not occupied them and they now made no effectual resistance to the Spanish conquest of the islands. The union of Portugal to the crown of Spain in 1580 subsequently removed every obstacle, and when the Portuguese crown resumed its independence in 1640 the Portuguese had been driven from the Spice Islands by the Dutch.

This is not the place to narrate in detail the history of the great expedition of Legaspi. It established the power of Spain in the Philippines and laid the foundations of their permanent organization. In a sense it was an American enterprise. The ships were built in America and for the most part equipped here. It was commanded and guided by men who lived in the New World. The work of Legaspi during the next seven years entitles him to a place among the greatest of colonial pioneers. In fact he has no rival. Starting with four ships and four hundred men, accompanied by five Augustinian monks, reinforced in 1567 by two hundred soldiers, and from time to time by similar small contingents of troops and monks, by a combination of tact, resourcefulness, and courage he won over the natives, repelled the Portuguese and laid such foundations that the changes of the next thirty years constitute one of the most surprising revolutions in the annals of colonization. A most brilliant exploit was that of Legaspi's grandson, Juan de Salcedo, a youth of twenty-two who with forty-five men explored northern Luzon, covering the present provinces of Zambales, Pangasin?n, La Union, Ilocos, and the coast of Cagay?n, and secured submission of the people to Spanish rule. Well might his associates hold him "unlucky because fortune had placed him where oblivion must needs bury the most valiant deeds that a knight ever wrought." Nor less deserving of distinction than Legaspi and his heroic grandson was Friar Andr?s de Urdaneta the veteran navigator whose natural abilities and extensive knowledge of the eastern seas stood his commander in good stead at every point and most effectively contributed to the success of the expedition. Nor should the work of the Friars be ignored. Inspired by apostolic zeal, reinforced by the glowing enthusiasm of the Catholic Reaction, gifted and tireless, they labored in harmony with Legaspi, won converts, and checked the slowly-advancing tide of Mohammedanism. The ablest of the Brothers, Martin de Rada, was preaching in Visayan within five months.

The work of conversion opened auspiciously in Cebu, where Legaspi began his work, with a niece of Tupas, an influential native, who was baptized with great solemnity. Next came the conversion of the Moor "who had served as interpreter and who had great influence throughout all that country." In 1568 the turning point came with the baptism of Tupas and of his son. This opened the door to general conversion, for the example of Tupas had great weight.

It is a singular coincidence that within the span of one human life the Spaniard should have finished the secular labor of breaking the power of the Moslem in Spain and have checked his advance in the islands of the antipodes. The religion of the prophet had penetrated to Malacca in 1276, had reached the Moluccas in 1465, and thence was spreading steadily northward to Borneo and the Philippines. Iolo and Mindanao succumbed in the sixteenth century and when Legaspi began the conquest of Luzon in 1571 he found many Mohammedans whose settlement or conversion had grown out of the trade relations with Borneo. As the old Augustinian chronicler Grijalva remarks, and his words are echoed by Morga and by the modern historian Montero y Vidal: "So well rooted was the cancer that had the arrival of the Spaniards been delayed all the people would have become Moors, as are all the islanders who have not come under the government of the Philippines."

It is one of the unhappy legacies of the religious revolution of the sixteenth century that it has fixed a great gulf between the Teutonic and the Latin mind, which proves impassable for the average intellect. The deadly rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, of Englishman and Spaniard, have left indelible traces upon their descendants which intensify race prejudice and misunderstanding. The Englishman or American looks with a contempt upon the economic blindness or incapacity of the Spaniard that veils his eyes to their real aims and achievements.

The tragedies and blunders of English colonization in America are often forgotten and only the tragedies and blunders of Spanish colonization are remembered. In the period which elapsed between the formulation of the Spanish and of the English colonial policies religious ideals were displaced by the commercial, and in the exaltation of the commercial ideal England took the lead. Colonies, from being primarily fields for the propagation of Christianity and incidentally for the production of wealth, became the field primarily for industrial and commercial development and incidentally for Christian work. The change no doubt has contributed vastly to the wealth of the world and to progress, but it has been fatal to the native populations. The Spanish policy aimed to preserve and civilize the native races, not to establish a new home for Spaniards, and the colonial legislation provided elaborate safeguards for the protection of the Indians. Many of these were a mere dead letter but the preservation and civilization of the native stock in Mexico, Central and South America, and above all in the Philippines stand out in marked contrast, after all allowances and qualifications have been made, with the fate, past and prospective, of the aborigines in North America, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, and Australia, and clearly differentiate in their respective tendencies and results the Spanish and English systems. The contrast between the effects of the Spanish conquest in the West Indies, Mexico, and the Philippines reflects the development of the humane policy of the government. The ravages of the first conquistadores, it should be remembered, took place before the crown had time to develop a colonial policy.

It is customary, too, for Protestant writers to speak with contempt of Catholic missions, but it must not be forgotten that France and England were converted to Christianity by similar methods. The Protestant ridicules the wholesale baptisms and conversions and a Christianity not even skin-deep, but that was the way in which Christianity was once propagated in what are the ruling Christian nations of today. The Catholic, on the other hand, might ask for some evidence that the early Germans, or the Anglo-Saxons would ever have been converted to Christianity by the methods employed by Protestants.

The wholesale baptisms have their real significance in the frame of mind receptive for the patient Christian nurture that follows. Christianity has made its real conquests and is kept alive by Christian training, and its progress is the improvement which one generation makes upon another in the observance of its precepts. One who has read the old Penitential books and observed the evidences they afford of the vitality of heathen practices and rites among the people in England in the early Middle Ages will not be too harsh in characterizing the still imperfect fruits of the Catholic missions of the last three centuries.

In the light, then, of impartial history raised above race prejudice and religious prepossessions, after a comparison with the early years of the Spanish conquest in America or with the first generation or two of the English settlements, the conversion and civilization of the Philippines in the forty years following Legaspi's arrival must be pronounced an achievement without a parallel in history. An examination of what was accomplished at the very ends of the earth with a few soldiers and a small band of missionaries will it is believed reveal the reasons for this verdict. We are fortunate in possessing for this purpose, among other materials, a truly classic survey of the condition of the islands at the opening of the seventeenth century written by a man of scholarly training and philosophic mind, Dr. Antonio de Morga, who lived in the islands eight years in the government service.

The Spaniards found in the population of the islands two sharply contrasted types which still survive--the Malay and the Negrito. After the introduction of Christianity the natives were commonly classified according to their religion as Indians , Moors , and Heathen or Infidels. The religious beliefs of the Malays were not held with any great tenacity and easily yielded to the efforts of the missionaries. The native taste for the spectacular was impressed and gratified by the picturesque and imposing ceremonials of the church.

Although the Indians possessed an alphabet before the arrival of the Spaniards and the knowledge of reading and writing was fairly general they had no written literature of any kind. A Jesuit priest who had lived in the islands eighteen years, writing not far from 1640, tells us that by that time the Tagals had learned to write their language from left to right instead of perpendicularly as was their former custom, but they used writing merely for correspondence. The only books thus far in the Indian languages were those written by the missionaries on religion.

In regard to the religious life of the converted Indians the Friars and Morga speak on the whole with no little satisfaction. Friar Martin Ignacio in 1584 writes: "Such as are baptised, doo receive the fayth with great firmenesse, and are good Christians, and would be better, if that they were holpen with good ensamples." Naturally the Spanish soldiers left something to be desired as examples of Christianity and Friar Martin relates the story of the return from the dead of a principal native--"a strange case, the which royally did passe of a trueth in one of these ilandes,"--who told his former countrymen of the "benefites and delights" of heaven, which "was the occasion that some of them forthwith received the baptisme, and that others did delay it, saying, that because there were Spaniard souldiers in glory, they would not go thither, because they would not be in their company."

Morga writing in 1603 says: "In strictest truth the affairs of the faith have taken a good footing, as the people have a good disposition and genius, and they have seen the errors of their paganism and the truths of the Christian religion; they have got good churches and monasteries of wood, well constructed, with shrines and brilliant ornaments, and all the things required for the service, crosses, candlesticks, chalices of gold and silver, many brotherhoods and religious acts, assiduity in the sacraments and being present at divine service, and care in maintaining and supplying their monks, with great obedience and respect; they also give for the prayers and burials of their dead, and perform this with all punctuality and liberality." A generation later the report of the Religious is not quite so sanguine: "They receive our religion easily and their lack of intellectual penetration saves them from sounding the difficulties of its mysteries. They are too careless of fulfilling the duties of the Christianity which they profess and must needs be constrained by fear of chastisement and be ruled like school children. Drunkenness and usury are the two vices to which they are most given and these have not been entirely eradicated by the efforts of our monks." That these efforts were subsequently crowned with a large measure of success is shown by the almost universal testimony to the temperate habits of the Filipinos.

This first period of Philippine history has been called its Golden Age. Certainly no succeeding generation saw such changes and advancement. It was the age of Spain's greatest power and the slow decline and subsequent decrepitude that soon afflicted the parent state could not fail to react upon the colony. This decline was in no small degree the consequence of the tremendous strain to which the country was subjected in the effort to retain and solidify its power in Europe while meeting the burden of new establishments in America and the Philippines. That in the very years when Spaniards were accomplishing the unique work of redeeming an oriental people from barbarism and heathenism to Christianity and civilized life, the whole might of the mother-country should have been massed in a tremendous conflict in Europe which brought ruin and desolation to the most prosperous provinces under her dominion, and sapped her own powers of growth, is one of the strangest coincidences in history.

Bending every energy for years to stay the tide of change and progress, suppressing freedom of thought with relentless vigor, and quarantining herself and her dependencies against new ideas, conservatism grew to be her settled habit and the organs of government became ossified. Policies of commercial restriction which were justifiable or at least rationally explicable in the sixteenth century lasted on, proof against innovation or improvement, until the eighteenth century and later. Consequently from the middle of the seventeenth century at the period of the rapid rise of colonial powers of France, Holland, and England, the Spanish colonies find themselves under a commercial regime which increasingly hampers their prosperity and effectually blocks their advancement.

The contrast between the Spanish possessions and those of the other maritime powers became more marked as time went on. The insuperable conservatism of the home government gave little opportunity for the development of a class of energetic and progressive colonial officials, and financial corruption honeycombed the whole colonial civil service.

To facilitate the understanding of the historical materials which will be collected in this series and to lay the foundation for a just and appreciative comparison of the institutions of the Philippines with those of other European dependencies in the tropics, it will be my aim now to bring into relief the distinctive features of the work wrought in the islands which raised a congeries of Malay tribes to Christian civilization, and secured for them as happy and peaceful an existence on as high a plane as has yet been attained by any people of color anywhere in the world, or by any orientals for any such length of time.

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