Such is the society of Manila, and such its manners: from them the general character of those who compose it may be easily imagined; they are polite in offering every thing--but do but little or nothing:--they affect great decency of manners and a religious deportment in all their actions; but any thing but this is to be found in the conduct of the generality; and a common remark amongst themselves, "Esta no es tierra para un hombre de bien," [137] is worth a chapter on the subject.
This may be thought an exaggerated, or at least a highly coloured picture, and it is natural that it should be so. A recital of a well-known custom may add an evidence to these assertions, premising that it is not the only, though the most prominent one that attracts the notice of the stranger: I allude to that of promiscuous bathing. This shamefully indecent custom could exist in no country where the common decencies of life were held in due consideration. Imagine the members of a large family, the father, mother, children, young and old, any visitors who may be in the house and often part of another family, all assembled in a large bath, built out on the river with bamboos, the women with only a petticoat and a gauze chemise, and the men with a thin pair of drawers, and this continuing for one or two hours. This is a Manila bath, to which it is no uncommon thing for an acquaintance to be asked, and in which 4/5ths of all the families in Manila indulge. It may be said in extenuation, that from its frequency no evil arises from it: this may be the case, but it is not the less indecent on that account.
The policy of Spain towards the Phillippines appears to have been to preserve them--no matter how, as it afforded occasion to remark, "that the sun never set in the dominions of his Catholic majesty." Its neglect of so rich a colony can only be supposed to arise from ignorance, or from a mistaken determination to sacrifice it to the Americans: from which, this is not the place to enquire. It will suffice to observe, that in Spain it has been at all times considered as the "ne plus ultra" of expatriation: a natural consequence of this was the state of society which has been shewn to exist. [138] Nor is this idea confined to Spain alone: Mr. Whitbread, when addressing the House on the tyranny of Ferdinand to the liberal party, concluded in the following manner: "Some have perished on the scaffold--others in the dungeons of Ceuta--and others, still more horrible to relate, have been sent to linger out their days amidst the savages of the Phillippine islands!"