Some Spanish proverbs have made their way into Tagal.
Baquit siya y namong cahi ay siyang nabalantogui. Fué por lana y bolvió trasquilado.—He went for wool, and returned shorn.
I have selected most of these proverbs, aphorisms and moral and religious maxims from Fr. de los Santos’ folio volume, and they would have some interest if they represented the thoughts and feelings of a civilized nation. That interest will hardly be less when the social code of semi-barbarians is studied in these short sentences. The influence and teachings of the priests will be found in many; others will be deemed characteristic of local usages, and some will find a recommendation in their grotesqueness and originality. I have thought these examples of the language might not be without their value to philologists.
[1] There are many names for the public executioner, denoting the places in which he exercises his profession, and the instruments he employs for inflicting the punishment of death. [↑]
CHAPTER XX.
COMMERCE.
To foreign nations—to our own especially—the particular interest felt in the state of the Philippines is naturally more of a commercial than of a political character. They must grow in trading importance; already enough has been done to make a retrograde or even a stationary policy untenable. Every step taken towards emancipation from the ancient fetters which ignorance and monopoly laid upon their progress has been so successful and so productive as to promise and almost to ensure continuance in a course now proved to be alike beneficial to the public treasury and to the common weal. The statistics which I have been able to collect are often unsatisfactory and inaccurate, but, upon the whole, may be deemed approximative to the truth, and certainly not without value as means of comparison between the results of that narrow-minded exclusive system which so long directed the councils of Spain and the administration of las Indias, and the wiser and more liberal views which make their way through the dense darkness of the past.
The caprices and mischiefs of a privileged and protected trade and the curses which monopolies bring with them to the general interests, may, indeed, be well studied in the ancient legislation of Spain as regards her colonies. One vessel only was formerly allowed to proceed from the Philippines to Mexico; she was to be commanded by officers of the royal navy, equipped as a ship of war, and was subject to a variety of absurd restrictions and regulations: the adventurers were to pay 20,000 dollars for their privilege; and no one was allowed to adventure unless he were a vocal de consulado, which required a residence of several years in the islands, and the possession of property to the extent of 8,000 dollars. The privilege often passed clandestinely, by purchase, into the hands of friars, officials, women and other speculators—and it may well be supposed at what prices the goods had to be invoiced. Such being the licensed pillage in Asia, on arriving at Acapulco, in America, to which place the cargo was necessarily consigned, 33⅓ per cent. was imposed upon the valuation of the Manila invoices. And on the return of the ship similar or even more absurd conditions were exacted: she was only allowed to bring back double the value of the cargo she conveyed; but, as the profits were often enormous, every species of fraud was practised to give fictitious values to the articles imported—in fact, from the beginning to the end of the undertaking there seems to have been a rivalry in roguery among all parties concerned.