cription of property.

[Easy capital but lessened profits.] Accustomed, in their limited
calculations, to identify the resources, offered by the funds belonging
to this class of establishments, with the very existence of the
colony, the needy merchants easily confound their personal with the
general interest; and few stop to consider that the identical means
of carrying on trade, without any capital of their own, although they
have accidentally enriched a small number of persons, eventually have
absorbed the principal profits, and possibly been the chief cause
of the unflourishing state of the colony at large. Without fearing
the charge of rashness, it may, in fact, be asserted, that if these
charities and pious endowments had never existed, public prosperity
in the Philippine Islands would, as in other parts, have been the
immediate effect of the united efforts of the individual members
of the community and of the experience acquired in the constant
prosecution of the same object. As, however, a progress of this kind,
although certain, must necessarily have been at first extremely
slow, and as, on the other hand, the preference given to mercantile
operations undertaken with the funds belonging to public charities,
has its origin in the assemblage of vices so remarkable in the very
organization of the body of Philippine merchants, any new measure on
this subject might be deemed inconsistent, that at once deprived them
of the use of resources on which they had been accustomed to rely,
without removing those other defects which excuse, if not encourage,
the continuation of the present system. Without, therefore, appealing
to violent remedies, it is to be hoped that, in order to render plans
of reform effectual, it will be sufficient, under more propitious
circumstances, to see property brought from other countries to these
Islands, as well as persons coming to settle in them, capable of
managing it with that intelligence and economy required by trade. The
competition of those who speculate at random would then cease, or
what is the same, as money obtained at a premium could not then be
laid out with the same advantages by the merchants as if it was their
own, it will be necessary to renounce the fallacious profits held out
by the public charities, till at least they are placed on a level
with existing circumstances, and brought in to be of real service
to the honorable planter and laborious merchant, in their accidental