The monks have opposed every attempt at reform. Their policy has ever been the policy of ignorance, knowing that their livelihood depended upon its perpetuation. It has been their aim chiefly to limit public instruction to the mere rudiments of knowledge--giving to every subject a religious bias. Even the colleges and the University of Manila are not free from their narrow supervision; while they have ever maintained a rigid censorship over the press. The natives, however, are gradually breaking through the network of superstition that centuries of priestcraft have woven round them. That they are open to conviction,--to the light of reason and the hope of truth,--deeds bear witness. None but the most enlightened natives, of course, recognize, as yet, their spiritual wants or desire a higher moral state, but many of them, privately, attest their waning belief in the Church monopoly of all things temporal in their lives. Still, owing to the reasons previously stated, those that thus impugn and combat ecclesiastical preponderance, do so rarely except by secret word or in a limited conclave. But the enlightening and invigorating effects incidental to American occupation will inevitably loose their tongues and rally recruits to their new standard of thought. Of this I hope and expect great results. THE VARIOUS TRIBES OF THE PHILIPPINES. Character of the Natives. To judge of the character of one's own people is extremely difficult. One is likely to be either too severe or too complimentary. However, I believe, that--after a residence of many years in England and on the Continent, and a subsequent stay of eleven years in America, with frequent visits to the Philippines--I am able to judge in the abstract, and, in fact, comparatively to look upon my own countrymen with the eye of a thorough cosmopolitan. The natives of the islands are a branch of the Malay race, and may be divided into three large groups,--the Tagalogs, the Visayos, and the Sulus,--each group subject to modifications and exceptions. The Tagalogs inhabit Luzon, the northern islands of the Archipelago, and it is with these that we have mainly to deal, as they are by far the most numerous and the most intelligent part of the population, forming, as they do, also the majority of the inhabitants in Manila and in the largest ports.