So then, if the prudence and wise reforms of our ministers do not find capable and determined interpreters among the colonial governors and faithful perpetuators among those whom the frequent political changes send to fill such a delicate post; if met with the eternal it is out of order, proffered by the elements who see their livelihood in the backwardness of their subjects; if just claims are to go unheeded, as being of a subversive tendency; if the country is denied representation in the Cortes and an authorized voice to cry out against all kinds of abuses, which escape through the complexity of the laws; if, in short, the system, prolific in results of alienating the good will of the natives, is to continue, pricking his apathetic mind with insults and charges of ingratitude, we can assert that in a few years the present state of affairs will have been modified completely--and inevitably. There now exists a factor which was formerly lacking--the spirit of the nation has been aroused, and a common misfortune, a common debasement, has united all the inhabitants of the Islands. A numerous enlightened class now exists within and without the Islands, a class created and continually augmented by the stupidity of certain governing powers, which forces the inhabitants to leave the country, to secure education abroad, and it is maintained and struggles thanks to the provocations and the system of espionage in vogue. This class, whose number is cumulatively increasing, is in constant communication with the rest of the Islands, and if today it constitutes only the brain of the country in a few years it will form the whole nervous system and manifest its existence in all its acts. Now, statecraft has various means at its disposal for checking a people on the road to progress: the brutalization of the masses through a caste addicted to the government, aristocratic, as in the Dutch colonies, or theocratic, as in the Philippines; the impoverishment of the country; the gradual extermination of the inhabitants; and the fostering of feuds among the races.