are usually taken who, under the name of collectors, surveyors and assessors of tributes, intervene in, or influence the public administration.  Owing to the variety and great number of persons emigrating to America, ample field, no doubt, is there left for selection, by which means the viceroys may frequently meet with persons suitable and adequate to the above trusts, if prudent steps are only taken; but in this respect the case is very different in the Philippines, where chance alone occasionally brings over a European Spaniard, unemployed or friendless.  In these remote Islands, also, more than in any other quarter, people seek to live in idleness, and, as much as possible, without working, or much trouble.  As long as hopes are entertained of doing something in the Acapulco speculations, every other pursuit is viewed with indifference, and the office of district or provincial magistrate is only solicited when all other resources have failed, or as a remedy against want.  As the applicants for these situations are therefore not among the most select classes, it very frequently happens that they fall into extremely improper and unworthy hands.

It is in fact common enough to see a hairdresser or a lackey converted into a governor; a sailor or a deserter transformed into a district magistrate, collector, or military commander of a populous province, without any other counsellor than his own crude understanding, or any other guide than his passion.  Such a metamorphosis would excite laughter in a comedy or farce; but, realized in the theatre of human life, it must give rise to sensations of a very different nature.  Who is there that does not feel horror-struck, and tremble for the innocent, when he sees a being of this kind transferred from the yard-arm to the seat of justice, deciding, in the first instance, on the honor, lives, and property of a hundred thousand persons, and haughtily exacting the homage and incense of the spiritual ministers of the towns under his jurisdiction, as well as of the parish curates, respectable for their acquirements and benevolence, and who, in their own native places, would possibly have rejected as a servant the very man whom in the Philippines they are compelled to court and obey as a sovereign.

In vain do the laws ordain that such offices shall not be given away to attendants on governors and members of the high court of justice, for under pretext of the scarcity of Europeans experienced in the colony, means are found to elude the statute, by converting this plea into an exception in favor of this description of persons.  By such important offices being filled in this manner, it is easy to conceive the various hardships to which many of the provinces and districts are exposed; nor can any amelioration be expected as long as this plan is persisted in and the excesses of the parties go without punishment.