Translated from Spanish into English

BY CHARLES DERBYSHIRE


THE SOCIAL CANCER (NOLI ME TANGERE)
THE REIGN OF GREED (EL FILIBUSTERISMO)



Translator's Introduction




"We travel rapidly in these historical sketches. The reader flies in
his express train in a few minutes through a couple of centuries. The
centuries pass more slowly to those to whom the years are doled out
day by day. Institutions grow and beneficently develop themselves,
making their way into the hearts of generations which are shorter-lived
than they, attracting love and respect, and winning loyal obedience;
and then as gradually forfeiting by their shortcomings the allegiance
which had been honorably gained in worthier periods. We see wealth and
greatness; we see corruption and vice; and one seems to follow so close
upon the other, that we fancy they must have always co-existed. We
look more steadily, and we perceive long periods of time, in which
there is first a growth and then a decay, like what we perceive in
a tree of the forest."

FROUDE, Annals of an English Abbey.