onies have been immoral, it must be granted that they
have been religious. This fact has made them easier to govern, for the
words of the priests and friars have been accepted as divinely inspired
at times when, as a matter of fact, they have been inspired only by the
governor or the garrison colonel. The church in the colonies is nothing
like the modern and American institution that we know. It is a survival
from the Middle Ages. Yet it has shown shrewdness in Porto Rico,
Cuba, and the Philippines, its prosperity proving that the Spaniard
can be a thrifty mortal whether he wears a monkish cowl or a military
uniform. Much money has been demanded by the church, but much of it has
been honestly spent in the beautifying of altars and the dressing of
the statues. Our Lady of the Remedies, in the Church of La Providencia,
San Juan, for example, wears a cloak worth fifteen hundred dollars,
and is emblazoned with twenty thousand dollars' worth of jewels; but
then, she is the patron of the island. The priests have been quick to
see an advantage in benefits or disasters and have often impressed
the natives by lessons drawn from natural phenomena. Thus, in 1867,
a conspiracy for the overthrow of Spanish rule had been organized,
and violence was hourly expected: but on the eve of an uprising the
island was shaken by an earthquake. The priests made the most of
this, assuring the natives that it was a warning from heaven never
to interfere with Spaniards; so the insurrectos stealthily laid down
their arms and stole away to their various substitutes for employment,
leaving their Lexington unfought.

In one way this willingness to keep out of fights has been a
bad thing for the island, because insurrection became a matter
of business with some of the natives. They used it as a mode of
blackmail. These insurrectos would throw a wealthy planter into a
state of alarm by pretending to hold meetings on his premises. He knew
that if the authorities got wind of this it might go hard with him,
for if he were suspected of being a member of a lodge of the White
Saber or the Red Hand, it could mean imprisonment, perhaps death;
so he paid the revolution something to move on and occur on some
other man's land. By levying thus on fear and policy a few members
of an alleged junta managed to live quite comfortably without work,
and it is whispered that the padres of certain villages received
their share of the reluctant tributes.

Porto Rico has be