erely farm-labourers.

Philippine musicians have won fame outside their own country. Some
years ago there was a band of them in Shanghai and another in
Cochin China on contract. It was reported, too, that the band of the
Constabulary sent to the St. Louis Exhibition in 1904 was the delight
of the people in Honolulu, where they touched _en route_.

Slavery was prohibited by law as far back as the reign of Philip
II.; [85] it nevertheless still exists in an occult form among
the natives. Rarely, if ever, do its victims appeal to the law
for redress, firstly, because of their ignorance, and secondly,
because the untutored class have an innate horror of resisting
anciently-established custom, and it would never occur to them
to do so. Moreover, in the time of the Spaniards, the numberless
_procuradores_ and _pica-pleitos_--touting solicitors had no interest
in taking up cases so profitless to themselves. Under the pretext
of guaranteeing a loan, parents readily sell their children (male or
female) into bondage. The child is handed over to work until the loan
is repaid; but as the day of restitution of the advance never arrives,
neither does the liberty of the youthful victim. Among themselves
it was a law, and is still a practised custom, for the debts of
the parents to pass on to the children, and, as I have said before,
debts are never repudiated by them. Slavery, in an overt form, now
only exists among some wild tribes and the Moros.

Education was almost exclusively under the control of the friars. Up
to the year 1844 anything beyond religious tuition was reserved
for the Spanish youth, the half-castes, and the children of
those in office. Among the many reforms introduced in the time of
Gov.-General Narciso Claveria (1844-49), that of extending Education
to the provincial parishes was a failure. In the middle of the reign
of Isabella II. (about 1850) it was the exclusive privilege of the
classes mentioned and the native petty aristocracy, locally designated
the _gente ilustrada_ and the _pudientes_ (Intellectuals and people
of means and influence). Education, thus limited, divided the people
into two separate castes, as distinct as the ancient Roman citizen and
the plebeian. Residing chiefly in the ports open to foreign trade,
the Intellectuals acquired wealth, possessed rich estates and fine
houses artistically adorned. Blessed with all the comforts which
money could procure and the refinement resulting fro