He thinks the attempts to conglomerate the population in towns and cities injurious to the agricultural interests of the country; but assuredly this agglomeration is friendly to civilization, good government and the production of wealth, and more likely than the dispersion of the inhabitants to provide for the introduction of those larger farms to which the Philippines must look for any very considerable augmentation of the produce of the land.
"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." [31]
The gross revenues of the Philippines are about 10,000,000 dollars. The budget for 1859 is as follows:--
Contributions and Grace and Justice 679,519·11 taxes 1,928,607·92 War 2,216,669·44 Custom-houses 600,000·00 Finance (Hacienda) 5,367,829·83 Monopolies 7,199,950·59 Marine 904,331·27 Lotteries 253,500·00 Government 272,528·62 State property 12,118·59 Remitted to and Uncertain receipts 21,826·00 paid for Spain 1,011,850·00 Marine 1,338·00 ------------- ------------- Total 10,017,341·10 Total 10,452,728·27