Note 17 — Chapter X · FILIPINO INDOLENCE
Reading edition
Agriculture is the natural business of the Islands. Hebetudinous government in Rizal’s time did nothing to encourage or even to defend it. The farmer went his way, preyed upon by the most villainous system of interest pillage so far disclosed in human affairs,17 and the Government gave him never so much as a friendly word. When crops failed, when typhoons wrought huge destruction, when the plague of locusts turned some great green valley to naked desolation, the Government looked on indifferently and sent another tax collector.