s quaked at the possible consequences. The dogmatical affirmation
"_qui non credit anathema sit_," so indiscriminately used, had lost
its power. Public opinion protested against an order of things which
checked the social and material onward movement of the Colony. And,
strange as it may seem, Spain was absolutely impotent, even though
it cost her the whole territory (as indeed happened) to remedy the
evil. In these Islands what was known to the world as the Government
of Spain was virtually the Executive of the Religious Corporations, who
constituted the real Government, the members of which never understood
patriotism as men of the world understand it. Every interest was made
subservient to the welfare of the Orders. If, one day, the Colony
must be lost to _them_, it was a matter of perfect indifference into
whose hands it passed. It was their happy hunting-ground and last
refuge. But the real Government could not exist without its Executive;
and when that Executive was attacked and expelled by America, the
real Government fell as a consequence. If the Executive had been
strong enough to emancipate itself from the dominion of the friars
only two decades ago, the Philippines might have remained a Spanish
colony to-day. But the wealth in hard cash and the moral religious
influence of the Monastic Orders were factors too powerful for any
number of executive ministers, who would have fallen like ninepins
if they had attempted to extricate themselves from the thraldom of
sacerdotalism. Outside political circles there was, and still is in
Spain, a class who shrink from the abandonment of ideas of centuries'
duration. Whatever the fallacy may be, not a few are beguiled into
thinking that its antiquity should command respect.

The conquest of this Colony was decidedly far more a religious
achievement than a military one, and to the _friars of old_ their
nation's gratitude is fairly due for having contributed to her glory,
but that gratitude is not an inheritance.

Prosperity began to dawn upon the Philippines when restrictions
on trade were gradually relaxed since the second decade of last
century. As each year came round reforms were introduced, but
so clumsily that no distinction was made between those who were
educationally or intellectually prepared to receive them and those who
were not; hence the small minority of natives, who had acquired the
habits and necessities of their conquerors, sought to acquire for _all_
an