Excerpt from The Philippine Islands: An Address Delivered Before the Chautauqua Society, August 11th, 1904, by the Hon. William H. Taft, Secretary of War The influence of the friars was thrown against the investigation and development of the resources of the Philippines. The priests knew that the development of the mines in Peru and Mexico had meant suffering and death to many of the natives, and it was thought better to let the mines in the Philippines, if mines there were, lie undeveloped. There were but a few Spanish merchants who lived permanently in the islands, and these were chiefly engaged in the trans shipment of Asiatic merchandise from Manila, and not much interested in Philippine merchandise as such, so that they assisted but little the internal development of the islands. Taxes were light, there was no money to make improvements on a large scale, or to establish many schools. One Spanish-speaking priest'among three or four thousand natives could do little in spread ing the knowledge of the language. Indeed it is prob able that apart from the convenience, for purposes of administration, of the priest learning the language of his parish, rather than requiring the parishioners to learn his, it was deemed expedient from a religious point of view to keep the people isolated by their ignorance of a common tongue. To know Spanish meant contact with the outside world and the priests feared not civilization, but the evils of civilization. Material civilization, the modern progress with steam and iron, seemed to the Spanish missionaries of little worth, compared with keeping their people unspotted from the world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.