| P. cts. | P. cts. | |
| Stamps on Weights and Measures | 2,490 00 | |
| Billiard Tax and Live Stock credentials | 496 00 | |
| 90% of fines for shirking forced labour | 1,500 00 | |
| Tax in lieu of forced labour | 85,209 00 | |
| Vehicle tax | 4,000 00 | |
| 93,695 00 |
Municipal Revenue
| Tax paid by sellers in the public market-place | 7,050 00 | |
| Tax on slaughter of animals for food | 12,098 00 | |
| Tax on local sales of hemp | 40 00 | |
| 90% of the Municipal fines and tax on Chinese | 554 00 | |
| 10% on tithes paid and house-property tax | 380 00 | |
| 10% on Industrial licences | 5,710 00 | |
| 10% on Alcohol licences | 2,525 00 | |
| 28,357 00 | ||
| ₱122,052 00 |
In the same year this province contributed to the common funds of the Treasury a further sum of ₱133,009.
There was in each town another local tax called Caja de Comunidad, contributed to by the townspeople to provide against any urgent necessity of the community, but it found its way to Manila and was misappropriated, like the Fondos locales.
There was not a peso at the disposal of the Provincial Governor for local improvements. If a bridge broke down so it remained for years, whilst thousands of travellers had to wade through the river unless a raft were put there at the expense of the very poorest people by order of the petty-governor of the nearest village. The “Tribunal,” which served the double purpose of Town Hall and Dâk Bungalow for wayfarers, was often a hut of bamboo and palm-leaves, whilst others, which had been decent buildings generations gone by, lapsed into a wretched state of dilapidation. In some villages there was no Tribunal at all, and the official business had to be transacted in the municipal Governorʼs house. I first visited Calamba (La Laguna) in 1880, and for 14 years, to my knowledge, the headmen had to meet in a sugar-store in lieu of a Tribunal. In San José de Buenavista, the capital town of Antique Province, the Town Hall was commenced in good style and left half finished during 15 years. Either some one for pityʼs sake, or the headmen for their own convenience, went to the expense of thatching over half the unfinished structure, which was therefore saved from entire ruin, whilst all but the stone walls of the other half rotted away. So it continued until 1887, when the Government authorized a partial restoration of this building.
As to the roads connecting the villages, quite 20 per cent. of them serve only for travellers on foot, on horse or on buffalo back at any time, and in the wet season certainly 60 per cent, of all the Philippine highways are in too bad a state for any kind of passenger conveyance to pass with safety. In the wet season, many times I have made a sea journey in a prahu, simply because the highroad near the coast had become a mud-track, for want of macadamized stone and drainage, and only serviceable for transport by buffalo. In the dry season the sun mended the roads, and the traffic over the baked clods reduced them more or less to dust, so that vehicles could pass. Private property-owners expended much time and money in the preservation of public roads, although a curious law existed prohibiting repairs to highways by non-official persons.
Every male adult inhabitant (with certain specified exceptions) had to give the State fifteen daysʼ labour per annum, or redeem that labour by payment. Of course thousands of the most needy class preferred to give their fifteen days. This labour and the redemption-money were only theoretically employed in local improvements. This system was reformed in 1884 (vide p. [224]).
The Budget for 1888 showed the trivial sum of ₱120,000 to be used in road-making and mending in the whole Archipelago. It provided for a Chief Inspector of Public Works with a salary of ₱6,500, aided by a staff composed of 48 technical and 82 non-technical subordinates. As a matter of fact, the Provincial and District Governors often received intimation not to encourage the employment of labour for local improvements, but to press the labouring-class to pay the redemption-tax to swell the central coffers, regardless of the corresponding misery, discomfort, and loss to trade in the interior. But labour at the Governorʼs disposal was not alone sufficient. There was no fund from which to defray the cost of materials; or, if these could be found without payment, some one must pay for the transport by buffaloes and carts and find the implements for the labourersʼ use. How could hands alone repair a bridge which had rotted away? To cut a log of wood for the public service would have necessitated communications with the Inspection of Woods and Forests and other centres and many monthsʼ delay.