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 vent one case of fraud, there are provided a million and a half preventive or humiliating regulations, which produce the immediate effect of awakening in the public the desire to elude and mock such regulations. To make a people criminal, there's nothing more needed than to doubt its virtue. Enact a law, not only here, but even in Spain, and you will see how the means of evading it will be sought, and this is for the very reason that the legislators have overlooked the fact that the more an object is hidden, the more a sight of it is desired. Why are rascality and astuteness regarded as great qualities in the Spanish people, when there is no other so noble, so proud, so chivalrous as it? Because our legislators, with the best intentions, have doubted its nobility, wounded its pride, challenged its chivalry! Do you wish to open in Spain a road among the rocks? Then place there an imperative notice forbidding the passage, and the people, in order to protest against the order, will leave the highway to clamber over the rocks. The day on which some legislator in Spain forbids virtue and commands vice, then all will become virtuous!"

The Dominican paused for a brief space, then resumed: "But you may say that we are getting away from the subject, so I'll return to it. What I can say to you, to convince you, is that the vices from which you suffer ought to be ascribed by you neither to us nor to the government. They are due to the imperfect organization of our social system: qui mullum probat, nihil probat, one loses himself through excessive caution, lacking what is necessary and having too much of what is superfluous."

"If you admit those defects in your social system," replied Isagani, "why then do you undertake to regulate alien societies, instead of first devoting your attention to yourselves?"

"We're getting away from the subject, young man. The theory in accomplished facts must be accepted."

"So let it be! I accept it because it is an accomplished