"Or the cat of the canary, which amounts to the same thing," added
Pecson, in his turn interrupting the speech.

"Get out!" cried Sandoval, enraged at the interruption, which had
caused him to lose the thread of his long, well-rounded sentence. "As
long as we hear nothing bad, let's not be pessimists, let's not be
unjust, doubting the liberty and independence of the government."

Here he entered upon a defense in beautiful phraseology of the
government and its good intentions, a subject that Pecson dared not
break in upon.

"The Spanish government," he said among other things, "has given
you everything, it has denied you nothing! We had absolutism in
Spain and you had absolutism here; the friars covered our soil with
conventos, and conventos occupy a third part of Manila; in Spain
the garrote prevails and here the garrote is the extreme punishment;
we are Catholics and we have made you Catholics; we were scholastics
and scholasticism sheds its light in your college halls; in short,
gentlemen, we weep when you weep, we suffer when you suffer, we have
the same altars, the same courts, the same punishments, and it is
only just that we should give you our rights and our joys."

As no one interrupted him, he became more and more enthusiastic,
until he came to speak of the future of the Philippines.

"As I have said, gentlemen, the dawn is not far distant. Spain is now
breaking the eastern sky for her beloved Philippines, and the times
are changing, as I positively know, faster than we imagine. This