in every house, but one wonders that they have not taken even greater precautions.  The forgetfulness of earthquake experiences in countries where they are familiar, always amazes those unaccustomed to the awful agitations and troubled with the anticipations of imagination.  However, there never has been in the Philippines structural changes of the earth as great as in the center of the United States in the huge fissures opened and remaining lakes in the New Madrid convulsions.

In a surprising extent the Spanish government in the Philippines has been in the hands of the priests, especially the orders of the church.  In the early centuries there was less cruel oppression than in Mexico and Peru.  And yet there is in the old records a free-handed way of referring to killing people that shows a somewhat sanguinary state of society even including good citizens.

Blas Ruys de Herman Gonzales wrote to Dr. Morga from one of his expeditions, addressing his friend: 

“To Dr. Antonio de Morga, Lieutenant of the Governor of the Filipine isles of Luzon, in the city of Manila, whom may our Lord preserve.  From Camboia.”  This was in Cochin China, one of the Kings being in trouble, called upon Gonzales, who sympathized with him and wrote of the ceremony in which he assisted:  “I came at his bidding, and he related to me how those people wished to kill him and deprive him of the kingdom, that I might give him a remedy.  The Mambaray was the person who governed the kingdom, and as the king was a youth and yielded to wine, he made little account of him and thought to be king himself.  At last I and the Spaniards killed him, and after that they caught his sons and killed them.  After that the capture of the Malay Cancona was undertaken, and he was killed, and there was security from this danger by means of the Spaniards.  We then returned to the war, and I learned that another grandee, who was head of a province, wished to rise up, and go over to the side of Chupinanon; I seized him and killed him; putting him on his trial.  With all this the King and kingdom loved us very much, and that province was pacified, and returned to the King.  At this time a vessel arrived from Siam, which was going with an embassy to Manila, and put in here.  There came in it Padre Fray Pedro Custodio.  The King was much delighted at the arrival of the priest, and wished to set up a church for him.”

Unquestionably there was degeneracy that began to have mastery in high places, and this can be distinctly made out early in this century, becoming more obvious in depravity, when Spain fell into disorder during the later years of the Napoleonic disturbances, and the authority and influence of Mexico were eliminated from Spain.  I may offer the suggestion and allow it to vindicate its own importance, that if we have any Philippine Islands to spare, we should turn them over to the Republic of Mexico, taking in exchange Lower California and Sonora, and presenting those provinces to California to be incorporated in that State as counties.  It was under Mexican rule that the Philippines were most peaceable and flourishing.