Their general character is that of a good-natured and merry people, strongly disposed to enjoy the present, and caring little for the future. So far as regards personal strength and mental activity or power, they are much superior to any of the Javanese or Malays I have seen in Java, or at Batavia and Singapore. But, to our modes of thinking, the greatest defect in their character is their indolence and dislike to any bodily exertion, which are the effects of the sun under which they live; but their native maxims and their habits, although we may disapprove of them now-a-days, when everything goes by steam, might be dignified by a great poet's verse into the truest and best philosophy; for does he not sing,-- Otium bello furiosa Thrace, Otium Medi pharetra decori Grosphe, non gemmis, neque purpura venale, nec auro. Vivitur parvo bene, cui paternum Splendat in mensa tenui salinum; Nec leves somnos timor aut Cupido Sordidus aufert. Laetus in praesens animus, quod ultra est Oderit curare, et amara lento Temperet risu, &c.----Hor. II. xvi. CHAPTER XVIII. At Manilla a labourer's pay is a quarter of a dollar a-day, or a little more than a shilling, which is enough to keep him supplied with food of as good quality and quantity as he needs to eat for about two or three days, so that if a labourer or coolie, who has only himself to support, work two days out of the seven, he has enough to supply all his necessities, and can enjoy what is to him a high degree of pleasure and amusement,--the training of a cock for the cockpit, sleeping a long siesta, gossiping with his neighbour, and chewing _buyos_, or smoking cigarillos, quite at his ease, during the rest of the time. They have all a strong dislike to settling down to any employment demanding the exercise of much bodily exertion, even when it is well remunerated; and the consequence is, that the extreme difficulty of procuring labour forms the greatest drawback there is to a planter settling in the Philippines, and not unfrequently causes the one or two people who have now got plantations there on a small scale, to suffer the utmost inconvenience in the management of their estates; and this operates to so great an extent, as virtually to prevent any one but a very bold and speculative man investing money in sugar plantations, or otherwise locking it up in agriculture. Government has long been sensible of this, and the present Captain-General has issued an order, containing a permission for persons engaging in plantations to import Chinese labourers, to whom, if actually engaged in tilling the soil, are conceded certain privileges which they have not hitherto enjoyed, being subject to less tribute than what is paid by the rest of their countrymen who are engaged in other avocations.