With regard to permanence, the Spanish system cannot for a moment be compared with that of America. While each of the Spanish colonies, in order to favor a privileged class by immediate gains, exhausted still more the already enfeebled populace of the metropolis by the withdrawal of the best of its ability, America, on the contrary, has attracted to itself from all countries the most energetic element, which, once on its soil and freed from all fetters, restlessly progressing, has extended its power and influence still farther and farther. The Philippines will escape the action of the two great neighboring powers [the United States and Great Britain] all the less for the fact that neither they [the Philippines] nor their metropolis find their condition of a stable and well-balanced nature. These deliberated forecasts deeply impressed Rizal. They were written about 1874. Looking back now, the applause Jagor deserves for his keen vision is easy, but in 1874 or 1876 who hailed him as a prophet? If he found a disciple outside of the grim walls of the Ateneo the fact escaped record; but to Rizal the sequence seemed normal to his own reflections. He had an instinctive faith in the latent capacity of his people; now he noted that this cool-minded scientist came from judicial analysis of these same people to share the same belief. The next step was facile; he perceived the logical procession of Jagor’s reasonings about the rising American influence. It must be so, then, that America would prove to be light and leadership to the Far East, and from this time he turned to the United States as an example and a well-spring of hope. [47] That same year came the celebration of the first one hundred years of American independence, and the reports of it fell pat with his new meditations. As a rule, the newspapers of Manila, inspired by the Spanish habitude, had referred with phrases of contempt to the American republic. The centennial festival seemed to modify or to beat through their prejudices, for space was given to long and respectful reviews of the progress and achievements of the United States, and with these an outline of the desperate struggle by which it had won its independence. Upon a mind like Rizal’s, enlisted for freedom, susceptible to all things heroic and idealistic, the effect must have been galvanic. It was a lesson of more than one angle. Here was a people that had been under such an incubus of political medievalism as was strangling his countrymen. A handful challenging the greatest power in the world, they had achieved their emancipation, and he could not fail to note that the disparity between the Philippines and Spain was hardly greater than that between America and Great Britain in 1776.