at the letter was merely an invitation to a gambling game. The
trial was a farce, the informer was garroted just when he was on
the point of complaining that he was not receiving the pardon and
payment which he had been promised for his services in convicting
the others. The whole affair had an ugly look, and the way it was
hushed up did not add to the confidence of the people in the justice
of the proceedings. The Islands were then placed under military law
and remained so for many years.

Father Burgos's dying advice to Filipinos was for them to be educated
abroad, preferably outside of Spain, but if they could do no better,
at least go to the Peninsula. He urged that through education only
could progress be hoped for. In one of his speeches he had warned the
Spanish government that continued oppressive measures would drive the
Filipinos from their allegiance and make them wish to become subjects
of a freer power, suggesting England, whose possessions surrounded
the Islands.

Doctor Burgos's idea of England as a hope for the Philippines was
borne out by the interest which the British newspapers of Hongkong
took in Philippine affairs. They gave accounts of the troubles and
picked flaws in the garbled reports which the officials sent abroad.

Some zealous but unthinking reactionary at this time conceived the idea
of publishing a book somewhat similar to that which had been gotten
out against the Constitution of Cadiz. "Captain Juan" was its name;
it was in catechism form, and told of an old municipal captain who
deserved to be honored because he was so submissively subservient to
all constituted authority. He tries to distinguish between different
kinds of liberty, and the especial attention which he devotes to
America shows how live a topic the great republic was at that time in
the Islands. This interest is explained by the fact that an American
company had just then received a grant of the northern part of Borneo,
later British North Borneo, for a trading company. It was believed that
the United States had designs on the Archipelago because of treaties
which had been negotiated with the Sultan of Sulu and certain American
commercial interests in the Far East, which were then rather important.

Americans, too, had become known in the Philippines through a soldier
of fortune who had helped out the Chinese government in suppressing
the rebellion in the neighborhood of Shanghai. "General" F. T. Ward,
from Massachuset