tion must be ready for the
officers, and, at intervals during an hour and a half, he (or she)
has to sign six different declarations as to whether he (or she)
brings fire-arms. The baggage is then taken to the Custom-house in
a steam-launch for examination, which is not unduly rigid. Under a
Philippine Commission Act, dated October 15, 1901, the Collector of
Customs, or his deputy, may, at his will, also require the passenger
to take an oath of allegiance in such terms that, in the event of
war between the passenger's country and America, he who takes the
oath would necessarily have to forfeit his claim for protection
from his own country, unless he violated that oath. No foreigner
is permitted to land if he comes "under a contract expressed, or
implied, to perform labour in the Philippine Islands." In 1903 this
prohibition to foreigners was disputed by a British bank-clerk who
arrived in Manila for a foreign bank. The case was carried to court,
with the result that the prohibition was maintained in principle,
although the foreigner in question was permitted to remain in the
Islands as an act of grace. But in February, 1905, a singular case
occurred, exactly the reverse of the one just mentioned. A young
Englishman who had been brought out to Manila on a four years'
agreement, after four or five months of irregular conduct towards the
firm employing him, presented himself to the Collector of Customs
(as Immigration Agent), informed against himself, and begged to be
deported from the Colony. The incentive for this strange proceeding
was to secure the informer's reward of $1,000. It was probably the
first case in Philippine history of a person voluntarily seeking
compulsory expulsion from the Islands. The Government, acting on the
information, shipped him off to Hong-Kong, the nearest British port,
in the following month, with a through passage to Europe.

Since the American advent the _Administration of Justice_ has been
greatly accelerated, and Municipal Court cases, which in Spanish times
would have caused more worry to the parties than they were worth, or,
for the same reason, would have been settled out of court violently,
are now despatched at the same speed as in the London Police Courts. On
the other hand, quick despatch rather feeds the native's innate love
for litigation, so that an agglomeration of lawsuits is still one
of the Government's undesirable but inevitable burdens. There is a
complaint that the fines