orward
to their own destruction. Lucrative employments have satisfied the
ambition of so many educated Filipinos who must find a living, that
the same principle--a creation of material interest--might perhaps be
advantageously extended to the uneducated classes. All the malcontents
cannot become State dependents, but they might easily be helped to
acquire an interest in the soil. The native who has his patch of
settled land with _unassailable title_ would be loth to risk his all
for the chimerical advantages of insurrection. The native boor who
has worked land for years on sufferance, without title, exposed to
eviction by a more cunning individual clever enough to follow the
tortuous path which leads to land settlement with absolute title,
falls an easy prey to the instigator of rebellion. These illiterate
people need more than a liberal land law--they need to be taken in
hand like children and placed upon the parcelled-out State lands
with indisputable titles thereto. And if American enterprise were
fostered and encouraged in the neighbourhood of their holdings,
good example might root them to the soil and convert the _boloman_
into the industrious husbandman.

The poorest native who cannot sow for himself must necessarily
feed on what his neighbour reaps, and hunger compels him to become
a wandering criminal. It is not difficult partially to account for
the greater number in this condition to-day as compared with Spanish
times. In those days there was what the natives termed _cayinin_. It
was a temporary clearance of a patch of State land on which the
native would raise a crop one, two, or more seasons. Having no legal
right to the soil he tilled, and consequently no attachment to it,
he would move on to other virgin land and repeat the operation. In
making the clearance the squatter had no respect for State property,
and the damage which he did in indiscriminate destruction of valuable
timber by fire was not inconsiderable. The law did not countenance the
_cayinin_, but serious measures were seldom taken to prevent it. The
local or municipal headmen refrained from interference because, having
no interest whatever in public lands, they did not care, as landowners,
to go out of their way to create a bad feeling against themselves
which might one day have fatal consequences. Although no one would
for a moment suggest a revival of the system, there is the undeniable
fact that in Spanish times thousands of natives lived