In Australia and the United States it was found necessary to enact special laws regulating the ingress of Mongols. Under the Spanish-Philippine Government the most that could be said against them, as a class, was that, through their thrift and perseverance, they outran the shopkeeping class in the race of life.
The Insular Government “Chinese Exclusion Act,” at present in operation, permits those Chinese who are already in the Islands to remain conditionally, but rigidly debars fresh immigration. The corollary is that, in the course of a few years, there will be no Chinese in the Philippines. The working of the above Act is alluded to in Chapter [xxxi].
Under a native Government their lot is not likely to be a happy one. One of the aims of the Tagálog Revolutionists was to exclude the Chinese entirely from the Islands.
[1] “Hist. Gen. de Philipinas,” by Juan de la Concepcion, Vol. IV., p. 53. Published in Manila, 1788.
[2] Ibid., Vol. V., p. 429.
[3] About two per thousand of the resident Chinese were not originally coolies.
[4] General Wong Yung Ho, accompanied by a Chinese Justice of the High Court, visited Australia in the middle of the year 1887. In a newspaper of that Colony, it was reported that after these persons had been courteously entertained and shown the local institutions and industries, they had the effrontery to protest against the State Laws, and asked for a repeal of the “poll tax”—considered there the only check upon a Chinese coolie inundation!
[5] Just before the naval engagement of Playa Honda between Dutch and Spanish ships (vide p. [75]) the Dutch intercepted Chinese junks on the way to Manila, bringing, amongst their cargoes of food, as many as 12,000 capons.
[6] Since about the year 1885, this system, which entailed severe losses, gradually fell into disuse, and business on cash terms became more general.