considerable portion of the native population in the larger centers,
who had shared in the economic progress of the colony, were enabled
to look beyond their daily needs and to afford their children an
opportunity for study and advancement--a condition and a need met
by the Jesuits for a time.

With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 communication with the
mother country became cheaper, quicker, surer, so that large numbers
of Spaniards, many of them in sympathy with the republican movements
at home, came to the Philippines in search of fortunes and generally
left half-caste families who had imbibed their ideas. Native boys
who had already felt the intoxication of such learning as the schools
of Manila afforded them began to dream of greater wonders in Spain,
now that the journey was possible for them. So began the definite
movements that led directly to the disintegration of the friar regime.

In the same year occurred the revolution in the mother country,
which had tired of the old corrupt despotism. Isabella II was driven
into exile and the country left to waver about uncertainly for
several years, passing through all the stages of government from red
radicalism to absolute conservatism, finally adjusting itself to the
middle course of constitutional monarchism. During the effervescent
and ephemeral republic there was sent to the Philippines a governor
who set to work to modify the old system and establish a government
more in harmony with modern ideas and more democratic in form. His
changes were hailed with delight by the growing class of Filipinos
who were striving for more consideration in their own country,
and who, in their enthusiasm and the intoxication of the moment,
perhaps became more radical than was safe under the conditions--
surely too radical for their religious guides watching and waiting