“The natural riches of the country are incalculable. There are immense tracts of the most feracious soil; brooks, streams, rivers, lakes, on all sides; mountains of minerals, metals, marbles in vast variety; forests whose woods are adapted to all the ordinary purposes of life; gums, roots, medicinals, dyes, fruits in great variety. In many of the islands the cost of a sufficiency of food for a family of five is only a cuarto, a little more than a farthing, a day. Some of the edible roots grow to an enormous size, weighing from 50 to 70 lbs.:—gutta-percha, caoutchouc, gum-lac, gamboge, and many other gums abound. Of fibres the number is boundless; in fact, the known and the unknown wealth of the islands only requires fit aptitudes for its enormous development.
“With a few legislative reforms,” he concludes, “with improved instruction of the clergy, the islands would become a paradise of inexhaustible riches, and of a well-being approachable in no other portion of the globe. The docility and intelligence of the natives, their imitative virtues (wanting though they be in forethought), make them incomparably superior to any Asiatic or African race subjected to European authority. Where deep thought and calculation are required, they will fail; but their natural dispositions and tendencies, and the present state of civilization among them, give every hope and encouragement for the future.”[2]
[1] Articulo sobre las Rentas de Filipinas y los medios de aumentarlas, por D. Sinibaldo de Mas (afterwards Minister Plenipotentiary of Spain in China). Madrid, 1853. [↑]
[2] M. Marcaida considers the best historical and descriptive authorities to be the Fathers Blanco, Santa Maria, Zuñiga, Concepcion, and Buzeta. He speaks highly of Don Sinibaldo de Mas’ Apuntes, of which I have largely availed myself. [↑]
CHAPTER XXI.
FINANCE, TAXATION, ETC.
The gross revenues of the Philippines are about 10,000,000 dollars. The budget for 1859 is as follows:—
| Receipts. | Expenditure. | ||
| Dollars. | Dollars. | ||
| Contributions and taxes | 1,928,607·92 | Grace and Justice | 679,519·11 |
| Custom-houses | 600,000·00 | War | 2,216,669·44 |
| Monopolies | 7,199,950·59 | Finance (Hacienda) | 5,367,829·83 |
| Lotteries | 253,500·00 | Marine | 904,331·27 |
| State property | 12,118·59 | Government | 272,528·62 |
| Uncertain receipts | 21,826·00 | Remitted to and paid for Spain | 1,011,850·00 |
| Marine | 1,338·00 | ||
| Total | 10,017,341·10 | Total | 10,452,728·27 |