. The Philippine Islands . them in their natural growth,and so checked their development that they lost the benefit thatthey might have gained from a more liberal policy. Of all thenations, Spain pursued this short-sighted policy most rigidly. Notonly in commerce, but in everything else, she cramped her trade was so sternly prohibited that, in her period ofsupremacy, she put to death any alien merchant that venturedinto one of her ports. Her colonies were her cows ; no onecould milk them but herself; but she milked them so dry as tostarve them of their natural yield. Spain nev
. The Philippine Islands . them in their natural growth,and so checked their development that they lost the benefit thatthey might have gained from a more liberal policy. Of all thenations, Spain pursued this short-sighted policy most rigidly. Notonly in commerce, but in everything else, she cramped her trade was so sternly prohibited that, in her period ofsupremacy, she put to death any alien merchant that venturedinto one of her ports. Her colonies were her cows ; no onecould milk them but herself; but she milked them so dry as tostarve them of their natural yield. Spain never learned the lesson that the other nations weretaking to heart. In the nineteenth century her policy with hercolonies was as illiberal as in the eighteenth. As a result, rebel-lions everywhere broke out ; one by one the colonies becamefree, and the country whose possessions covered more than acontinent at the beginning of the century, held, at the end, but ashred of her once-splendid dominion. Spains treatment of the 174. 170 The Philippine Ishinds. PhiHppine Islands in their commercial interests, forms a markedexample of what I have previously said, and an extended accountof this remarkable method of trade cannot fail to be of interest. The Philippines, at first, in 1569, were too far away to be dealtwith directly, and were made an appanage of the intermediatecolony of Mexico, through which they were reached and method was curious. The natives were no sooner subduedand put under Spanish governors than they were required to payroundly in taxes and tribute to the royal treasury. All this be-longed to the crown, but some of it had to be devoted to thegovernment of the colony ; and the Spanish grandees that exiledthemselves to that far land, took good care to pay themselves wellfor the penance. For many years the taxes were paid to the treasury wholl> incolonial produce, and for many more years, partly so. Thismaterial was exchanged for Chinese wares, junks fro
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