expensive establishment;” for, in the first place, in order, to render it incumbent on the company to introduce an indefinite quantity of European articles, it previously would be necessary to provide a vent for them, and this can never be the case, unless the exclusion of all competitors in the market is rigorously carried into effect.  As things now are, the North Americans, English, French, and every other nation that wishes, openly usurped this privilege, by constantly inundating the Islands with spirits and all kinds of effects, and it is very evident that this same abuse which authorizes the infraction of the above privilege, if in that light it could in any way be considered, totally exonerates the company from all obligations by them contracted under a different understanding.  Besides, the circumstances which have taken place since the publication of the royal decree, creating the above establishment into a corporate body, in the year 1785, have entirely changed the order established in this respect.  In the first place, the port of Manila has been opened to foreign nations, in consequence of the disinterested representations of the company itself, and for the direct advantage of general trade; nor was it necessary to prevent our new guests from abusing the facilities thus granted to them, and much less to confine them to the mere introduction of Asiatic goods, the original plea made use of.  In the second, as soon as the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands became familiar with the more useful and elegant objects of convenience and luxury, which they were enabled to purchase from foreigners, at reasonable prices, it was natural for them to pay little regard to the superfluous aid of the company, more particularly when the latter were no longer able to sustain the competition, either in the sale or supply of a multitude of articles, which, thanks to our own national simplicity, are scarcely known in Spain, whence their outward-bound cargoes are divided.  Hence it follows that, far from the importation and supplies of the company being missed, it may with great reason be presumed, that this formal renunciation of this ideal privilege of theirs, must rather have contributed to secure, in a permanent manner, adequate supplies for all the wants and whims of the inhabitants of the colony; and that the publicity of such a determination would act as a fresh allurement successively to bring to the port of Manila a host of foreign speculators, anxious to avail themselves of a fresh opening for commercial pursuits.

[Company not a philanthropy.] The other objection, founded on the mistaken notion of its being inherent in, and belonging to, the very essence of the company, to promote the general improvement of the Philippine Islands, if well considered, will appear equally unjust.  It is, in fact, a ridiculous, although too generally received, a prejudice to suppose, that the founders of this establishment proposed to themselves the plan