No one will pretend that the Filipinos have had any political training. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, only 350 years ago, they were all uncivilized. Many of them are still semi-savages; others are savages pure and simple. These facts are indisputable. If, then, we turn to history for assistance, we can not find a single instance of any real political evolution in any of the various divisions of the inhabitants of the Archipelago. The exception furnished by the debased Mohammedan sultanates of the great Island of Mindanao is only apparent. The germ of fruitful growth is everywhere missing. Now, the Spaniards assuredly took no steps to teach their new subjects the art and science of government; there was every reason, from their point of view, why they should not teach this art and science. On the other hand, our own course has been totally different. We have lost no time in putting political power into the hands of the natives, so that to-day, after fourteen years' possession, municipal and provincial government are almost wholly native. To crown all, we have given the Filipinos an elective legislature, an Assembly, all the members of which are native. Students of the subject at first hand, impartial observers on the spot, declare freely that we have gone much too fast, and that we have granted a measure of political administration and government beyond the native power of assimilation and digestion. With this opinion, sound though it be, we are not immediately concerned: the point we wish to bring out is that the experiment we have made is not free; that the case is one of constrained motion, since everyone knows that the mighty power of the United States dominates the entire situation, and that under these conditions the Filipinos have been exercising themselves in the form of government, rather than in responsible government itself. The Filipino government as such has faced no crisis: behind its treasury stands that of the metropolis. Order is assured by the garrison maintained by us, internal police by the Constabulary, another agency of American origin. But, even if all this were not true, it is questionable if an experience of only eight or nine years affords sufficient ground for the belief that a nascent government could exist and advance under its own power alone.