As for the natives, Professor Worcester gives them, on the whole, a fairly good character. The aboriginal tribes, Negritoes, or "little niggers," are, like our own Indians, nearly extinct. The pagan Malays are bold, warlike, treacherous, but they are not numerous, being confined largely to the northern islands, and even the Spaniards were able, by keeping firearms out of their reach, to prevent them from becoming seriously dangerous. The Mohammedan Malays are more formidable. To the fierceness and treachery of their pagan congeners, their faith has added a savage fanaticism which takes the form of special hatred for the Christian. They are fatalists, and hence fearless in battle, and their priests teach them that for every Christian slain they will be rewarded with a new peri in paradise.
There are forty thousand Chinese in the islands, including some coolies, but the greater part are engaged in retail trade, which in some districts they entirely monopolize. Scarcely any village is without its Chinese shop.
The most numerous and important portion of the population is the half-caste element--Malay-Chinese and Malay-Caucasian, generally Spanish. The creole Spaniards affect to despise these "half-cousins," especially the friars, though it is said that the friars are responsible for the existence of most of them. As a matter of fact, however, the half-castes constitute the great "middle classes" of the population, and are far and away the most tractable, intelligent, and in every way promising for the purposes of a civilized government. Not a few of them are intelligent and fairly educated. Aguinaldo himself is said to be a Malay-Chinese. The Spaniards, never violently addicted to labor, allowed these people to do the greater part of such work as shop-tending, bookkeeping, etc., so that, in the opinion of Professor Worcester, they would be available for the minor positions of government, under the direction of American chiefs.
Much will depend on how these half-castes are treated. Senor Nicholas Estévanez, at one time Spanish Minister of War, gives friendly warning to the Americans, not to copy the mistakes of his own countrymen in taking for granted the inferiority of the native Filipinos. This was one stumbling-block to the peacefulness of Spanish rule in the islands, though not, of course, the only one. In a very interesting article in the _North American Review_, Senor Estévanez tells of the trials and injustices endured by these really patient and peaceful people at the hands of "impure priests and merchants without a conscience." Disraeli said, "Race is the key to history." But race distinctions can be overworked, and if our people enter upon the government of the islands too strongly prepossessed with the idea of their own superiority, they will simply be making unnecessary trouble for themselves.