official estimate in 1819 was just short of 2,600,000; by 1845 Buzeta calculates the number at a little short of four millions. In the next half century it nearly doubled. [144] In view of all these facts one must readily accord assent to Zúñiga's simple tribute to the work of Spain. "The Spanish rule has imposed very few burdens upon these Indians, and has delivered them from many misfortunes which they suffered from the constant warfare waged by one district with another, whereby many died, and others lived wretched lives as slaves. For this reason the population increased very slowly, as is now the case with the infidels of the mountain regions who do not acknowledge subjection to the King of Spain. Since the conquest there has been an increase in well-being and in population. Subjection to the King of Spain has been very advantageous in all that concerns the body. I will not speak of the advantage of knowledge of the true God, and of the opportunity to obtain eternal happiness for the soul, for I write not as a missionary but as a philosopher." [145] The old régime in the Philippines has disappeared forever. In hardly more than a generation the people have passed from a life which was so remote from the outside contemporary world that they might as well have been living in the middle ages in some sheltered nook, equally protected from the physical violence and the intellectual strife of the outside world, and entirely oblivious of the progress of knowledge. They find themselves suddenly plunged into a current that hurls them along resistlessly. Baptized with fire and blood, a new and strange life is thrust upon them and they face the struggle for existence under conditions which spare no weakness and relentlessly push idleness or incapacity to the wall. What will be the outcome no man can tell. To the student of history and of social evolution it will be an experiment of profound interest. _Edward Gaylord Bourne_ _Yale University_, October, 1902. Preface to Volume I The history of the Philippine archipelago is fitly introduced by presenting a group of documents which relate to Pope Alexander VI's Line of Demarcation between the respective dominions of Spain and Portugal in the recently-discovered New World. So many controversies regarding this line have at various times arisen, and so little on the subject has appeared in the English tongue, that we have thought it well to place before our readers the more important of the documents relating thereto, of which a brief synopsis is here given.