An Historical View of the Philippine Islands: Vol I (of 2)

The original, of which the following translation is offered to the English reader, is, probably, the only copy which has yet reached this country. Whether the chance which threw it in the way of the translator may be deemed fortunate or otherwise must be left to the decision of the candid public; but it appeared to him that the information it contains respecting a Spanish colony, the most interesting of any other to a British subject, supplies that desideratum so much wanted in our language;—a correct view down to a very late period of the Spanish establishments in the Philippines. The position of these islands, and, indeed, that of the eastern Archipelago generally, whether considered in a political or commercial point of view, is sufficiently important. They form the entrepôt of Europe, India, China, the immensely extended regions of Spanish America, the north-western coasts of the new, and north-eastern coasts of the old world; and in the storms which at present convulse the political atmosphere of Europe, as well as that of both the Americas, it is not easy even to conjecture what may be their fate.