Note 6 — APPENDIX: AGRICULTURE IN FILIPINAS

Founded in the year 1781, in virtue of a royal order dated August 27 in the preceding year (issued in consequence of advices from the excellent governor Don José Basco y Vargas), in 1787 it suspended its meetings on account of the gradual and progressive decline of the society. In 1819 it resumed its functions, but suffered a period of discouragement and paralysis as a result of the Asiatic cholera morbus, which appeared then for the first time in these islands; and until October, 1822, the few meetings which the society held had no other object than questions of internal order, having little interest or importance for its history.6 A memoir published by the society with date of January 1, 1860,7 makes the following statement: “From that date (October 22, 1822), it can be said, begins the series of the society’s labors and services—achievements all the greater and more valuable, inasmuch as they proceeded from slight and ephemeral causes, and from a corporation which could not depend on material resources even remotely proportioned to the magnitude of its object; and which plunged into labors [which meant] nothing less than the advancement and civilization of a virgin country, containing more than 8,000 square leguas of surface, with 3,000,000 of inhabitants still half-barbarous, and without stable or established mercantile relations with any part of the world (on account of the recent crisis in the privileged commerce, which bad just been abolished), with a capital of 30,000 pesos, at 5,000 leguas distance from European civilization, and with a government occupied besides with the political situation and calamities of those days, confiding only in its patriotic enthusiasm and in its desires for the aggrandizement and prosperity of the country.” In the above memoir are concisely recorded three hundred forty-seven notable achievements, all beneficial to the country, accomplished by that distinguished society in the space of thirty-seven years. We would gladly reproduce entire in our modest book the relation of services so important; as we cannot do this, we indicate those which, in our judgment, are the more notable.