124
Considerable is reduced to nothing, and the place is only the shadow of its former self; of Manila it is notorious that the most is not made and her principal city is deficient in the ordinary requirements of Civilization as if it had been kept two centuries back.
On the recent occasion of a disastrous Earthquake, a sum (of an amount variously reported, but large) was contributed by the Madrid Government for the relief of a Colony which, under a Different System, would have been perfectly independent of such external aid.
28.
I do not, of course, attribute the condition of these two places solely to the contributions exacted by the Mother Countries, but I am, I think, sustaining a point in my argument if I maintain that the monies they remitted to Europe would have been beneficially expended on the spot, and would directly on the Colony and indirectly on the mother Country have reflected more credit than at the present time be claimed by either.
29.
I am aware that there is another Colony in this part...