season the sun mended the roads, and the traffic over the baked clods
reduced them more or less to dust, so that vehicles could pass. Private
property-owners expended much time and money in the preservation of
public roads, although a curious law existed prohibiting repairs to
highways by non-official persons.

Every male adult inhabitant (with certain specified exceptions) had to
give the State fifteen days' labour per annum, or redeem that labour
by payment. Of course thousands of the most needy class preferred to
give their fifteen days. This labour and the redemption-money were
only theoretically employed in local improvements. This system was
reformed in 1884 (_vide_ p. 224).

The Budget for 1888 showed the trivial sum of P120,000 to be used
in road-making and mending in the whole Archipelago. It provided
for a Chief Inspector of Public Works with a salary of P6,500,
aided by a staff composed of 48 technical and 82 non-technical
subordinates. As a matter of fact, the Provincial and District
Governors often received intimation not to encourage the employment
of labour for local improvements, but to press the labouring-class
to pay the redemption-tax to swell the central coffers, regardless
of the corresponding misery, discomfort, and loss to trade in the
interior. But labour at the Governor's disposal was not alone
sufficient. There was no fund from which to defray the cost of
materials; or, if these could be found without payment, some one must
pay for the transport by buffaloes and carts and find the implements
for the labourers' use. How could hands alone repair a bridge which
had rotted away? To cut a log of wood for the public service would
have necessitated communications with the Inspection of Woods and
Forests and other centres and many months' delay.

The system of controlling the action of one public servant by
appointing another under him to supervise his work has always found
favour in Spain, and was adopted in this Colony. There were a great
many Government employments of the kind which were merely sinecures. In
many cases the pay was small, it is true, but the labour was often of
proportionately smaller value than that pay. With very few exceptions,
all the Government Offices in Manila were closed to the public
during half the ordinary working-day,--the afternoon,--and many of
the Civil Service officials made their appearance at their desks
about ten o'clock in the morning, retiring shortly afte