like water into the Philippines from other lands; but they do not even consider where the money is to come from to pay for all the things they want.  They howl like victims over taxation, but they have a hazy idea that it is the duty of their Government to seek out every labor-saving machine in the world and to buy it and to put it in operation in the Philippines till the inhabitants have accustomed themselves to its use, and have obtained through its benefits the wherewithal to indulge in more of the same sort.  They do not concern themselves with the problem of the Government’s getting the money to do all this, other than they think that if we Americans were out of the way, and the six or eight million pesos of revenue which go annually into our pockets were going to Filipinos instead, there would be money in plenty for battleships, deep-water harbors, railroads, irrigation, agricultural banks, standing armies, extended primary and secondary education; and that the resources of the Government would even permit of the repeal of the land tax, of the abolition of internal revenue taxes, and of the lowering of the tariff.  One of their favorite dreams of raising money is to put a tremendously high license upon all foreigners doing business in the Islands; and so high an opinion have they both of their value to the world at large and of their prowess, that they do not take into consideration the probability of the foreigner’s either getting out of the country or appealing to his own Government to protect his invested capital.  When they speak of independence, they invariably assume that America is going to protect them against China, Japan, or any of the great colony-holding nations of Europe.

Such are the peculiar governmental conceptions of the middle-class Filipino—­a class holding the ballot by the grace of God and the assistance of the American Government.  Their inverted ideas come from real inexperience in highly organized industrial society, and from perfectly natural deductions from books.  When they study Roman and Greek history, they learn there the names of generals, poets, artists, sculptors, statesmen, and historians.  Books do not dwell upon that long list of thriving colonies which filled the Grecian archipelago with traffic, and reached east and west to the shores of Asia and to the Pillars of Hercules.  The Filipinos learn that Rome nourished her generals and her emperors upon the spoils of war, but they do not reflect that the predatory age—­at least in the Roman sense—­is past.  Their imaginations seize upon the part played by the little island republic of Venice, and they gloat over the magnificence of the Venetian aristocracy, but they hardly give a thought to the thousands of glass-blowers, to the weavers of silken stuffs, to the shipbuilders and the artisans, and to the army of merchants that piled up the riches to make Venice a power on the Mediterranean.