One of their favorite dreams of
raising money is to put a tremendously high license upon all foreigners
doing business in the Islands; and so high an opinion have they both
of their value to the world at large and of their prowess, that they
do not take into consideration the probability of the foreigner's
either getting out of the country or appealing to his own Government
to protect his invested capital. When they speak of independence,
they invariably assume that America is going to protect them against
China, Japan, or any of the great colony-holding nations of Europe.
Such are the peculiar governmental conceptions of the middle-class
Filipino--a class holding the ballot by the grace of God and the
assistance of the American Government. Their inverted ideas come
from real inexperience in highly organized industrial society, and
from perfectly natural deductions from books. When they study Roman
and Greek history, they learn there the names of generals, poets,
artists, sculptors, statesmen, and historians. Books do not dwell
upon that long list of thriving colonies which filled the Grecian
archipelago with traffic, and reached east and west to the shores
of Asia and to the Pillars of Hercules. The Filipinos learn that
Rome nourished her generals and her emperors upon the spoils of war,
but they do not reflect that the predatory age--at least in the Roman
sense--is past.
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