m education, they
freely associated and intermarried with the Spaniards, whose easy grace
and dignified manners they gradually acquired and retain, to a great
extent, to the present day. The other caste--the Illiterates--were
dependents of the Intellectuals. Without mental training, with few
wants, and little expenses, they were as contented, in their sphere,
as the upper class were in theirs. Like their masters, they had their
hopes, but they never knew what misery was, as one understands it in
Europe, and in this felicitous, ambitionless condition, they never
urgently demanded education, even for their children. The movement came
from higher quarters, and during the O'Donnell ministry a Royal Decree
was sent from Madrid establishing schools throughout the provinces.

On the banks of the Pasig River there was a training college for
schoolmasters, who were drafted off to the villages with a miserable
stipend, to teach the juvenile rustics. But the governmental system
of centralization fell somewhat hard on the village teacher. For
instance, I knew one who received a monthly salary of 16 pesos,
and every month he had to spend two of them to travel to Manila and
back to receive the money--an outlay equal to 12 1/2 per cent. of his
total income. For such a wretched pittance great things were not to
be expected of the teacher, even though he had had a free hand in his
work. Other circumstances of greater weight contributed to keep the
standard of education among the common townfolk very low; in some
places to abolish it totally. The parish priests were _ex-officio_
Inspectors of Schools for primary instruction, wherein it was their
duty to see that the Spanish language was taught. The old "Laws
of the Indies" provided that christian doctrine should be taught
to the heathen native in Spanish. [86] Several decrees confirming
that law were issued from time to time, but their fulfilment did
not seem to suit the policy of the friars. On June 30, 1887, the
Gov.-General published another decree with the same object, and sent
a communication to the Archbishop to remind him of this obligation
of his subordinates, and the urgency of its strict observance. But it
had no effect whatever, and the poor-class villagers were only taught
to gabble off the christian doctrine by rote, for it suited the friar
to stimulate that peculiar mental condition in which belief precedes
understanding. The school-teacher, being subordinate to the inspect