preying and warring upon the other. Dr. David P. Barrows states the situation thus in his History of the Philippines:

The weakest side of the culture of the early Filipinos was their political and social organization, and they were weak here in precisely the same way that the now uncivilized peoples of Northern Luzon are still weak. Their state did not embrace the whole tribe or nation; it included simply the community. Outside the settlers in one immediate vicinity, all others were enemies or, at most, foreigners. There were, in the Philippines, no large states, nor even great rajas and sultans such as were found in the Malay Archipelago, but instead on every island were a multiple of small communities, each independent of the other and frequently waging war. The unit of their political order was a small cluster of from thirty to one hundred families, called a "barangay," which still exists in the Philippines as a “barrio." At the head of each barangay was a chief known as the "dato," a word no longer used in the northern Philippines though it persists among the Moros of Mindanao.

Despite over three centuries of Spanish sovereignty and influence, these tribal distinctions still largely persist, the population being split into numerous local divisions, speaking different dialects and regarding each other with mutual distrust and suspicion. H. Otley Beyer, Professor of Anthropology at the University of the Philippines, fixes the number of existing ethnographic groups in the Philippines at eighty-seven, basing his classification upon the following definition of "ethnographic group," i. e., “Any group of people, living in a more or less continuous geographic area, who have a sufficiently unique economic and social life, language, or physical type to mark them off clearly and distinctly from any other similar group in the Philippine Islands."

It has been said, and doubtless truly, that in no like area in the world will there be found such a diversity of types and blends of people each speaking its own

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language and having its own peculiar customs and interests as exists to-day in the Philippine Archipelago. Within the island group will be found every gradation of humanity, from the pygmy Negritos, at the very bottom of the human scale, to the cultured and up-to-date product of our modern schools and colleges.

Inasmuch as any government established in the Philippines must be builded by or for this variegated Malay population, we are concerned in knowing what the racial characteristics of Malay peoples are and to what extent Spain, during her long rule, refined or otherwise changed these characteristics before turning the product over to us for further treatment.

A. R. Colquhoun, author of "The Mastery of the Pacific," and an acknowledged authority on Oriental peoples, discussing Malay capacity for self-government,

says:

No Malay nation has ever emerged from the hordes of that race which have spread over the Islands of the Pacific. Wherever they are found they have certain marked characteristics, and of these the most remarkable is their lack of that spirit which goes to form a homogeneous people, to weld them together. The Malay is always a provincial; more, he rarely rises outside the interests of his town or village. He is never honest as we account that virtue, never truthful, and never industrious or persevering. This is his dark side, but it is with that we are concerned. The two points which are most inimical to progress are, as already mentioned, the lack of unity and the lack of persistence. The Malay, in short, is a creature of limitations.

Sir Frank Swettenham, for thirty years a colonial administrator in British Malaysia, and pronounced "the foremost living authority on Malay history," stated, from the sum of his experience, that "the germ of self-government does not exist in the Malay race.

Bishop James Thoburn, of the Methodist Episcopal

Church, who spent forty-five years in the Orient and fifteen years among the Malays of the Straits Settlements, testifying as to Malay characteristics before a committee of the United States Senate, said:

They have no cohesion whatever among themselves. Wherever I meet the Malays I find they live to themselves; they go off into tribes and clans, and the biggest man is called a sultan and his jurisdiction is limited.

The above conclusions, which could be multiplied indefinitely, are historically accurate, and certainly reflect conditions as they existed in the Philippines when Spain took possession. It remains to be seen how far this general verdict must be modified as to the Filipino-Malay because of Spanish influence and tutelage.

Ferdinand Magellan, sailing under commission of Charles V of Spain, discovered the Philippines in 1521. His were the first vessels to round South America, the first to reach the Orient from Europe by sailing westward, and the first to circumnavigate the globe. A writer has well termed it, "The greatest voyage of discovery that has ever been accomplished, and greater than can ever be performed again." Magellan, however, did not live to reap his triumph, meeting death in one of the tribal feuds of the Philippines. While at Cebu he volunteered to assist the dato of that place in a war being waged with the islanders of Mactan, and was killed in battle.

A permanent settlement was effected at Cebu by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565, and at Manila in 1571. Thereafter, and with but little resistance, Spanish sovereignty was extended to include most of the archipelago, where, with but slight interference, it continued until superseded by that of the United States in 1898.

When taken over by Spain the Philippines had an es

timated population of five hundred thousand. No Filipino nation was destroyed or supplanted, for none existed. The inhabitants, as already noted, were simply a collection of scattered tribes occupying limited areas of the archipelago. Even at that time Mohammedan Moros from Mindanao and Sulu had established settlements in Manila, as also along the coasts of Luzon and on the adjacent islands of Mindoro and Lubang. Being of a more virile and aggressive stock than the earlier comers, there is little question but that this Mohammedan element, if undisturbed, would have shortly impressed its religion and tribal customs upon the other native groups. Given the trend of events, however, the islands could not long have continued unoccupied by some European Power. It was an era of discovery and expansion, wherein the English, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish were mapping between them the new worlds to which Columbus had

opened a way. Within brief intervals following her occupation of the Philippines, Spain's hold thereon was contested in turn by each of these rival powers, none of which could the Filipinos have successfully resisted.

Owing to their remoteness and the difficulties of communication, Spain made but little effort to colonize the Philippines or to develop their resources. Except as government servants, civil and military, or members of various religious orders, comparatively few Spaniards found their way to the Far East. In fact, for more than two hundred years there was little or no direct transport between the Philippines and Spain, all communication being had with and through Mexico, to which the islands were subordinate. Even this service was limited to an annual galleon ("great ships of six hundred and eight hundred tons apiece") sailing between Manila and Aca