tation of all kinds of agricultural machinery and implements into Filipinas; and authorized premiums and rewards from the public funds to Filipino farmers who should first make large plantations of coffee, cacao, cinnamon, and cloves, as also to those who should make most progress in the plantations of Chinese cinnamon [canelón], tea, and mulberry-trees, and in raising silk, etc. Those who kept in cultivation a certain area of land, and day-laborers who continued to work for a certain number of years, were exempted from paying tributes; and the native farmers were allowed to keep cockpits in operation daily and without tax, on the estates which they cultivated. "In spite of so many privileges, not many of them were inclined to the cultivation of their fields." Another royal order (April 6, 1828) made important regulations regarding the Chinese residing in the islands; they were to be gathered into villages, as were the Indians; their heads of barangay were to collect the tributes, as in the Indian villages, being allowed three per cent of the collections for their trouble; they were classified into three groups – those who were engaged in foreign or wholesale trade, those in domestic or retail trade, and artisans of all classes – who were obliged to pay a monthly tax of ten, four, and two pesos respectively; those who had settled in the islands, but were not married, must return to China within six months; and any Chinaman who failed to pay his tax for three months was to be sent to compulsory labor on some estate, at a specified wage, from which should be deducted two pesos a month until his tax dues should be paid.[1] Still another royal order of
- ↑ "The Chinese refused to accept their reduction into villages; more than eight hundred elected to return to their own country; four hundred odd were assigned to labor on the public works, as being insolvent; and about a thousand fled to the mountains in order to elude payment and punishment. The intendant, in view of the difficulty in collecting [their] taxes, explained to the government the expediency of modifying the enactment; and this was done in 1834." (Note by Montero y Vidal.)
