t. A few millions of dollars,
subscribed by private capitalists and loaned out to the planters,
would enormously benefit the agricultural development of the Colony;
and if native wealthy men would demonstrate their confidence in the
result by subscribing one-tenth of the necessary amount, perhaps
Americans would be induced to complete the scheme. The foreign banks
established in the Islands are not agricultural, but exchange banks,
and any American-Philippine Agricultural Bank which may be established
need have little reason to fear competition with foreign firms who
remember the house of Russell & Sturgis (_vide_ p. 255) and also
have their own more recent experiences. Philippine rural land is a
doubtful security for loans, there being no free market in it.

Between the years 1902 and 1904 the Insular Government confiscated the
arable lands of many planters throughout the Islands for delinquency
in taxes. The properties were put up to auction; some of them
found purchasers, but the bulk of them remained in the ownership of
the Government, which could neither sell them nor make any use of
them. Therefore an Act was passed in February, 1905, restoring to
their original owners those lands not already sold, on condition of
the overdue taxes being paid within the year. In one province of Luzon
the confiscated lots amounted to about one-half of all the cultivated
land and one-third of the rural land-assessment in that province. The
$2,400,000 gold spent on the Benguet road (_vide_ p. 615) would have
been better employed in promoting agriculture.

Up to 1898 Spain was the most important market for Philippine tobacco,
but since that country lost her colonies she has no longer any
patriotic interest in dealing with any particular tobacco-producing
country. The entry of Philippine tobacco into the United States is
checked by a Customs duty, respecting which there is, at present,
a very lively contest between the tobacco-shippers in the Islands and
the Tobacco Trust in America, the former clamouring for, and the latter
against, the reduction or abolition of the tariff. It is simply a clash
of trade interests; but, with regard to the broad principles involved,
it would appear that, so long as America holds these Islands without
the consent of its inhabitants, it is only just that she should do all
in her power to create a free outlet for the Islands' produce. If this
Archipelago should eventually acquire sovereign independence, A