populace from their hallucination. The High Host was
carried through the streets, but the rioters were only pacified when
they could find no more victims.

Amongst other reforms concerning the Chinese which the Spanish
colonists and Manila natives called for in 1886, through the public
organs, was that they should be forced to comply with the law
promulgated in 1867, which provided that the Chinese, like all other
merchants, should keep their trade-books in the Spanish language. The
demand had the appearance of being based on certain justifiable
grounds, but in reality it was a mere ebullition of spite intended
to augment the difficulties of the Chinese.

The British merchants and bankers are, by far, those who give most
credit to the Chinese. The Spanish and native creditors of the Chinese
are but a small minority, taking the aggregate of their credits, and
instead of seeking malevolently to impose new hardships on the Chinese,
they could have abstained from entering into risky transactions with
them. All merchants are aware of the Chinese trading system, and none
are obliged to deal with them. A foreign house would give a Chinaman
credit for, say, L300 to L400 worth of European manufactured goods,
knowing full well, from personal experience, or from that of others,
that the whole value would probably never be recovered. It remained
a standing debt on the books of the firm. The Chinaman retailed
these goods, and brought a small sum of cash to the firm, on the
understanding that he would get another parcel of goods, and so he
went on for years. [52] Thus the foreign merchants practically sunk
an amount of capital to start their Chinese constituents. Sometimes
the acknowledged owner and responsible man in one Chinese retail
establishment would have a share in, or own, several others. If matters
went wrong, he absconded abroad, and only the one shop which he openly
represented could be embargoed, whilst his goods were distributed
over several shops under any name but his. It was always difficult
to bring legal proof of this; the books were in Chinese, and the
whole business was in a state of confusion incomprehensible to any
European. But these risks were well known beforehand. It was only then
that the original credit had to be written off by the foreigner as a
nett loss--often small when set against several years of accumulated
profits made in successive operations.

The Chinese have guilds or secret societies for t