Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/492

474 unable to read. The pressure of the colored people to the higher studies and the special schools far exceeds the percentage which one would anticipate from their proportion to the whole population. And if we add to these those who seek their education in Spain and other foreign countries we shall find Malays and mestizos in the first line, and the creoles in the last. It should be remarked on this point that many more natives would have gone to Europe for education if the Spaniards, and especially the monks, had not perceived conspirators in all Filipinos who studied away from home. The fear of persecution deterred many fathers from sending their sons over the sea.

More than ten years ago a prominent monkish writer showed how the professions of medicine and the law were crowded with Malays and mestizos. But besides these two professions and that of the secular clergy the colored Filipinos turned also to engineering and art. With respect to art, I am not thinking of the skillful goldsmiths and silversmiths of Manila, although these artificers are among the best, but I refer to artists of divine gifts, among whom the mestizo F. Resureccion Hidalgo, resident in Paris, and Don Juan Luna, of the tribe of Ilokans of northwestern Luzon, brother of the Philippine minister Antonio Luna, are most conspicuous. Luna is not unknown to us Germans, for the Leipsic Illusirirte Zeitung some time ago published a wood engraving of his great prize-crowned picture Spoliarum. The best testimony to his eminence is the fact that the Spanish Senate honored this artist, who was then living in Paris, with the commission to paint for its chamber a pendant to Padilla's famous picture Boabdil Surrendering the Keys of Granada to the Catholic Queen, and he painted The Battle of Lepanto. And among the Filipino poets the name of the great Tagal, Dr. Rizal, has become known to the whole world through his skill in tragedy.

There is no need of mentioning any other names, for those we have given are enough to show that these Malays and mestizos are susceptible of cultivation, and, as Bismarck used to say, "carry a rocket-charge in their bodies."

As the Spaniards who came to the archipelago were for the most part only monks or officers, trade, so far as it was not in the hands of foreigners, was dependent on the participation of the colored population, particularly of the mestizos. And what of large land ownership the monkish orders had not absorbed likewise belonged for the most part to the colored races. None but foreigners and colored took part in all the great enterprises of the country. The Spaniards only ruled.

This position of the colored population in the country was the