of accumulating fortunes in a country that presents a thousand attractions of every kind.  Many, no doubt, will preferably devote themselves to commerce, others to agricultural undertakings and also to the pursuits of mining, but necessarily some will turn their attention and employ their funds in the formation of extensive manufactures, aided by intelligent instructors and suitable machinery.  The newly-introduced information and arts being thus diffused, it is natural to expect they will be progressively adopted by a people already possessing a taste and genius for this species of labor, by which means manufacturing industry will soon be raised from the state of neglect and unprofitableness in which it is now left.

[Internal commerce handicapped.] The circulation of the country productions and effects of all kinds among the inhabitants of the provinces, which, properly speaking, constitutes their internal commerce, is tolerably active and considerable.  Owing to the great facilities of conveyance afforded by the number of rivers and lakes, on the margins of which the Filipinos are fond of fixing their dwellings, this commerce might be infinitely greater, if it was not obstructed by the monopoly of the magistrates in their respective districts and the unjust prerogative, exercised by the city, of imposing rates and arbitrary prices on the very persons who come to bring the supplies.  Nevertheless, as the iniquituous operations of the district magistrates, however, active they may be, besides being restricted by their financial ability, regularly consist of arrangements to buy up only the chief articles, and those which promise most advantage, with least trouble; as that restless inquietude which impels man on, under the hope of bettering his condition, acts even amidst rigor of oppression, a certain degree of stimulus and scope is still left in favor of internal trade.

[Inter-island traffic.] Hence it follows, that there is scarcely an island or province, that does not carry on some traffic or other, by keeping up relations with its neighbors, which sometimes extend as far as the capital; where, in proportion as the produce and raw materials find a ready market, returns suitable and adequate to the consumption of each place, respectively, are obtained.  If, however, it would be difficult to form an idea, even in the way of approximation, of the exchanges which take place between the various provinces, a task that would render it necessary to enumerate them, one by one, it is equally so to make an estimate of the total amount of this class of operation carried on in Manila, their common center.  Situated in the bottom of an immense bay, bathed by a large river, and the country round divided by an infinite number of streams and lakes descending from the provinces by which the capital is surrounded, the produce and effects are daily brought in and go out of suburbs so extended in a diversity of small vessels and canoes, without its being possible to obtain any exact account of the multiplicity of transactions carried on at one and the same time, in a city built on so large a scale.