s further widened and the soil sown with
discontent. But more far-reaching than this immediate result was
the educational movement inaugurated by the Jesuits. The native,
already feeling the vague impulses from without and stirred by the
growing restlessness of the times, here saw a new world open before
him. A considerable portion of the native population in the larger
centers, who had shared in the economic progress of the colony, were
enabled to look beyond their daily needs and to afford their children
an opportunity for study and advancement--a condition and a need met
by the Jesuits for a time.

With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 communication with the
mother country became cheaper, quicker, surer, so that large numbers
of Spaniards, many of them in sympathy with the republican movements
at home, came to the Philippines in search of fortunes and generally
left half-caste families who had imbibed their ideas. Native boys
who had already felt the intoxication of such learning as the schools
of Manila afforded them began to dream of greater wonders in Spain,
now that the journey was possible for them. So began the definite
movements that led directly to the disintegration of the friar regime.

In the same year occurred the revolution in the mother country,
which had tired of the old corrupt despotism. Isabella II was driven
into exile and the country left to waver about uncertainly for several
years, passing through all the stages of government from red radicalism
to absolute conservatism, finally adjusting itself to the middle course
of constitutional monarchism. During the effervescent and ephemeral
republic there was sent to the Philippines a governor who set to work
to modify the old system and establish a government more in harmony
with modern ideas and more democratic in form. His changes were hailed
with delight by the growing class of Filipinos who were striving for
more consideration in their own country, and who, in their enthusiasm
and the intoxication of the moment, perhaps became more radical than
was safe under the conditions--surely too radical for their religious
guides watching and waiting behind the veil of the temple.

In January, 1872, an uprising occurred in the naval arsenal at Cavite,
with a Spanish non-commissioned officer as one of the leaders. From
the meager evidence now obtainable, this would seem to have been
purely a local mutiny over the service questions of pay and treatment,