“To clerical government,” he writes “paradoxical as the statement may sound in modern European ears, the Philippine islands owe, more than to anything else, their internal prosperity, the Malay population its sufficiency and happiness.  This it is that again and again has stood a barrier of mercy and justice between the weaker and stronger race, the vanquished and the victor; this has been the steady protector of the native inhabitants, this their faithful benefactor, their sufficient leader and guide.  With the ‘Cura’ for father, and the ‘Capitan’ for his adjutant, a Philippine hamlet feels and knows little of the vexations inseparable from direct and foreign official administration; and if under such a rule ‘progress,’ as we love to term it, be rare, disaffection and want are rarer still.”

As compared with India, the absence of famines is significant; and this he attributes in part to the prevalence of small holdings.  “Not so much what they have, but rather what they have not, makes the good fortune of the Philippines, the absence of European Enterprise, the absence of European Capital.  A few European capitalist settlers, a few giant estates, a few central factories, a few colossal money-making combinations of organized labour and gainful produce, and all the equable balance of property and production, of ownership and labour that now leaves to the poorest cottager enough, and yet to the total colony abundance to spare, would be disorganized, displaced, upset; to be succeeded by day labour, pauperism, government relief, subscriptions, starvation.  Europe, gainful, insatiate Europe would reap the harvest; but to the now happy, contented, satiate Philippine Archipelago, what would remain but the stubble, but leanness, want, unrest, misery?” [123]

The latest witness to the average well-being of the natives under the old system whom I shall quote is Mr. Sawyer.  “If the natives fared badly at the hands of recent authors, the Spanish Administration fared worse, for it has been painted in the darkest tints, and unsparingly condemned.  It was indeed corrupt and defective, and what government is not?  More than anything else it was behind the age, yet it was not without its good points.

“Until an inept bureaucracy was substituted for the old paternal rule, and the revenue quadrupled by increased taxation, the Filipinos were as happy a community as could be found in any colony.  The population greatly multiplied; they lived in competence, if not in affluence; cultivation was extended, and the exports steadily increased.—­Let us be just; what British, French, or Dutch colony, populated by natives can compare with the Philippines as they were until 1895?” [124]

These striking judgments, derived from such a variety of sources, are a sufficient proof that our popular ideas of the Spanish colonial system are quite as much in need of revision as popular ideas usually are.