ies enjoy in
America, they stand in need of all they earn and possess for their
maintenance, and in order to be enabled to discharge the various duties
and obligations annexed to the missions with which they are entrusted.

[Spanish planters.] The second class comprehends the Spanish
proprietors, whose number possibly does not exceed a dozen of persons,
and even they labor under such disadvantages, and have to contend with
so many obstacles, under the existing order of things, that, compelled
to divide their lands into rice plantations, in consequence of this
being the species of culture to which the natives are most inclined,
and to devote a considerable portion of them to the grazing of horned
cattle, no one of them is in a situation to give to agriculture the
variety and extent desired, or to attain any progress in a pursuit
which in other colonies rapidly leads to riches.

[Filipino farmers.] The third consists of the principal mestizos
and natives, and is in fact that which constitutes the real body of
farming proprietors. In the fourth and last may be included all the
other natives, who generally possess a small strip of land situated
round their dwellings, or at the extremities of the various towns
and settlements formed by the conquerors; besides what they may
have obtained from their ancestors in the way of legal inheritance,
which rights have been confirmed to them by the present sovereign of
the colony.

[Aids to agriculture.] It will beyond doubt, in some measure dissipate
the distrust by which the Filipino is actuated, when the new and
paternal exertions of the superior government, to ameliorate his
present situation, are fully known, and when that valuable portion of
our distant population is assured that their rights will henceforth be
respected, and those exactions and compulsory levies which formerly
so much disheartened them, are totally abolished. On the other
hand, a new stimulus will be given by the living example and fresh
impulse communicated to the provinces by other families emigrating
and settling there, nurtured in the spirit and principles of those
reforms in the ideas and maxims of government by which the present
era is distinguished. A practical participation in these advantages
will, most assuredly, awaken a spirit of enterprise and emulation
that may be extremely beneficial to agriculture, and as the wants
of the natives increase in proportion as they are enabled to know
and compare t