laration of humanity's right to be and
to become, in its all-encircling sweep, reached the lands controlled
by her it was coldly received and blindly rejected by the governing
powers, and there was left only the slower, subtler, but none the
less sure, process of working its way among the people to burst in
time in rebellion and the destruction of the conservative forces that
would repress it.

In the opening years of the nineteenth century the friar orders in the
Philippines had reached the apogee of their power and usefulness. Their
influence was everywhere felt and acknowledged, while the country
still prospered under the effects of the vigorous and progressive
administrations of Anda and Vargas in the preceding century. Native
levies had fought loyally under Spanish leadership against Dutch
and British invaders, or in suppressing local revolts among their
own people, which were always due to some specific grievance, never
directed definitely against the Spanish sovereignty. The Philippines
were shut off from contact with any country but Spain, and even this
communication was restricted and carefully guarded. There was an
elaborate central government which, however, hardly touched the life
of the native peoples, who were guided and governed by the parish
priests, each town being in a way an independent entity.

Of this halcyon period, just before the process of disintegration
began, there has fortunately been left a record which may be
characterized as the most notable Spanish literary production
relating to the Philippines, being the calm, sympathetic, judicial
account of one who had spent his manhood in the work there and who,
full of years and experience, sat down to tell the story of their
life. [4] In it there are no puerile whinings, no querulous curses
that tropical Malays do not order their lives as did the people of
the Spanish village where he may have been reared, no selfish laments
of ingratitude over blessings unasked and only imperfectly understood
by the natives, no fatuous self-deception as to the real conditions,
but a patient consideration of the difficulties encountered, the good
accomplished, and the unavoidable evils incident to any human work. The
country and the people, too, are described with the charming simplicity
of the eyes that see clearly, the brain that ponders deeply, and the
heart that beats sympathetically. Through all the pages of his account
runs the quiet strain of peace and con