Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/517

 OF THE ARCHIPELAGO. 47^ cessors, and, as we have already seen, their sordid and cruel management produced a longer and more extended misery, than that of either of the nations which had gone before them. The Spaniards of the Philippines attempted the conquest of the Moluccas, from the Portuguese or Dutch, no less than five times. They sent their first expedition, as early as 1682, about ten years after the foundation of the city of Manila, and con- tinued their eiForts down to 171 6, wh.en the last great attempt was made against ' the whole com- merce and possessions of the Philippines, by Don Juan de Silva. The Dutch supremacy was, after this, too firmly established to be shaken by the feeble power of the Philippines. It was the ambition of the Spanish court that prompted, and, for the most part, directly ordered these fruitless expeditions, to which the capacity of the Indian possessions of Spain was never equal, and which tended to exhaust the resources of the Philippines, to retard their improvement, and af- forded the local governments, in one form or other, a pretext to oppress both the natives and the Spanish colonists. The only formidable attack ever made on the Philippines by an European power, was that of the British in 176:2 ; and as the circumstances and con- sequences of it elucidate, in a very pointed and in- teresting manner, the nature of the Spanish admi-