both in means and desire for the journey back, for their life in the colony is far pleasanter than that they were forced to lead in Spain.  These latter arrive without the slightest knowledge of the country and without being in the least prepared for a sojourn there.  Many of them are so lazy that they won’t take the trouble to learn the language even if they marry a daughter of the soil.  Their servants understand Spanish, and clandestinely watch the conversation and the actions, and become acquainted with all the secrets, of their indiscreet masters, to whom the Filipinos remain an enigma which their conceit prevents them attempting to decipher.

[Spanish lack of prestige deserved.] It is easy to understand how Filipino respect for Europeans must be diminished by the numbers of these uneducated, improvident, and extravagant Spaniards, who, no matter what may have been their position at home, are all determined to play the master in the colony. [Social Standing of Filipinos thus enhanced.] The relative standing of the Filipinos naturally profits by all this and it would be difficult to find a colony in which the natives, taken all in all, feel more comfortable than in the Philippines.  They have adopted the religion, the manners, and the customs of their rulers; and though legally not on an equal footing with the latter, they are by no means separated from them by the high barriers with which, not to mention Java, the churlish reserve of the English has surrounded the natives of the other colonies.

[Spanish-Filipino bonds of union.] The same religion, a similar form of worship, an existence intermixed with that of the indigenous population, all tend to bring the Europeans and the Indians together.  That they have done so is proved by the existence of the proportionately very numerous band of mestizos who inhabit the Islands.

[Latin races better for colonists in the tropics.] The Spaniards and the Portuguese appear, in fact, to be the only Europeans who take root in tropical countries.  They are capable of permanent and fruitful amalgamation [52] with the natives. [53]

[Initiative and individuality missing.] The want of originality, which among the mestizos, appears to arise from their equivocal position, is also to be found among the natives.  Distinctly marked national customs, which one would naturally expect to find in such an isolated part of the world, are sought for in vain, and again and again the stranger remarks that everything has been learned and is only a veneer.

[A compromise civilization.] As Spain forcibly expelled the civilization of the Moors, and in Peru that of the Incas, so in the Philippines it has understood how to set aside an equally well-founded one, by appropriating in an incredible manner, in order to take root itself the more quickly, all existing forms and abuses. [54]