[131] "* * * All thrifty activity was regarded as despicable. No trader had a seat in the Cortes of Aragon. As late as 1781 the Academy of Madrid was obliged to offer as the subject for a prize essay the proposition that there was nothing derogatory in the useful arts. Every tradesman and manufacturer sought only to make enough money to enable him to live on the interest of it or to establish a trust fund for his family. If he was successful he either entered a cloister or went to another province in order to pass for a noble. In Cervantes we find the maxim: 'Whoever wishes to make his fortune seeks the church, the sea (i. e., service in America), or the king's house.' The highest ambition of the nation in its golden age was to be to Europe just what the nobility, the clergy, and the army were to single nations. Consequently there was an enormous preponderance of personal service in the industrial organism, and much of this was purely for ostentation. Nowhere in the world were there so many nobles, so many officers, civil and military, so many lawyers and clerks, priests and monks, so many students and school-boys, with their servants. But as truly, nowhere in the world were there so many beggars and vagabonds." (The Spanish Colonial System, by Wilhelm Roscher, pp. 3-4.) [132] Azcarraga, pp. 117-118. [133] See Bl. and Rb., Vol. 52, pp. 307-322. Also Vidal, Historia General de Filipinas, Vol. 2, pp. 285-297; Mas, Informe Sobre el Estado de las Islas Filipinas en 1842, part II, pp. 28-31; and the Boletin de la Sociedad Económica for the different years. [134] Jagor, Travels in the Philippines, chapter 25. Memoria Sobre el Desestanco del Tabaco en las Islas Filipinas, José Jimeno Agius, Manila, 1871. [135] "* * * at the time of Basco there were in Camarines four and a half million mulberry trees, and this was one of the results of the industrious administration of that famous governor, and of the first patriotic attempts of the Economic Society, so ably aided by the alcalde mayor, Don Martin Ballesteros, who later became factor of the Company in said province. At the request of the Society the first seeds were sent to Manila in 1780 by an Augustinian by the name of Fray Pedro Galiano; the director of the Company decided at all cost to stimulate this production, by advancing big sums * * (and) thought of introducing Chinese laborers for this purpose, and even proposed to bring over families from Granada, Valencia, and Murcia, well acquainted with this kind of industry; and, according to report of those agents, the first crops gave good results because of the continuous sprouting of the leaves, possibly the harvesting of even nine crops in each year. They were assured too, that according to Chinese experts, the silk of the country was inferior to that of Nanking, but very much superior to that of Canton." (Azcarraga, p. 133.)