If any one wants to know why Spain cannot keep
her colonies he should read the correspondence from Hong-kong published in the Times of Friday, p. 9. The Spaniards in the Philippines, aware of their feebleness and of the special hatred towards them entertained by the natives, have resor,ted to horrible cruelties. They keep their prisoners in Manila in an oubliette or deep pit ventilated through an iron grating in the floor. The tide sometimes rises to this grating and stops it up, and it did so one Monday night, when one hundred and fifty men and women were in the oubliette. Says the writer, whose story is confirmed from another source, "When the tide rose and the atmosphere became more and more stifling the wretched men and women fought like wild animals. Some went mad altogether. Next morning the numbers bad been reduced by about one-half." The Black Hole of Calcutta was better than that, for the native officer who imprisoned his captives there was not aware that the room was too small for them ; while the authorities in Manila must have known that their oubliette was unfit for human habitation. They did not, of course, intend the horror which occurred; but they did not care whether it occurred or not. Naturally the natives who have been governed in this way for a century, and who have Malay blood in them, disgrace their revolt by disgusting cruelties to all Spaniards—they spare other Euro- peans—and naturally also, being aware that they will never be 'pardoned, especially for torturing the priests, they are ready to fight to the death. The Spaniards send home accounts of vict ones, but it is doubtful if they will reconquer the islands.
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