rbing recently interred bodies.

Liberty for foreigners to settle in the country for the purposes of
trade or agriculture, and to hold property, might be obtained without
much difficulty, were it properly explained, and shown that their
doing so would benefit the Spaniards as much as themselves.

Under the existing laws their inability to hold property prevents
those foreigners who, after passing many years in the country, have
become as it were almost native, and where they have contracted ties
and formed connexions which few men would like to break, from settling
down in it for the remainder of their lives. As they have no means of
investing their gains with security, though they have probably reached
an age when the cares of business press heavily on relaxed energies,
and they are disposed to sit down quietly, and enjoy themselves in
the country where they are naturalized in every thing but in the eye
of the law--all the interest which good citizens, holding pecuniary
investments, naturally take in the well-being of the country, is
withdrawn from them. No wonder, then, that they are careless about the
domestic improvement of the Philippines, or of their progress in those
arts which fill the treasuries of rulers, and make subjects happy.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The laws do not appear to be bad in themselves, but the dilatoriness
with which they are administered has the effect of rendering them as
baneful to those living under them as if they were radically bad;
the delays and accidents inseparable from the mode of conducting
legal business are very vexatious, and frequently from its cost it
is quite inefficient for its purposes of justice. However, Spain and
its colonies are not singular in that respect, as there is one great
and flourishing country which I could name, where the same defects
exist, although, thank God, in a less degree than they do either
in the colony of Spain, or in that country itself; so the less said
about the mote in our brother's eye, the better for those who have
at this moment a beam in the organ of their own judicial executive.

In conducting a _pleito_ at Manilla, all is done by writing; first,
the charge is made out and filed; then comes an answer to the charge;
then a counter-answer is put in, and that again is replied to; and
so on they go for any length of time, determined by the weight of
the purses of the respective contending parties, till, if no more
is to be said, or if one o