Report on the condition of the Filipinas Islands in 1842. Written by the author of the “Aristodemo,” of the “Sistema musical de la lengua castellana,” etc.1 Volume III. Their internal political condition. Madrid, January, 1843.

The twenty-four chapters which I have presented [30]hitherto,2 have only been preliminary studies, in order that I might treat of the present matter; for it would be an ill thing to speak of the internal administration of the country, or of the line of policy that it is of advantage to adopt therein, without passing in review its anterior data, analyzing its elements, and forming an opinion of its resources.

The laws of every state must have one object, and the wiser and more perfect they are, the better they fulfil their end. To discourse, then, on those laws which are advisable in Filipinas, one must take note of the intentions that the government may have in regard to the islands. These intentions will probably be reduced to the following plans or principles.

To conserve the colony forever, that is to say, without its separation being even thought of.

To consider indifferently its loss or its conservation, [31]and the fate of the Spaniards living in the colony.

To resolve upon emancipation, and prepare the colony for giving it freedom.3

In regard to the second of these three fundamental policies, nothing occurs to me to say, except that it follows in everything, as hitherto. I shall treat, then, only of the first and last.

In order to conserve the colony, it is necessary, in my opinion, to work with reference to the spirit of the following three principles, which I shall endeavor successively to explain: 1st. It is advisable to reduce the Spanish-Filipino4 population to the least possible number. 2d. The people of color must voluntarily give respect and obedience to the whites. 3rd. The general administration demands a complete reform.

1st. It is advisable to reduce the population, etc. In the epochs when the light of experience was lacking, [32]it was believed that the most powerful means of assuring the possession of a colony was to increase the white race therein as much as possible; and, as a school for this conviction, they preferred to send thither as employes those who had the most children, especially female. The Council of Indias5 has, up to its last gasp, given proofs of this erroneous idea. But since then it has been seen that, in fleeing from Scylla, it has fallen into Charybdis; for among this white population born in the country, there is formed a local interest opposed to that of the mother-country, which begins by creating a discontent, and ends by suggesting the desire for independence. [Although a Filipino-Spaniard calls himself a Spaniard, all his sympathies are in the Philippines, and Spain is only secondary in his thoughts. Generally the sons or grandsons of government employes, Filipino-Spaniards, receive but little education, are fond of playing the gentleman, are lazy and dissipated. Little inclined to a professional or business career, they put all their efforts on securing a government post. As it is about one-half of the posts do belong to them, but since the best posts depend upon the favor of the Madrid ministers, the Filipino-Spaniards are constantly disappointed in the promotion which they believe [33]belongs to them by right. Consequently, there is much ill-will and complaint. Camba’s pamphlet,6 although chiefly written to prove that there was no disloyalty in the Philippines, yet noted the anger and consequent mutiny (June 2–3, 1823)7 because of the arrival of Governor J. Antonio Martinez (October, 1822) with a large staff of Peninsular officials and sergeants; as well as the displeasure manifested in October, 1825, by the arrival of a new contingent of civil and military officers with Governor Mariano Ricafort. Still, it is not right to expect that, so long as Spain does not intend to abandon the Philippines, it should refrain from sending Peninsulars to fill the posts there or cease to exercise the appointing or removing power as it sees fit. If all the posts are reserved for the Filipino-Spaniards, it cannot be expected that the islands will remain loyal to a country so distant from them. In fact, the Filipino-Spaniards, under existing circumstances, cannot receive greater consideration than at present. The natural and necessary preference for Peninsulars in the posts of the Philippines engenders the hatred of the Filipino-Spaniards toward them; but, on the other hand, this hatred has been greatly exaggerated by the [34]Peninsulars, who are intolerant and contemptuous of the colonials. This contempt, Mas illustrates by two examples, of which he was an eyewitness. Such things, together with the contemptuous nickname given them by the Peninsulars, gives rise to much ill-will on the part of the Filipino-Spaniards, who declare that all the cause of the enmity between the two classes comes from the former. The real cause, however, of the hatred, is economic, and a matter of the posts. Each of the male Filipino-Spaniards is seeking a post, but since there are only four hundred posts of all kinds in the islands, while the Filipino-Spaniards number about one thousand, the trouble must be continuous and must even become exaggerated, just so long as a remedy is not applied. Such a remedy would be for the government to refuse them any post in the army or other department of government service in the Philippines, although recognizing them as Spaniards with full rights if they come to reside in the Peninsula. Mas proceeds to elaborate his plan for decreasing the white population of the Philippines. All Spaniards going from Europe to the Philippines before the age of fifteen or sixteen must be regarded as Filipino-Spaniards. It is proposed that only single men be sent to fill posts in the islands, and that they be compelled to return to the Peninsula after twenty years, with permission to return in ten if they so please. It will be natural for these men to marry Filipino-Spanish women, who with their children will accompany their husbands to the Peninsula at the end of the twenty years. Transportation should be at national expense. On a basis of three passages for each family, the cost would be only 450 pesos. Each twenty [35]years, there would be one thousand two hundred return passages to be paid. This would cost only 27,000 pesos annually. In return, four hundred men would have to be sent to the islands each twenty years, or with allowance for deaths and other contingencies, five hundred. At 300 pesos apiece, this would cost annually 8,750 pesos; and the total transportation expense would be only 35,750 pesos. Although transportation is not now paid by the government, the strange mismanagement is practiced of sending married men with families, thus increasing the white population. On the basis that there are three thousand five hundred young Filipino-Spaniards in the islands (both male and female), and reckoning sixty years as the average life of the individual, there would be fifty-eight and one-third individuals for each year of the sixty years, of whom one-half would be women (and hence eligible for marriage with the Peninsulars). All the males shall be taken to Spain at the end of the fifteenth or sixteenth year at national expense, and there educated at the expense of the Manila treasury in whatever profession they choose. These shall reside in the Peninsula thereafter, where they shall be given a post. Some few of the thirty or so of the males reaching the indicated age annually, will doubtless prefer to devote themselves to commerce or industry; hence at the most there will be only about twenty-five passages of young men to reckon on annually, which will be an inconsiderable expense. If this plan be carried out there will be few children to transport after sixteen years. European Spaniards, if prohibited from marrying native Filipino and mestizo women, will marry only Filipino-Spanish [36]women. Hence, as they continue to retire to Spain, the white population will constantly decrease. There will not be a sufficiently large number of whites to become turbulent, and the domination of the Peninsula over the islands will be ensured. This plan can be carried out at an annual expense of about 40,000 pesos, and probably much less. This will really be a saving over present expenses, for retirement and widows’ pensions cost more, the widow of an oidor receiving 18,000 reals vellon. Hence, the passive classes receive about 175,000 pesos annually. However, Mas does not advocate that those receiving pensions at present be deprived of them or sent to Spain, as this would be unjust and cause discontent. In former years the quarrels and discontent did not lead to desire for independence. The population was not so great as now; also (and especially) since an annual situado was sent from the Peninsula to pay the government employes, and the latter thus depended on the Spanish treasury, they would have gained nothing by rebelling. This is the case at present in the Marianas Islands, where the officials are paid and supported from the money and food sent there, and the few whites there, consequently, have no desire for independence.] It will also be asked, in addition, whether, in case the Philippine colony separated at present, it would be possible for the white population to become masters of the country, or would there be a tendency for them, perhaps, to amalgamate with the colored population. The observation is very just. The Filipino-Spaniards do not think of forming a body with the (Indian) natives, nor is it possible for them to desire it, for now they are the masters and in such an event they would [39]become equals and even inferiors, since the vast mass of the natives would quickly reduce them to nullity in the matter of government, and in place of the privileges and exemptions from paying taxes, which they at present enjoy, they would more than once have to obey and humble themselves before the very one who now mops the ground that their foot touches. In the recent occurrence of Tayabas,8 when the first news of the insurrection arrived, I was at a gathering of several Spanish leaders, and they all believed, or at least suspected, that the whites of the country had compromised themselves in the matter. I maintained immediately, and obstinately, that they were mistaken in this, since however disloyal and intemperate one may fancy the Filipino-Spaniards, it was impossible for me to believe that it would ever enter their heads to arouse and arm the natives. In fact, the true spirit of the movement was soon known, and it was seen that the Filipino-Spaniards were as alarmed at the result (if not more so) as were the Europeans. Their hopes and plans, then, can only be based on the persuasion that the natives and Chinese mestizos will continue quiet, and pay the tribute as at present, and that they will make their patrimony from the country, and share its posts. This idea is highly absurd, no doubt. Much less loved by the natives than the Europeans, without the support of the friars (for even granting the case that those living in the country should remain, others would cease to go from the Peninsula), without capital, in a weak minority for the subjugation of more than two hundred thousand rich, active, and intelligent mestizos, and three and one-half millions of [40]natives (who have already rebelled against the Spaniards themselves, in spite of the great prestige of the reenforcements that could be received from the other side of the seas), and compelled by force of circumstances to adopt a liberal and intelligent system with reference to these same natives, which would speedily make the latter more arrogant and exacting than at present, it is quite easy to see that the government of Filipinas, would within a very few years, fall into the hands of the Indian Filipinos, or, perhaps, into those of the Chinese mestizos, or of the two races mixed, and that the whites would become submissive to the people of color—if they were not despoiled of all their property, as having been usurped and without valid title, just as happened to the Turkish families who had acquired possession in that land during the long rule of the Turks in Greece, in which, since the insurrection, not a single Mussulman has remained. It is clear, therefore, that this Spanish population, long established in the country, is the one that has most to lose. In case of an outbreak, the Europeans would return to España, where they would continue their professions and would find their kin. The Filipino-Spaniards, however, would have to change utterly, for they would lose everything, and would have to seek another country. These are obvious and important truths, and nevertheless, can we tax the individuals in question with being blind or stupid, when we see repeatedly in the history of popular revolts that a Bailly, a Danton, in fine, that the most clever and eminent men persuade themselves that they are able to stop a revolution at the line which they trace, and do not suspect that they are going to be the victims of the masses who rise?

[41]

For the white population that remains in the country, and for all who are living there at present, agriculture offers an abundant resource. Very fatal is the deep-rooted idea that Spaniards cannot prosper in it. [Mas cites several instances to prove that Spaniards can succeed in agriculture in the Philippines. He also cites the instances of the Ansaldos family as told by father Agustin de Santa Maria, who acquired great wealth from agriculture, and who moved to the Peninsula during the English invasion.] Reflection: Just as the two Ansaldos brothers, leaving the life of trade, which the Spaniards in the Indias generally follow, applied themselves to the cultivation of the soil through their own efforts, lived many years, and succeeded in amassing a fixed and permanent capital, why could not the same be done by so many idle spongers who go about Manila with their white faces begging, deceiving, terrifying, exciting, and confounding all the inhabitants?

The present superintendent of the islands, Don Juan M. de la Matta,9 whose opinion I greatly respect, because I truly believe that he is one of the few Spaniards who know the country, and that he has the capacity, honor, patriotism, and energy to do something good and solid there, wrote me in a letter now before me: “It is necessary for the Spanish population to stick to agriculture, the only source capable of providing abundantly for their necessities, for which the profit from any other employ in the different careers of the state is indeed very insufficient. I have already called the attention of the ministry of the treasury to this particular, showing [42]that a wretched generation, and consequently, one dissolute and turbulent, is increasing daily, and that the government must prevent in time the fatal consequences, by inviting them to turn their attention to agriculture.10 In fact, there are rich and extensive lands which have been abandoned, which ought to invite the attention of a Filipino-Spaniard more than the posts, for with an estate not only can he live in ease and independently, but he can also establish a rich patrimony for his descendants. Lands that now are worth little, or even nothing, will in time have a greater or less price by reason of the population of the territory and the perfection to which its cultivation is carried. There is today in the charity hospital of Sidney an aged woman, whose husband owned a bit of land, which he sold thirty years back for three pounds sterling, and at this moment it is worth one-half million pesos fuertes. And this, only because of the rapid increase in population! In Filipinas itself, any one can be convinced of this manifest fact, which is a trivial truth among economists. In Laguna and other provinces, there are most fertile fields, abandoned and at the disposal of the one who will take them; and in Bulacan and Tondo, whose soil is very inferior, all have owners and a value. In the environs of Malolos and Manila, land costs one thousand [43]pesos fuertes per quiñon. One hundred years ago, this same quiñon could be bought for fifty.”

[The difficulty in attracting the whites to an agricultural life lies in the labor question. Mas does not consider advisable the system of the Dutch in Java,11 and prescribed by certain laws of the Indies, of compelling the natives to work in estates at the established wage scale, “as the natives have been accustomed for three centuries to be humored and allowed freely to work or live in idleness according to their fancy.” He proposes that the heavy tribute of the Chinese who cultivate the lands of the Spaniards be reduced to the small amount paid by the Chinese mestizos; also that negritos, Igorots, and captured Moro pirates be made to cultivate the fields for the Spaniards. He also recommends the plan of indenturing the condemned criminals out to the cultivators, as England did with its criminals, who were sent to America in former periods. This system Mas does not consider as unjust or inhumane, but quite the contrary, for the farmers, since their pocket book is touched, will be more considerate than the prison officials. He recommends the awarding of prizes for the cultivation of cacao and coffee; and “finally, the authorization of individual contracts, by means of which Filipinos may bind themselves to work on [44]the estate of a Spaniard for a certain number of years, as is done in the military service, such Spaniards then remaining subject until the termination of the contract. These persons, during said time, shall be exempt from service in the army, and exemption from polos and personal service may even be conceded to some (for instance, to one for each quiñon of land).”]

2d. People of color must voluntarily respect and obey the whites. In order to attain this object, it is necessary to maintain the former race in an intellectual and moral condition which will make of their numerical majority a political force less than that which resides in the second, just as a pile of straw in the balance weighs less than a gold nugget. The farmer or the goatherd does not read social contracts, or know more than what takes place in his own village. This is not the class of people who have overthrown absolutism in España, but that class who are educated in the colleges, and who know the price of guarantees, and fight for them. We must not depart from this point of view, if we are to discuss the matter sincerely. The making of liberals must be necessarily avoided, for in a colony the words liberal and insurgent are synonymous. The consequence of the idea will be to admit the principle that each step forward is a treading backward. It is necessary to circumscribe the education to primary schools where reading, writing, and arithmetic will be taught, continuing as at present with one school in each village, and leaving their direction to the curas. The colleges for males now existing in Manila must be closed.12 In English India, whose educational institutions [45]and free government are of so much weight with some, there is nothing similar to this, and an Englishman who wishes to become a lawyer, a notary, a physician, or a military or civil official, has to go to England for study and graduation—I say Englishman, for the natives do not even enter into the question.

In the service of arms, they must not rise beyond privates or at the most corporals. It is much better to make a sergeant or officer from a Spanish farmer, even though he cannot read and write, than from the more capable native. On the contrary, the more dexterous and deserving is the latter, so much greater will be the mistake committed. Here the one who plays for gain loses. It is less dangerous and more tolerable to bestow the rank of officer on a very stupid, vicious, and cowardly fellow.

It is necessary to provide that a Spanish cura be placed in each village, and it is preferable to leave a village without a minister rather than to place it in charge of a Filipino secular priest. Between Filipinas and España there is no other bond of union than the Christian religion. This bond is very powerful, and may induce the islanders to love and to defend the Spanish domination as a duty. In no place better than in España is it known of what the religious influence on the masses is capable, even in violation of their most direct interests. To imagine that the natives will become fond of our government because they judge it good or the best possible, I [46]believe a vain project. Their ignorance regarding the condition of other peoples does not permit of their entering into such comparisons; and those who might be capable of doing it, will discuss political matters; and however excellent such men consider our domination, they would always think that it would be more advantageous for them to withdraw from the yoke and seize the scepter in their own hands, and pass by this method from their humble condition of vassals and subjugated to that of masters and mandarins. Therefore, just as the community is sustained by virtue and the monarchy by fidelity, this colony, in my opinion, must be maintained by religion. Starting from this beginning, nothing can become so direct an agent for promoting emancipation, as the ordaining of priests among the natives.13 Some persons observe that they are unfit and vicious, and consequently, do not infuse respect, exercise influence or cause fear. More, if a Filipino secular priest lives in a state of intoxication, and even commits, as has indeed happened, atrocious crimes which lead him to the scaffold, he does not for this cease to be a priest; and thus he degrades the class to which he belongs, and undermines the prestige of [47]sanctity surrounding the character of a religious man. And this idea, namely, that because they are Filipinos, they cannot have any influence, has been destroyed by merely the recent insurrection in Tayabas, where a lay-brother, a young fellow, without any personal or antecedent quality that could make him respected, was able, by means of a religious matter—without the printed copies of the admonition of the archbishop of Manila, or the Spanish friars of the neighboring territory, being able to prevent it—to cause a settlement to mutiny and to arm a crowd of three or four thousand men, even to the point of firing upon their own pastors, who only saved themselves by means of flight; to kill the governor of the province; and attack the national troops. And so that my opinion in regard to this matter is, and has been, that of many others who studied the country, I shall copy a few extracts illustrative of the matter.14 [48]

[Mas’s first extract is from a communication to the king from Governor Aguilar, dated November 25, 1804. In this letter, Aguilar characterizes the native secular priests as lazy and dissolute. He cites a recent example of a village, evidently previously in charge of the native seculars, where a Recollect priest has been placed in charge, and where in consequence the church has been completed and order preserved. Although there are some good native priests, they do not infuse the respect that the regulars do, for the latter are never intimate with their parishioners, while the native priests, on the other hand, live on an intimate footing with them, and enter into every detail of their lives. Consequently, the regulars can manage the natives better than the native secular priests. Again the religious have no ties, and hence their only care is their church and their duty. The native seculars are burdened with relatives, who even live in the curacies with them, and hence, they neglect their churches which soon fall into ruin. It would be bad indeed for the islands if the bishops were to transfer the curacies to the native seculars. That might be done when there are Spanish secular priests who possess the right qualities, but to transfer them to the natives would be committing a great wrong. If all the villages in charge of native secular priests had friar curas, they would be in a much better condition. In Negros, which is in charge of the native seculars, nothing is done, a ruinous condition prevails, and the villages are greatly depopulated. If the matter were left to him, he would not allow a single native secular priest to have charge of a village. They might profitably be used as assistants to the regulars.] [49]

[The second letter is one from the Manila Ayuntamiento, dated July 12, 1804. This letter is highly laudatory of the friars, who spare no pains to fulfil their duties. The native secular priests however, are only in few instances found efficient, and are in general only fit to act as assistants to the friar curas. The Filipinos with their weak intellects, seem unfitted for the office of priest, by reason of their lack of constancy. They have not the education requisite for the office of priest, for the conciliar seminaries are little more than a name in which a few native secular priests, themselves without sufficient education, attempt to teach. The regulars subjected to the royal patronage would be much better than any native seculars. After Mindoro was transferred from the Recollects to the native seculars, the missions quickly declined, churches were ruined, Moro raids increased, and the tribute of the villages fell off. In consequence, the government now wishes to replace the native clergy by the Recollects. The regulars also further the temporal affairs, and have done notable things in agriculture. The Ayuntamiento hopes that the complaints against the regulars will be disregarded, “for although there are some defects which they may have, they are always useful to religion and the state.”]

[The third citation is from San Agustin’s famous letter on the character of the natives.15]

Taking the Christian religion as the foundation [50]upon which our domination is sustained, it is evident that everything that contributes to destroy the religious spirit, destroys and undermines this foundation. Under this idea nothing can have more direct harm than the degradation and corruption of the minister of divine worship, and experience has demonstrated this truth. For just as the first sectarians of Jesus Christ extended his religion rapidly by means of the enthusiasm which took possession of their minds, and by means of the martyrdoms which they suffered, so also, in all places where the priests have given themselves to effeminacy, to feasting, to ambition, and to vices, the belief of the peoples has diminished from that moment, and they have ended by falling into religious indifference. The government ought, then, to consider the clergy as a power; and just as great care is taken not to introduce insubordination and demoralization into an army, so also the government ought to watch over the conduct of the curas. Let them have all the influence possible over the village, but let them always be Spanish Europeans, and allow them to feel no other interest than España. This is the vital question. If the matter be considered under this point of view, one cannot exaggerate the harm that a goodly portion of the friars are doing, and the moral force that our government is losing because of the manner in which they are living. The most general weakness is that of concubinage. Many keep a mistress (who is there called a stewardess [despensera]), inside or outside the convent. The convent in Filipinas has no cloister, as it is a parochial house. And this fault, if one considers the climate of the country, the circumstances, and the ideas of the natives, is, to say truth, the most excusable and the least harmful. [51]

The most pernicious and transcendental fault into which many curas have fallen especially for some time back—a fault ten times more harmful than the one to which we have referred—is that of avarice, fed by the practice of trading. It is well known that the mode of trading in that country usually consists in usury, that is, in advancing money in order later to receive products in kind at a very low price. And even leaving aside this aspect of the matter, it happens, as is natural, that the minister, as soon as he has become a speculator, contrives to get some profit from his position, and from the influence which his ministry and the policy indispensable in that country give him, and thinks little or nothing of the means so long as they conduce to the increase of his capital. Sometimes this vice is united with the first, and the stewardess or her husband—who is generally one of the servants of the convent, whom the friar has married to her, in order to save appearances—is charged with the gathering, magazines, shops, sales, etc. But it must be confessed that the government has had a great part in this corruption, by protecting the religious against their superiors. Two left during the term of General Lardizabal, taking a large amount with them. When the Augustinian provincial, Father Grijalvo, went with his secretary, Father Fausto Lopez, to see him [i.e., Lardizabal] about one of them (Father Jarava)16 who wished to go away with his money, and said provincial asserted to him that [52]this was a very bad example, as there were many who would devote their energies to making money, and then leave, although religious are so necessary in these islands, the said general answered him: “Do not believe it. You are not so necessary. You are deceived in this. The English government in India has no friars, and yet that country is sustained and prospers.” Nevertheless, in Singapor, he [i.e., Father Jarava] boasted in conversation with the good Bishop Courvery (as the latter mentioned to me) of the gold which he carried; and told him of the presents which he had had to bestow in Manila in order to obtain his passport, especially to the assessor of the government. The most illustrious bishop wrote that to that capital, and on learning it, the guileless general Lardizabal was angry enough to tear his hair, as was mentioned by the secretary of the government, Cambronero.17 In 1840 they went to inform the alcalde-mayor of a province that all those who went away with indigo, unless provided with a pass by the cura, were detained in the bantayan (a kind of sentry-box) of a village in his jurisdiction. [53]The alcalde ordered the matter to be investigated, and found it to be so; and some passes were brought to him, which stated little more or less than “permit So-and-so to pass with so many quintals of indigo.” The reason for this was that the cura had advanced money to them, and feared that if they carried away the indigo and sold it, it would afterward be impossible to collect the money. The alcalde ordered a verbal process to be formulated, in which two friars and two secular priests made their depositions in the most effective terms against the cura in question. [The alcalde-mayor wrote to the vicar of the province, who answered him under date of Batac, July 25, 1840, to the effect that the freedom given by the government to the friars, who had been relieved of obedience to their prelates, accounted for this. The government and the ideas of the present time were to blame, consequently, not the friar prelates. The friar of whom the alcalde-mayor and the vicar wrote boasted that when he was attacked on the one side he took refuge in the jurisdiction of the other. Although he boasted that he intended to take his 40,000 pesos and enjoy life with a female companion, yet he obtained governmental permission to remain in his curacy.] The curas generally suffer from another defect, namely, that of meddling in temporal matters, or rather, of endeavoring to abrogate all jurisdictions, and then assume these in themselves. It is evident that there must be a limit to everything, and that those friars who display an insolent spirit and are usurpers of command must restrain themselves within limits. But this evil is one of the least, if our chief and vital object be considered to be the conservation of the state. Is it or not a fact that, [54]for España to maintain this colony under its dominion, it needs the influence of the religious over the inhabitants? If it is a fact, one must consider these persons as instruments; their influence must be positive; the alcaldes and other employes must be wheels of the machine, who must be in communication with them, and to a certain point move at their impulse. So long as the villages obey the voice of the friars, the islands will be Spanish, for the friars can do no less than be so. Emancipation would inevitably cause their ruin. This will appear hard and unendurable to many who are not friends of theoretic intervention, especially among the present military and civil officers of Filipinas; but I understand it in this way, and do not see by what other agency a handful of Spaniards can, at six thousand leguas’ distance, and without Spanish troops, keep obedient a vast and wealthy country, which has need of us for nothing, in which there are not a few elements of independence, and which is coveted by many foreign nations.

And if all this is a fact, we can do no less than lament the unjustifiable imprudence of having printed in the ordinances of good government now in force, which were printed and distributed throughout the whole country, the following:

[Here follow ordinances 17, 18, 24, 30, 31, 85, 87, 89, 91 and 92 (some only in part), for a synopsis of which see VOL. I., pp. 234, 235, 236, 238, 239, and 256–261. Mas continues:]

In no part did the animosity with which these ordinances were written appear so much as in these last two articles, for they treat of the construction of convents, churches, and royal houses; and since none [55]of these edifices can be erected without the instructions of a special measure and by authorization, it follows that the government is dictating provisions to itself, and consequently, it was quite useless to insert them in a public law; and although it was intended that they should contain the expression of the royal will, the latter would always have been sufficient provided that action were taken in the proper bureau. Moreover, what ordinance 91 says about the possibility of the sumptuous convents being used as a shelter by the enemy, as was experienced in the war with the English, seems to me to be lacking in common sense. For if they are susceptible of being used as fortresses, they will be an advantage to those possessing them, who may, if they wish, burn them when they have to abandon them. In the same category are all the strongholds. For example, in the war with the English above mentioned, the latter captured Manila, and immediately made use of the forts to protect themselves from Anda’s troops. Consequently, according to the argument, the fortifications of Manila ought to be demolished. If the enemy defend themselves in the convents, it will be because they have to flee from us, and then we can desire nothing better than that they shut themselves up, so that we may surround them and take them prisoners. If the Spaniards are in such a condition that they look upon the convent as a refuge, they can, since they are in their own country, get aid at any moment. A large and beautiful church, in the midst of a village of bamboo or board houses, contributes not a little to inspire a lofty idea of what is within it. All the sumptuous edifices of the ancients were temples. [56]

The utility of protecting the religious spirit having been admitted, the Spaniards of the province, who in general give a contrary example, by not fulfilling their church duties, do great harm. This is so much more harmful, as they are in the sight of the entire village, which knows quite well the actions of their most private life. Finding myself on the day of Corpus Christi at a place where a large procession and Church function were being made, not a single Spaniard of the several who were there, went to mass, including the governor of the province. For an alcalde not to go to mass, becomes so much the more scandalous, as it is the custom for the gobernadorcillo with all the community and past captains to go to get him at the royal house in order to accompany him as a matter of ceremony to the church.

It happens on account of this that it is enough for them to give notice of a Spaniard to the cura so that the latter may have the cura told that he is not at home—a thing which contributes to destroy the prestige of our name and dominion. Surely, this, joined with other motives, has contributed to diminish the spirit of devotion, especially for the last fifteen or twenty years. This decrease is not imaginary. I have assured myself of it through several channels, among others, through a house that formerly traded in books of religion and prints. From this I deduce that our foundations are becoming weaker, and if they are not strengthened, it may be delayed more or less, but the edifice will fall. I opine then, that if the colony is to be conserved, it is absolutely necessary to take positive measures to check the exterior manifestations of irreligion; to cause the priests to appear under the most possible venerable point of [57]view; and to endeavor to have their influence over the masses powerful. One of the acts to which the curas now see themselves obliged, and which robs them of great prestige, is the collection of the parochial fees at marriages and burials. A person who has lost a child or a parent by death, has in addition to the grief for his loss, the expense which it occasions. He goes to the cura weeping, and tells him that he has no money. The cura, nevertheless, must show himself inexorable; finally the native hands the cura a portion of the sum; the parish priest bids him go get the part lacking; he returns with another portion; and after seeing that the pretense of his poverty avails him nothing, he pays the whole fee. There are some who come with the money divided into the four corners of their handkerchiefs, and unwrap them one after the other, trying each time to avoid the payment. The same thing happens in marriages; and there are many who live in concubinage waiting until the cura marries them free of charge. These scenes are very unpleasant to the religious, and yet, they can do no less than show themselves hard, for if they did otherwise they would be unable to collect any of the fees which belong to them and form the greater part of their income. And the worst of all is, that this money which the cura would lose, would probably not be used in reproductive investments, but would be spent in feasting and the cockpit. It would be, then, much more advisable, and very much to the taste of the religious, to have a general tax imposed, and collected by the alcalde, as now happens with the sanctorum.18 One-half real [58]annually for each soul would be sufficient and would compensate, as some of them have assured me, for the present sum of the parochial fees. The display in the ceremony of marriage and burial ought to be suitable and designated by rules. Those who desired [59]any music or some extraordinary mourning decorations could pay something extra. In that way, the parishioners would experience nothing more from their parish priests than agreeable things—counsel, protection, and alms.

Since it is very important that the religious, as guides of public opinion, have essentially Spanish hearts, it is absolutely necessary for all these men to be born, to have been educated and ordained in España. From this is deduced the need of protecting the colleges existing at present, and where friars are made who take a vow for Filipinas.19

Their pride must be entirely broken, and they must in all places and on all occasions consider the Spaniard as their master, and not their equal. Our laws of Indias, dictated in the most beneficent, but not always in the most wise, spirit, not only concede them all the rights of Spaniards, but seem in several points to prefer them to the Spaniards, especially in the possession of lands. These benevolent regulations, often executed with exaggeration by the auditors of the Audiencia, the protector of the Indians, and the governors-general who come from España, overflowing with ideas of philanthropy and humanity, and without knowing the natives otherwise than by their humble hypocritical exterior with influential persons, have raised their pretensions to an alarming degree.

[The natives have committed many acts of violence and contempt. A Recollect cura was beheaded in Talibong, Cebú; the provincial governor of Negros was assassinated in 1833, and another Spaniard [60]severely wounded; the alcalde-mayor of Capis was attacked in 1836, but saved himself by his presence of mind; the house of the alcalde-mayor of Antique was burned and he barely escaped the flames; another alcalde-mayor was taken prisoner to Manila in an iron cage; the cura and government employes were ridiculed in pantomimic dances in Capan in 1841; a comedy was to have been enacted at the feast-day celebrations at Santa Cruz, Laguna, in 1840, in which the alcalde-mayor and his court were to be held up to ridicule, but it was avoided by the arrest of the actors. It has happened sometimes that the gobernadorcillo remains seated in the presence of a Spaniard with whom he has contests in the ayuntamiento. The members of the village ayuntamientos are not accustomed to rise when a Spaniard enters the town hall, and even laugh at them; and should the Spaniard grow angry and strike any of them, complaint is forthwith made to the governor, who punishes the Spaniard. An artillery captain and an advocate were stoned without cause in a Laguna village. A Spaniard, angered by the insolent answer of a native, struck him, whereupon the native threatened his life. In Manila, the natives are insolent. They do not yield the sidewalk to Spaniards; coachmen and porters do not rise in the presence of Spaniards; Filipino women do not yield to Spanish women either in the stores or the church. Since the new governor, Oraá, has ordered a verbal process against a commandant for punishing a servant, they have become more insolent than ever. Other acts of insolence are noted. These things are not heard of by the governor, or they lay no stress upon them as they do not recognize their political importance. [61]“Before the justice, the Spaniards and the Filipinos are equal.” The latter, however, get better treatment from the governors, who have even punished provincial governors severely, while they have treated the natives with clemency. The prestige of the Spanish name must be preserved. “He who merits it must without doubt be punished, not only for the crime which he commits against humanity and justice, but also because it obscures the luster of the Spanish character from which righteousness, benevolence, and liberality ought always shine forth. But it is advisable that this be among Spaniards, and that no account or satisfaction of it be given to the natives. Place them in the way of rights, and they will not pay until driving us from their soil.” It is wrong to treat the native with less severity than the Spaniard. Mas asserts that in all the countries in which he has traveled, he has had to exercise patience to no greater degree than in the Philippines. The insolence and disrespect which he has witnessed do not allow him to see safety and security for the Spaniards. “It seems to me that the islands were more secure in the times when a native got down on his knees when a Spaniard passed.” Mas advises that Spaniards alone be allowed to wear the neckerchief, and that natives and mestizos be distinguished by the loose shirt and straw hat which they have chosen themselves. Principales only should be permitted to wear jackets. The religious have destroyed distinction in rank among the natives in great measure, but while this is generous and democratic, “the destruction of rank also destroys the principle of ambition, the stimulus for economy and work.”]

The places of cabezas de barangay must not be [62]hereditary, but these posts ought to be filled by the most wealthy. Among these people aristocracy of money has great influence, but not that of family. In the colony, there must be no noble blood except the Spanish. When the Filipino or mestizo meets a Spaniard, the former shall be obliged to stop (except at Manila) to salute him. If seated, he shall rise when the Spaniard addresses him or passes in front of him. He who raises his hand against a Spaniard, although it be to defend his own life, shall incur the penalty of laboring on the public works all his life. If the offense is verbal, the punishment shall be decreased in proportion to the case. A Spaniard shall not give a seat in his house to a Filipino or mestizo, much less sit at table with him. He who falls into this fault of decorum, shall be punished the first two times by a fine, and the third time he shall be exiled from the colony. No Spaniard, under any consideration, shall be allowed to contract marriage with any Filipino or mestizo woman. The Filipinos or mestizos who desire to use a carriage or a saddle horse, shall have to obtain a permit for which an annual tax shall be charged, so that those who sustain this luxury may be very few. [Mas condemns the custom of giving the title “Don” to gobernadorcillos and principales. Even almost naked Tinguianes and Igorots are found with that title—which is ridiculous. Let the Filipinos use their own native equivalents for “Don” and “Doña.” Also the natives should not be allowed to present petitions which are disrespectful because of their ignorance of the language, such as for instance calling the governor a robber.]

Government employes should be well paid, for in [63]a country where appearances count for so much as in the Philippines, it is not well to live in a miserly manner. There are no Spanish grandees in the colony, and but few of the merchants can afford to live luxuriously. Mere living expenses are cheaper than in Spain, and one could if he desired save more, but if the natives live better than the ruling class, there will be a loss of prestige. Better salaries are paid in the Philippines than in Spain, but this is necessary. The governor, for instance, must really give some idea of the royal master whom he is serving, and this can be done through a certain amount of display. Each official ought to spend at least two-thirds of his pay.

No Spaniard ought to be allowed to go to the provinces who is not of well-known good behavior, and who does not leave in Manila a bondsman for the debts which he may contract. Passports are at times given to poor Spaniards, soldiers, or licensed corporals, for example, who go through the villages of the interior defrauding, guzzling, entering the houses of the town in an unbecoming manner, asking perhaps, food or baggage without paying for them, and finally obliging the natives to arrest them. The pernicious consequences of these examples are incalculable.

[In case that the employes of the treasury are decreased in number, and collections are made by contractors, only natives and Chinese mestizos should be accepted as such, on account of the odium incurred. The latter class will probably take the contract, which will result in good as it will tend to develop race hatred between them and the Filipinos.]

Those races are the ones who make up the population. [64]The one excels and is strong through its number, and the other through its intelligence, activity, and wealth. The ability of the government will consist in keeping them always separated, and at swords’ points, in order that they may never form a common mass or public spirit, but that, on the contrary, the one may serve as an instrument to subject the other. Filipinos would rather associate with mestizos than with Spaniards, for although the first tyrannize over them, and draw them under the yoke so far as possible, they invite them to dine, and treat them so that they all appear united. The Spaniards, for the most part, always talk to them with an air of superiority, and keep them at a certain distance—a thing which naturally disgusts the Filipino.

[The Filipinos do not, however, like the Chinese any better, but on the contrary, respect the Spaniards more as coming from a higher race. They regard the mestizos as a bastard race and beneath themselves. There are many lawsuits between the two classes for preference in rank. In villages where there are both mestizos and natives, each class has its own gobernadorcillo, although that of the latter has now been declared superior in rank, and in case of the death or absence of the alcalde-mayor, takes his place. They are jealous of these privileges, and in case of immediate separation, the mestizos would not become the dominant force in the country. This rivalry is useful for Spanish interests and must be preserved. The Chinese mestizos will within a century have grown to at least one million by natural increase and immigration from China; and will possess the greater part of the wealth of the islands. They are the proprietors, merchants, and educated [65]people of the country, and will dominate public opinion. This class has no sympathy for Spain and will be difficult to subdue. Therefore, the moral force of the natives must be preserved, and the rivalry between the two classes fomented, so that the natives may not become the vassals of the mestizos. Mas proposes a land tax on the mestizos and a distinctive dress. Theaters for both natives and mestizos, where they can rival and ridicule each other will be helpful. Arts and the prosperity of the country must be stimulated, for if the natives are left to their natural incapacity and sloth, they will be in the power of the Chinese mestizos within a century.]

[A Spanish force of at least one thousand or five hundred men is needed. If the native soldiers mutiny, nothing can restore discipline unless there is a Spanish force. Some of the governors have opposed even Spanish corporals and sergeants. The country seems quiet but a terrible mutiny and revolt may occur any day. There were only Spanish soldiers in the old days, and respect was more manifest. Native regiments are of modern date. The disreputable regiment of Asia made up largely of criminals has caused the Spanish soldiers to lose prestige among the natives. And besides they have been wretchedly treated. It would be well to have soldiers from Borneo or other islands outside the archipelago. If the British do not object, men might even be enlisted cheaply in India. This would relieve the natives from service, from which they would gladly be free; and the country would be more secure, and more prosperous.]

[The principales should be allowed to hold meetings [66]only in the presence of the cura. It is well known that they plot against the alcalde-mayor and the cura at times when they assemble for any common matter.]

The Spanish language ought not to be taught them, but they ought to learn to read and write in their own. It is impossible to avoid the introduction of papers and books into the provinces which it is unadvisable for them to read, and experience demonstrates that those who know our language, are almost always the restless ones of the villages and those who murmur at, censure, and act contrary to the curas and alcaldes.

[It is folly to teach the natives how to make artillery and firearms. Factories for the manufacture of these are now being finished in the islands. It would be better to send everything of this nature from Spain. Another imprudence is the manufacture of powder. Besides its inferiority to Spanish powder, and the danger of allowing the natives to learn to make it, it costs more than that sent from Spain. Although after the delivery of twelve thousand quintals, the factory and its effects are to become national property, the works which are now not worth more than ten thousand pesos, will be worthless.]

[Mas recommends the use of steam vessels for inter-island communication, for the rapid moving of troops, and the better protection of Spanish interests. They can also be used against the Moros20 with better effect than the small squadron of sailing vessels now employed, and will be more economical. Coal [67]and wood abound in the islands and can be used as fuel.]

The publication of a newspaper shall be permitted under the supervision of the government. In them shall be inserted descriptions of the best methods of making sugar, indigo, etc., dyeing thread, tempering iron, and in fact everything that may conduce to the instruction of agriculture and manufacture; the edicts and orders of the government; and political news, both peninsular and foreign, edited in the manner that is found advisable. [All the village ayuntamientos shall be compelled to subscribe to such a paper, and the cura shall be asked to translate into the native vernacular all useful articles. Foreign papers are admitted without any charge, and prove, instead of a benefit, an injury, for they are all democratic in tone, and foment disorder and discontent.] The non-existence of newspapers in Filipinas causes a very bad result among foreigners, who consider them and with reason, the foremost mark of civilization, and at the same time, the government is deprived of the advantage of guiding public opinion.21

A system of police must be established, especially in the capital. Not many years ago, there was a commission of public vigilance, which was abolished, I believe, during the government of General Camba. The neglect of the captains-general in this regard at present is scarce credible.

[Although China has caused and will cause trouble in the future, still the salutary punishments that the Chinese have received, and the rapid increase in the Filipino population, justify the admission [68]into the islands of 15,000 or 20,000 more Chinese, on the basis that there are only 8,000 or 10,000 now in the islands. These can be scattered through the islands and would work only on the estates of Spaniards.] Twenty thousand Chinese could work 10,000 quiñons of land, which planted with sugar cane would yield annually 2,000,000 picos of sugar. This sugar sold at Manila at only 3 pesos fuertes [per quintal] would produce the sum of 6,000,000 pesos fuertes. [In case of a popular insurrection the Chinese would all side with the government and if an attack were threatened from China, it would be sufficient to turn them over to the Filipinos, who, because of their hatred for them, on account of their superior industry, would soon make short work of them.]

[Foreigners are useful because of their knowledge and capital, and create much wealth for the islands through their continued traffic with their own countries. But their presence does not promote the conservation of the colony.] Formerly the feeling against this class of persons was very pronounced, owing in great measure to the religious, who always spoke of the English, Dutch, etc., as heretics, drunkards, and barbarians. The antipathy thus engendered was highly important, in case of an outside attack. [The natives are now friendly to foreigners, who pay more liberally than Spaniards, and even Spaniards at Manila are aping the English and are friendly to them. Undesirable books have and will surely be introduced through the foreigners; and consequently, the laws forbidding them to go to the provinces must be enforced, and entrance to Manila must not be easy. La Place, the Frenchman, although [69]he wrote many inaccurate things of the islands,22 recognized the danger from foreigners, when speaking of the slaughter of the foreigners in 1819 during the cholera.]

3rd. The administration requires a complete reform. The command of Filipinas has always been entrusted to a governor and captain-general, as if it were a province of España. To set some balance to his power, because of the distance from the throne, certain privileges and preeminences have been granted to other persons, especially to the Audiencia, even to the point of making of the latter a court of appeal against the measures of the chief of the islands. Besides, the revenues have been removed from his jurisdiction, and the office of the intendant has been constituted, who obeys no others than the orders communicated to him by the ministry of the treasury from Madrid.23 It is very obvious that this single point is quite sufficient to paralyze completely the action of the governor-general. Besides, since there are many matters which require to be passed on by distinct ministries, it happens that two contrary orders [70]touch the same matter, or that one order is lacking, which is enough to render its execution impossible, the contingency moreover arising that a chief may detain a communication, even after he has received it, if it does not suit him. This system of setting obstacles in the way of the governor of a distant colony is wise and absolutely necessary, but since the Leyes de Indias are not a constitutional code, but a compilation made in the year 175424 of royal orders despatched at various epochs and by distinct monarchs, in which are decided points of government, justice, war, politics, revenue, procedure, etc., there results rather than a balance among the various departments of authority a confusion of jurisdictions, the fatal fount of eternal discord. [Mas cites laws from Leyes de Indias showing the great confusion and contrariety of the orders to governor and Audiencia. This confusion has given rise to scandalous and tragic events because of the contests over authority. During these latter years have occurred many offenses of like nature. General Enrile had them with the intendant, and General Camba mentions several during the period of his government. To these difficulties, is added another, in order that the chariot may run right and easily; the government of the provinces is in charge of an alcalde-mayor,25 who is at once judge of first instance, chief of the political matters, subdelegate of the treasury, and war captain or military commandant, for whose different attributes [71]he is subject to authorities distinct from one another. This appears inconceivable, but yet it is a fact, although the cleverness of our India legislators has not been so great that it could free the system of the inconveniences which necessarily must obstruct it.

Whatever difficulty occurs in the fulfilment of an order, it must be solved by means of a conference and advice [consulta],26 from which a reply is not obtained until from twelve to fourteen months. These difficulties are more frequent in Filipinas than in a province of the Peninsula, because of the lack of knowledge of the country generally possessed by the ministers who dictate the measures. Things have gone so far that it has been ordered that the cultivation of the balate (a fish) be encouraged; and that the situado of Zamboanga be sent overland, because of the loss of the ship which was carrying it across to the island of Mindanao, where D. Infantes was then governing said presidio. The superintendent Enriquez says in the document which he printed on leaving his post in 1836,27 that in the short period [72]in which he filled the superintendency, he sent to the court six hundred and twenty-seven questions for resolution. And to these springs of torpor in the administration of the government, we must add that the captains-general scarcely decide any question whatever, without handing the matter for report to the assessor, fiscal, Audiencia, etc., because of the distance and impossibility of consulting España, and through their fear of compromising themselves, since on many occasions, measures have been obtained against them in Madrid, through agents and representatives or through complaints sent from the islands. The same thing happens with regard to the intendant and other authorities. From this practice arises the system of expedientes28 which reigns, and which is so fatal to the prosperity and good government of the country, since very often the arrangement that appears good to some, is contrary to the opinions or interests of others. [Expedientes lasting for years have been formulated for matters requiring immediate attention. For instance, one lasting for years was formulated in regard to an expedition against the Moro pirates. An expediente is formed when a foreigner arrives at Manila without a passport from Spain and asks permission to remain in the country, although the law on this point is explicit. Thus much valuable time is lost and the expedientes result in only a waste of paper, besides great injury to the islands. The governor often has to conform to the opinions expressed in the expediente, although he knows they will be the cause of [73]injustice.29 On the other hand, the governor is often directly at fault, because he enforces his own opinion on his assessor, who has often obtained his position through favoritism and is not a lawyer, and decides questions according to the will of the governor. Besides, the governor has the armed force at his disposal. The chiefs of the various departments at Manila carry on correspondence with the directors-general of their respective departments in Madrid, without the knowledge of the governor, a fact that increases the confusion and disorder. The director of the mails even is at fault in this, and renders accounts to the general post-office department in Spain.] A sub-inspector of engineers newly created, just went to Manila with orders to extend the fortifications of the capital to its suburbs. The suburbs contain about fifty thousand inhabitants scattered throughout various villages which are composed of [74]houses all of one story in height, which is enough to give an idea of the extension of the imagined fortification. The amount of artillery for garrisoning their walls, the workshop necessary to keep the artillery in good condition, the garrison necessary for their defense, besides the operating gangs: all were to be in the greatest magnitude, and demand an annual expense which the treasury of the colony could not even remotely meet. And if one reflect that the enemy can take all the other islands and even disembark at any point of Luzon itself without the necessity of going to Manila; that if this capital were besieged, it would be by enemies coming by sea, and hence, being masters of the port, they would very quickly take by hunger a place of one hundred and fifty thousand souls, or indeed it would be surrendered by the natives, and then the inhabitants, instead of contributing to the defense, would open their doors to the aggressors; and that the concentration of the forces, the property, the archives, and public and private wealth, at one single enclosed point, is to form a target to call the attention of exterior and interior enemies: we can do no less than agree that the plan of extending the fortifications of Manila to all its suburbs lacks all reasonable foundation, and that it will be advocated only by the many people who possess houses on the shores of the Pasig River, within cannon range, because of their fear lest, if the events of 1762 are again repeated, all those edifices which they were by a fatal lack of foresight permitted to raise successively (an evil which it is now very difficult if not impossible to remedy), would be leveled to the ground.

[However, the present condition of the treasury [75]will not allow this plan to be executed. The sub-inspector of the artillery has petitioned that all companies of the regiment be commanded by captains of the staff. This would cause discontent among the subalterns who would see all hope of promotion vanish forever. They can rise now only to captain, and some of them are even now angry. The artillery corps has always been loyal to the government and it is advisable to keep it so. Officers might indeed be trained in the military college, but in that case the promotion of the sergeants must be arranged for. Complaints of the military in the Philippines mean more than they do in Spain where the complainers are retired or exercise patience. But this substitution may be made without consulting the governor, as it is a matter concerning the artillery itself.]

In the various departments of the administration there may also be abuses to examine or correct, which will never be known or exactly proved by chiefs resident in Madrid, because of the distance which is so favorable to the distortion of facts. For example, the brigadier of the navy, Don J. Ruiz de Apodaca, told me before the sub-inspector of artillery and another chief that all the articles which were bought by the treasury for the arsenal, were charged at a much higher price than those for the fort, etc., and he invited me to go to his house where he would prove it to me with the documents. On the other side, I have heard complaints that after a contract had been made with the treasury for cables, iron, etc., it is impossible to get a receipt for them in the arsenal, unless for a bonus; that quantities of timber will not be receipted for and those who have transported it to Cavite have to sell it at any price; and that it is [76]bought by the very ones who have qualified it as useless; that many houses have been built in Cavite with the timber given out as no good, only with the object of making new bargains. Don F. Ossorio told me in the house of the secretary of the government, and in the presence of several respectable persons, that when he was commandant of artillery at that place, he made all the furniture of his house with wood which he bought in the arsenal as firewood. It is a fact that naval construction is very dear, and that the fragata “Esperanza” cost more than 600,000 pesos fuertes. During my stay in the islands, there has been talk of trickery in the outlay of tobacco, besides a defalcation in the magazines of three thousand eight hundred bundles of leaf. It was declared that there was introduced, for example, into the factory magazines, a quantity of bundled tobacco, in which was one part composed of fillers [palos] which had to be burned as useless; but if these fillers amounted to five thousand arrobas, only four thousand were destroyed. The other thousand arrobas were taken out as leaf of the best brand [from the magazines] and was carried to private houses where it was manufactured as contraband. This leaf was replaced by the fillers which ought to have been burned. For that reason, the cigars which were sent to the tobacco shops of the provinces, and even those which were sold to the trade, were sometimes of the worst quality; that the boxes were short weight; that choice lots were finished with care, and marked with a mark, and papers were given authorizing the exchange of tobacco in the factory, by which means the associates in these speculations could buy the poor tobacco which was given to the public, and leave it in the [77]national magazines, taking in place of it, that manufactured properly and reserved. But what I know to be a positive fact in this matter is that few or many superior or fine boxes were made, which were obtained by favor in Manila; and that when Don Luis Urrijola30 left the intendancy, the tobacco had lost its credit, and nine thousand boxes were held in the magazines, which no merchant then or since has cared to buy. The new superintendent, Don J. M. de la Matta took direct and positive measures by separating the magazine from the factory, and reducing the functions of the latter to the manufacture only, etc., whereupon the requests for the new tobacco were renewed, so that when I left Manila, it was impossible by a great amount to meet the demands of the trade. But had it not been for the providential appointment to the superintendency of said clever and zealous employe, perhaps that revenue would have entirely ceased. This is one of the foremost resources of that country, and the governor-general would at this moment find himself, perhaps, in the greatest straits, and it would be impossible to prevent the evil, although he knew its origin and progress, as he had no intervention in the department of the treasury, which is, nevertheless, the soul of all government. In the same place I also heard talk of the sale of posts, of abuses in the pay of vouchers and other matters. [These things may be [78]misrepresentation or calumny, but they are ever increasing in force and are being repeated with exaggeration—which tends to weaken Spanish prestige which is the source of their moral strength.]

I believe that all that I have observed is enough and more than enough to show that the actual system of administration suffers from capital defects, and to assert that, in my opinion, the organization of a government is peremptory, which besides being a check on despotism and a barrier to ambition, by means of correction and reform through itself, contains the elements of unity, concord, prudence, rectitude, power, and duration. Here follows for what it may be worth, a plan circumscribed on fundamental bases.31

[Mas’s plan provides for a regency or commission of three persons, one of whom shall be the president and exercise the powers of the governor-general. A fourth member is to be elected as a substitute in case of death or illness, who, until called upon to fill any vacancy, shall travel through the provinces and study the conditions of the country. All matters of importance, especially money matters must be decided at a meeting of the regency, and appear by an act signed by all three. The president shall communicate and sign all orders, and all official communications must be sent to him. The two secretaries, political and military, shall receive orders only from the president, and shall attend the meetings of the regency without vote. The president alone shall decide questions of detail and procedure and execution, in accordance with the regulations, always expressing [79]whether any measure has been voted on or not. The secretary shall send concise daily reports of all communications signed during the day by the president, noting after each one whether it was with or without the vote of the regency. Thus the other two regents having it in their power to call for the rough draft of any measure, can easily tell whether the president has overstepped his executory powers and encroached on the powers of the entire regency. This provision will obviate any such tendency on the president’s part, and will remove the jealousy of his two associates. The plan further provides for a commander-in-chief of all the army; a commander of the navy; a superintendent of the treasury; a court of justice; and a Council of State, to be composed of the officials above mentioned, together with the chiefs of artillery and fortification, the contador-mayor of accounts, the contadors of the army and treasury, the archbishop of Manila, and the provincials of the religious orders. The Council which has no power to assemble of its own accord, shall be assembled to consult on serious matters by the regency. At the death of the president, the senior regent shall assume his office, the substitute shall take a regular seat in the regency, and the Council shall appoint a new substitute to act provisionally until the court make a regular appointment, which shall never be the provisional appointment of the Council. The deliberations of the Council shall be secret and the regents shall only state the matters for discussion and then retire. The Council may be assembled at the request of the regents acting either singly or in accord. In impeachments of the president, if the impeachment is sustained, the senior regent shall take [80]his place; if it is not sustained, the Council shall retire, but may be assembled any number of times for the same matter. There is a clause against lobbying in the Council to influence the votes of the members. In case of two summons at the same time, the Council shall obey the one emanating from the president or senior regent first.]

The members of the regency shall be jurisconsults, owners of estates, or military men, and the regularly-appointed president shall always be a grandee of España. It is highly important that, at that distance, the first chief impose some personal respect, and that even his very lineage make him appear superior to all the others.

[The dissension manifest in Basco’s term as governor was due to his low rank, as he was only a captain of fragata when he went to the islands as governor, a fact that gave rise to envy. He was an excellent governor, but the ministry that supported him did not know the sentiments that move the human heart. Governor Lardizabal also was of lower rank than some who served in subordinate positions in the islands. It would be better to appoint a grandee to the post of governor; for, having his estates in Spain, he would be more loyal. A grandee also could better support the prestige of the government than a poor soldier or man of no rank, as he would be more accustomed to the duties of that life. A soldier generally desires to make money, and will neglect his real duties. As a rule there are no battles to be fought, while there are many duties of an administrational and industrial character. The governor must have tact with the natives, and look carefully after foreign, commercial, and industrial relations, and the [81]progress of the islands. It would be highly advisable to choose such a man when General Alcala is relieved.]

[For the government of the provinces, advocates shall be appointed from Spain, and they shall remain no longer than twenty years in the islands. There shall be three classes of provincial governments with distinct salaries. In addition to the requisite number of provincial governors there shall be six or eight substitutes in case of vacancies. These shall receive a salary of fifty pesos per month, so long as they are not called upon to fill a vacancy, and shall meanwhile do the bidding of the regency. A vacancy in the governments of the first class shall be filled by the regency from the governors of the second and third classes; and one in the third class from the substitutes. Governors may be transferred at will by the regency, and the relative importance of the various provinces may also vary.]

The provincial governors shall be as now political chiefs, judges of first instance, subdelegates of the treasury for the receiving of the direct incomes, managers of the mails, and war captains. This centralization has many advantages, a very chief one being the economic. The inconveniences which follow from it, will disappear when there is one supreme authority in the islands.

The limits of the provincial courts shall be enlarged to include both civil and criminal cases. This will increase the power of the subordinate authorities, and decrease the troubles of the Audiencia. The party [in the suit] shall always have the recourse of appeal.

The superior court of justice shall be composed [82]of three persons, one of whom shall be the president. It shall try criminal, civil, and contentious matters as well as trade questions by appeal. Appeal may be had from its sentences to the regency, which shall appoint three advocates to judge the case. These latter shall become joint judges, and together with the three judges shall form the court of appeal. This court shall be presided over by one of the regents or by the substitute with a vote, the jurisconsult member being rightly preferred for this if there is one in the regency.

[The fees of the court of appeal shall be larger than those of the Audiencia; and if the decision of the latter is found correct the penalty shall be increased; the death sentence, however, being abolished. A vacancy in the court of justice shall be filled provisionally by the regency, and regular appointment shall be made from Madrid, which must be otherwise than the provisional one made by the regency, unless such appointment be made before the action of the regents is known in Spain. This will tend to make the judiciary independent of the government.]

[In regard to the treasury employes a plan similar to that of the provincial governors shall be adopted. The custom of sending employes for any of the treasury posts from Madrid, many of whom are ignorant even of bookkeeping, means death to the hopes of those already in the islands, and breeds discontent.]

[This plan does not involve any extra expense. The president shall have a yearly salary of 12,000 pesos, in addition to the palace of Manila and the house at Malacañang; the two regents shall each receive 6,000 pesos and 1,000 pesos extra for a house; [83]and the substitute 4,000 pesos—a total of 30,000 pesos.32 Posts of rank in Manila have lately been increased, and now there are a lieutenant-general, a mariscal de campo, six brigadier-generals, and many colonels and commandants; and yet men of lower rank than all these have been appointed governor of the islands. There is no need of so many military titles. A brigadier-general, with 6,000 pesos’ pay acts as second commandant of the navy, which consists of but a few gunboats; and a sub-inspector of engineers has just arrived who has only two officers under him. Colonels can serve in place of brigadiers, and since they receive 2,000 pesos less, this will be a saving of at least 10,000 pesos. This added to the 7,000 pesos that can be saved from the affairs of justice being managed by three persons, who have no administrational duties, the 13,000 pesos saved from the present salary of the captain-general, and the 1,000 pesos given as a gratification to the commandant of the marine corps, will mean a total saving of 31,000 pesos.]

[Mas also proposes the establishment at Madrid of a ministry of the colonies,33 through whom all the [84]communications of the regency shall pass. It should have departments of government, war, navy, revenues, and justice. It can easily turn over to other ministries what primarily concerns them, and work in harmony with them. For instance it would not elect bishops, but would determine their number and salary.]

Thus far I have given minute details on the three principles which, in my opinion, I said it was necessary to adopt as basic policies in order to conserve the Filipinas: namely, to avoid the increase of the white population; make of the colored population, a docile and well-inclined mass; and reform the present administration. I have still to add that I conceive it to be of the foremost interest to always have in that treasury a sufficient store of spare funds to at least cover the expenses of one year. [It will be impossible to realize loans in case of either internal or external war. The treasury has been continually exhausted for years, and has drawn on the obras pías. Notes have been drawn on the Manila treasury for [85]over three million pesos, on which interest is being paid, and there is no hope of paying the principal.] Such a method of doing things, is, in my opinion, a political imprudence twice over—in the first place because the islands are left exposed to reverses from a faction or from a foreign enemy; in the second, because it causes certain murmurs among their inhabitants, and a discontent difficult to conceive of here, and which may precipitate their ruin.

After having discussed the means of conserving the colony, supposing that this is always the intention of the government, let us consider the other extreme, taken in review, namely, to resolve to emancipate it and prepare it for giving it liberty.

In order to attain this end, it becomes natural, as is necessary, to adopt a system diametrically opposed to the first. The chief object must be that it does not cause the shedding of blood, that the relations of friendship and of trade with España are not interrupted, that the European Spaniards living there do not lose their chattels or landed property, and, especially, that our race there, the Filipino-Spaniards, preserve their estates and their rights of naturalization, and free from the unfortunate fate that threatens them, and which is even inevitably expected for them, if the colony separates by force and at this moment. It is needful to encourage public instruction in all ways possible, permit newspapers subject to a liberal censure, to establish in Manila a college of medicine, surgery, and pharmacy: in order to break down the barriers that divide the races, and amalgamate them all into one. For that purpose, the Spaniards of the country, the Chinese mestizos, and [86]the Filipinos shall be admitted with perfect equality as cadets of the military corps; the personal-service tax shall be abolished, or an equal and general tax shall be imposed, to which all the Spaniards shall be subject. This last plan appears to me more advisable, as the poll-tax is already established, and it is not opportune to make a trial of new taxes when it is a question of allowing the country to be governed by itself. Since the annual tribute is unequal, the average shall be taken and shall be fixed, consequently, at fifteen or sixteen reals per whole tribute, or perhaps one peso fuerte annually from each adult tributary person. This regulation will produce an increase in the revenue of 200,000 or 300,000 pesos fuertes, and this sum shall be set aside to give the impulse for the amalgamation of the races, favoring crossed marriages by means of dowries granted to the single women in the following manner. To a Chinese mestizo woman who marries a Filipino shall be given 100 pesos; to a Filipino woman who marries a Chinese mestizo, 100 pesos; to a Chinese mestizo woman who marries a Spaniard, 1,000 pesos; to a Spanish woman who marries a Chinese mestizo, 2,000 pesos; to a Filipino woman who marries a Spaniard, 2,000 pesos; to a Spanish woman who marries a Filipino chief, 3,000 or 4,000 pesos. Some mestizo and Filipino alcaldes-mayor of the provinces shall be appointed. It shall be ordered that when a Filipino chief goes to the house of a Spaniard, he shall seat himself as the latter’s equal. In a word, by these and other means, the idea that they and the Castilians are two kinds of distinct races shall be erased from the minds of the natives, and the families shall become related by marriage in such manner that [87]when free of the Castilian dominion should any exalted Filipinos try to expel or enslave our race, they would find it so interlaced with their own that their plan would be practically impossible.

After some years, when this population was sufficiently trimmed off, an assembly of deputies shall be formed from the people, in order that they may hold sessions in Manila for two or three months every year. In those sessions they shall discuss public affairs, especially those treating of taxes and budgets. Then after some time of such political education, our government may be withdrawn without fear, fixing before doing that the kind of government that is to be established—probably some constitutional form analogous to those of Europe, with a royal prince at its head chosen from among our infantes.

My task is concluded. Which of the two plans, above analyzed, it is the most just or advisable to follow, does not concern me to recommend, much less propose.

I will add, however, a page to express my opinion as an individual of the Spanish nation. If I had to choose I would vote for the last. I cannot see what benefits we have had from the colonies: depopulation, decadence in the arts, and the public debt, which come in great measure from them. The interest of a state consists, as I see it, in having a dense and well-educated population, and I do not speak only of literary or political education, but of that general education, which makes each one perfect in his trade, I mean in that education which constitutes a cabinet-maker, a weaver, a blacksmith, the best cabinet-maker, weaver, or blacksmith possible. The greater [88]or less number of machines is, in our century, an almost sure thermometer by which to gage the power of empires.

A colony cannot be useful except with the end of filling one of the following three objects: to make of it a tributary country, for the increase of the income of the mother-country (as Holland effects by means of a compulsory and exclusive system); to erect it into a second country, and a place of immigration of the surplus population (such as are especially Australia, Van Diemen’s land and New Zealand); finally to procure in it, a place wherein to expend the products of the national manufactures (as is the principal aim of the modern colonial establishments). For the first, we have already seen that the Filipinas are a poor resource, and will be for a long time; and I shall not wonder that before losing them, they will cost us, on the contrary, some millions. As for the second, they are not necessary, for we have no surplus population to unload. And for the third they are useless, for we ourselves have no manufactures to export. Barcelona, which has the most factories in the Peninsula, does not have the least direct communication with the islands. All that is taken there from Cadiz consists of a little paper, oil, and liquors. If it were not for the tobacco and the passengers who go and come, one or two vessels annually would be enough to take care of all the mercantile speculations between both countries. [Separation will not deprive Spain of a future rich market in the Philippines, as the case of the American colonies and England shows. Even if Spain should have a surplus population within a century, the Philippines will also have no lack of inhabitants, and it will be [89]necessary for the Spaniards to emigrate to the Marianas. Mas is not concerned by the argument that separation would mean the loss of the Christian religion in the islands. To the argument that the islands might fall into the hands of the British, French, Dutch, or Chinese, he asks why Spain should become a knight errant for all unprotected peoples. Spaniards in the islands can always return to Spain. People assert that since Spain has spent over 300,000,000 pesos on the islands, it is but proper that that country be reimbursed; but although it has also spent much on the holy land, it never expects any return therefor. Let the Filipinos pay heavier taxes under their own government; why is that any concern? Even if ninety per cent of the population should desire to remain under Spain’s domination, that is no sign that there may not be a better condition.] In conclusion, if we are conserving the islands for love of the islanders, we are losing our time, and merit, for gratitude is sometimes met with in persons, but never can it be hoped for from peoples; and indeed through our love, why do we fall into an anomaly, such as combining our claim for liberty for ourselves, and our wish at the same time to impose our law on remote peoples? Why do we deny to others the benefit which we desire for our fatherland? By these principles of universal morality and justice, and because I am persuaded that in the midst of the political circumstances in which España is at present, the condition of that colony will be neglected; that none of the measures which I propose for its conservation (this is my conviction) will be adopted; and that it will emancipate itself violently with the loss of considerable property and many lives of [90]European Spaniards and Filipinos: I think that it would be infinitely more easy, more useful, and more glorious for us to acquire the glory of the work by being the first to show generosity. Hence, the foreign authors who have unjustly printed so many calumnies against our colonial governments, authors belonging to nations who never satisfy their hunger for colonies, would have to say at least this once: “The Spaniards crossing new and remote seas, extended the domain of geography by discovering the Filipinas Islands. They found anarchy and despotism there, and established order and justice. They encountered slavery and destroyed it, and imposed political equality. They ruled their inhabitants with laws, and just laws. They christianized them, civilized them, defended them from the Chinese, from Moro pirates, and from European aggressors; they spent much gold on them, and then gave them liberty.”34 [91]

Communication from the intendant of the army and treasury [Intendente de Ejercito y Hacienda] of the Filipinas Islands, Don Juan Manuel de la Matta,1 to the governor and captain-general of said islands, Don Marcelino Oraá, in regard to the moral condition of the country after the insurrection of a portion of the troops of the third regiment of the line, which happened at daybreak of the twenty-first of last January; and declaration of the chief legislative reforms, and of the peremptory measures of precaution and security, demanded by said condition.

[The recent disaffection of a portion of the Philippine troops has caused the government to issue instructions in case of the occurrence of any excitement, insurrection, or alarm in the city of Manila and its environs. Matta, on receiving these instructions, has transmitted secretly to the commander of the revenue guard2 (whom he has advised in case [92]of any danger to assemble all his command in the tobacco factory of Binondo) the portion of the instructions that concerns him. Also the forces of the station of San Fernando are to be embarked on the boats in the river belonging to the revenue guard, and placed in command of the port captain. In addition to the instructions above cited, it seems advisable, “considering the moral condition of the country, to adopt radical measures to avoid the evil before having to punish it, thereby to shelter the colony from new seditions, which cannot be repeated without imminent risk of sad consequences.” The suppression of the attempts of the insurgents and the calming of Manila was due to the loyalty of the artillerymen quartered at the fort of Santiago and the presence of other loyal troops.]

The sedition of Apolinario3 in the province of [93]Tayabas, at the end of October, 1841, and the insurrection of part of the third regiment of the line, which occurred in the capital at daybreak of January 21,4 have in little more than one year placed [94]these important possessions at the verge of a terrible civil war, and have compromised great interests.

[The discipline of the third regiment of the line before the insurrection was poor, a fact that was attributed, among other things, to the bad condition of the barracks. On the other hand, a corps composed of native troops recruited from Manila and the neighboring places remained loyal, and was used to good effect in putting down the insurrection. In the opinion of many, native troops officered by Spaniards (even to the sergeants and corporals) would prevent disaffection in the future, and be much better than Peninsular troops. In this treatise it is Matta’s purpose to set forth “the measures by which the tranquillity of these inhabitants and the conservation of this precious portion of the Spanish monarchy, will be conserved in the future.” The moral condition of the islands is most delicate and merits the close attention of the government, “and most especially of your Excellency, to whom is chiefly confided the tranquillity and conservation of these important possessions—which now demand radical administrational and economic reforms that will permit the development of the wealth of their fertile soil, and the welfare of all their inhabitants; and peremptory [95]measures of foresight and security, which will render those advantages lasting, keep the country loyal, and inalterably bind the union of the islands with the mother-country.” In consequence of the civil wars in Spain, the Spanish government has been compelled to draw heavy sums against the treasury of the Philippines, by which not only has the treasury been exhausted but a debt of more than four million pesos incurred—a debt that cannot be met for years, “both because the needs of the colony are increasing annually, and because the remainder left from the revenues, after covering the ordinary obligations of the budgets, is almost all spent in tobacco leaf, which is sent for the consumption of the mother-country, in accordance with the orders of the government.” In regard to the military defense of the country, conditions are as bad. “There are but few arms and they are in poor shape. The provinces are undefended. The army is composed almost exclusively of natives, and they are so few in number that the army is insufficient to defend the capital and fort of Cavite in case of a foreign invasion.” Indeed, in case of invasion it might be best to raze the fortifications built at the expense of so great sacrifices.]

In general there is to be seen considerable indifference, and even disaffection, to Peninsular interests. Ideas of emancipation are sheltered in many bosoms. Discontent swarms in all places. It is given utterance with effrontery, and is developed and fomented in various manners. Since the beginning of the colony, boldness, deceit, and acrimonious speech have had a foremost seat, but greed is today the dominant passion in the white people. Their needs are many and there are few means of satisfying them. The hot climate especially contributes to captiousness, [96]and the development of vehement passions. A multitude of jealous, complaining, and evil-intentioned men foment the discontent, to which also pusillanimous persons contribute by their indiscreet and excessive fear. Although by means of different passions, there is a manifest tendency to constantly discredit the dispositions of the government, to attack maliciously the authorities who represent it, and to foment rivalry and discord among them, to which both the complexity of the legislation and the burning climate lend themselves. Thus all concur in weakening the prestige that gives force to the government. The malcontents have the necessary time to gather new proselytes, to consolidate a faction against the mother-country, to prepare the will of the masses; and they await the time and opportunity for the realization of their desires. This plan is not in writing, but is engraved in the hearts of those who direct it, shows itself by its works, and is the result of the tendency of the age, of the calamitous circumstances in which the mother-country finds itself, and of the kind of abandonment in which these important possessions are held.

[Notwithstanding the royal order of April 25, 1837, prohibiting publications that might disturb public order and weaken the prestige of the government, such publications have circulated freely in Manila, thus increasing the discontent. In such publications the followers of Apolinario are called innocent, and the execution of the rebels in the camp of Alitao has been termed assassination. All things have combined to destroy in Manila “the prestige and moral force that have been hitherto the principal foundation of our domination.”] [97]

[Although the provinces are not yet so greatly disaffected as is Manila], their moral condition is very different from that when they generally pronounced against the English in 1762 and gave the victory to Anda. Mejico belonged to España, and its treasury contributed to the support of the islands, which had the exclusive benefit of a traffic which the public especially valued, and whose conservation was inseparable from union to the mother-country. North-American independence and the French revolution had not yet come to fix the future destiny of all the colonial possessions of the world.5 The regular clergy, the principal base of our domination, then exercised an influence over the inhabitants, which time has almost entirely vitiated. Little care is taken for the instruction of their members, from which it results that some of them with their gross manners, stupid pretensions, and exactions from the chiefs of the provinces, and the gobernadorcillos and notables of the villages, occasion anger, quarrels, and discord which disturb the quiet of the inhabitants, [98]distract and embarrass the authorities, and nourish those indiscreet and tenacious struggles in which all lose, and which have contributed so greatly to the rapid undermining of the base of our power in the provinces. The mistrust of a sad future leads many of them to engage in commercial business, and conduces to avarice and to a worldly life, so that they have lost their religious prestige, without gaining the respect and the consideration due to eminent and beneficent citizens. Without doubt there are respectable men among the individuals of the regular clergy, who, superior to circumstances, devote themselves entirely to the fulfilment of the duties of their sacred ministry; who as true fathers of their parishioners, look carefully after their comfort and welfare; and who, for that reason possessing their esteem, are, consequently, one of the chief supports of the action of the government in the villages. It is with reference to these that I have remarked in another place that both religion and policy recommend them. Let all be placed in the same category, and let strict watch be put on the instruction and conduct of the parish priests, in which, truly, there is much to correct; and the happiness of the provinces will be secure, if, in addition, the improvements demanded by the state of civilization and of wealth in some of the provinces, and by the genius and circumstances of the various races inhabiting them, and the differences of the times in which we are living, are made in their government and administration.

For that purpose it must be kept in mind that ambition is wont to affect the Spanish people transplanted to these distant and hot climes; that arrogant presumption is the distinctive characteristic of their [99]descendants; and we must consider duly the characteristic qualities of the natives.

As I have remarked to your Excellency on a different occasion, I consider the moral picture of the Indian as very difficult to draw, for frequently one finds united in him abjectness and ferocity, timidity and a wonderful fearlessness and courage in danger, and indolent laziness and slovenliness combined with industry and avaricious self-interest. It is impossible to represent exactly under one single stroke all the phases of their contradictory character. But in general the Indian is pacific, superstitious, indolent, respectful to authority, heedless, distrustful, and deceitful. Dominated by his first sensations, and most fertile in expedients to extricate himself from difficulties, or to carry out his design at a moment’s notice, he must be considered as a minor who follows the dictates of his own will; and, as such, he must be directed for his own good, his difficulties must be forestalled, corrected and punished. The natives are also spiteful and revengeful when they believe themselves offended; and at such times, hiding their ill-will under the veil of a deceitful humility, they await the opportunity for satisfying it, and generally give rein suddenly to their ill-will with perfidy and ferocity.

[The contradictory character of the Filipino native explains the ease with which a large province can be governed by one official with the aid of the parish priests and two or three dozen soldiers; while, on the other hand, the insurance companies of India refuse to stand the risks of mutiny in a vessel employing half a dozen natives from Manila in its crew. The natives know no middle path between abject respect and insolent contempt, in their attitude toward [100]the whites. In case of a foreign or internal war the governors or alcaldes-mayor of the provinces would be the least capable of directing affairs, because of their ignorance of the native languages and customs, and because they are in continual conflict with the natives over the collection of the tribute, while at the same time they exercise a monopoly in trade.]

For a very long period the elements of discord among the authorities have been numerous for lack of a special and analogous legislation, enacted with regard to the genius and circumstances of the various peoples inhabiting these islands and the enormous distance separating them from the mother-country. During these latter years, there have been heaped up on this unfavorable foundation the elements emanating from the civil war which has covered the mother-country with mourning, and those of our own political dissensions; the development and tendencies of the revolutionary principles common to all the colonial possessions of the world, and which only force, supported by the interest of self-preservation, is capable of restraining; and lastly the impressions which it has been impossible to keep from transmission to the natives and other races, in proportion as the knowledge of our language becomes general to them, and as they become civilized, and contract our tastes and necessities through the increase of commerce and industry, and observe from anear the confusion resulting from our lack of harmony. This is, in my opinion, the chief cancer of this body politic, and will finish it very speedily unless your Excellency, acting with the discretion and the energy so strongly charged in the laws, and especially in the royal order of April 25, 1837, apply the remedy peremptorily demanded by our situation. [101]

[Discord and confusion and the spirit of resistance are rife throughout the provinces. The events of 1820 and 1823, the sedition of Apolinario in October, 1841, and the mutiny of the troops, although different in their origin, all exhibit the “perfidy and ferocity that always accompany movements of color in Ultramar.” The prestige of the government is weakened, which formerly was, with religion, the chief foundation of Spanish domination. The political factions that have arisen in the last six years, and which are now perfectly organized, are greatly to blame. The Peninsulars and Spanish Filipinos will end by destroying each other if the fitting remedy is not speedily applied. In a report made to the government after the sedition of Apolinario had been put down, Matta said that the origin of the confraternity consisted “only in the character of the superstition which distinguishes these natives, who most readily believe whatever is presented to them under the veil of religion and of the marvellous; asserted that it became fanaticism as soon as measures were taken against Apolinario and his confreres, and that it became a declared sedition when the unfortunate Ortega attacked them in Ygsaban with more valor than prudence; and that from that time presenting the appearance of a near insurrection in the neighboring provinces, it is to be feared that it would have been converted into a revolution capable of compromising the conservation of these important possessions had not the seditious ones been promptly defeated and severely punished in Alitao.” Matta’s report also said that probably Apolinario’s expulsion from the hospital of San Juan de Dios in Manila, and the measures taken against his associates, together with the suggestions of the adherents of independence, [102]contributed to the holding of the novena in Tayabas in spite of the precautions taken by the military and ecclesiastical authorities. These occurrences were principally the effect of superstition and fanaticism; and although the ideas of emancipation have been present in the Philippines, as in all colonies since the Spanish-American revolution, yet ideas of emancipation are limited in the islands to a few Spaniards who do not even form a political party, but only a crowd of complainers who are either not government employees, or are employees who take it ill that Spaniards are sent from the Peninsula to fill offices that they believe belong properly to themselves.6 The ideas of emancipation have not yet contaminated, nor will they in a long time contaminate the Chinese, the Chinese mestizos, Spanish mestizos, or the natives, with the exception of a few of the “secular clergy, as insignificant because of their ignorance and few resources as by their lack of influence among their countrymen.” Whatever be the opinions of the influential Spaniards born in the islands, they recognise that political upheavals would be as fatal to themselves as to the Peninsulars. In the insurrection of last January, among the six white officers assassinated or wounded, three of those killed and one wounded belonged to the revolting regiment, while the two remaining who were wounded were Europeans. The safety of all lies in the stability of the government; but it must be noted that events are daily more serious and that the discontent is spreading. Important reforms are necessary, but matters must be viewed only in the light of the public cause. “Without virtues there can be [103]no prestige; and, without prestige, it will also be impossible for the lesser part to dominate the great whole.” The conservation of the islands depends on “radical reforms in their legislation, and peremptory measures of precaution and security.” Such reforms are:]

1st. The formation of a special law for these islands, analogous and framed with reference to the genius and circumstances of the various peoples inhabiting them, and to their great distance from the mother-country. [Matta believes in a law that will outline the duties of the governor and captain-general, and place under his general supervision real heads of the various departments of government, who shall be responsible. A Colonial Council or Cabinet for consultation on affairs of general public interest should also be formed. This separation of duties into specific classes, the heads of each department to be subordinate to the governor, in accordance with law ii, título ii, book iii, will ensure the right use of the governing functions. To continue so many unconnected duties under the governor will only add to the confusion.]

2d. The improvement of the government and administration of the provinces by organizing them with reference to their present state of civilization and wealth. For they cannot now, without serious inconveniences, without transcendental harm, have the government, judicial, military and revenue functions, together with commercial occupations and cares, united under one person alone. [The system of placing one person in command of all these departments is opposed to civilization and to the mercantile spirit that has penetrated into the provinces. [104]Civil governors should be appointed who should have charge of the government, administration of justice, and the promotion of the welfare of the inhabitants. Such governors should have learned the native tongue and should know something of the native manners and customs. The collection of tributes should not be entrusted to them, and their posts should be permanent, except for transfers, promotions, and suspension by the governor and captain-general, or sentence by the suitable tribunal. This will give such provincial chiefs the necessary prestige, in accordance with the royal order of December 10, 1839. In the provinces, passion often takes the place of reason, and anything at all can be justified because of the facility with which the natives contradict and perjure themselves. The position of the provincial chief demands that his authority be very vigorous and held in respect. The native must be kept respectful by tact, justice, punishment, and energy. Jueces pesquisidores7 and judges to take the residencia should not be sent to the provinces, as that tends to weaken the authority of the provincial chief. Easy recourse can be had in the provinces to the tribunals and superior authorities of the islands, while the natives and Chinese can appeal to their protectors, who are generally very zealous in their behalf.]

3rd. The suppression of the colleges of Santo Tomas, San Jose,8 and San Juan de Letran of this [105]capital, and the conciliar seminaries of the bishoprics, as perpetual nurseries of corruption, laziness, or subversive ideas, as contrary to the quiet and welfare of the villages as to peninsular interests. [The suppression of the last three can be made at once, and they should be replaced with schools of agriculture,9 arts,10 and commerce, which will conduce to the prosperity of the colony. As regards Santo Tomas, inasmuch as immediate suppression would anger the Spaniards and Chinese mestizos who have control of almost all the capital of the islands, a new plan should be adopted by which desire to attend it would be gradually decreased until it can be suppressed without any trouble. Sensible Spaniards generally believe that the suppression of these institutions would conduce to the good of the islands and of Spain. From them come the swarms of ignorant and vicious secular priests, and the pettifogging lawyers, who stir up so much trouble among the natives, and cause the provincial chiefs so great inconvenience. [106]Although not much attention is paid to this class, they are the most vicious and worthless in the islands. Public convenience demands the teaching of agriculture, the arts, and commerce, instead of the theology and law to which the institutions above mentioned are devoted. It should not be forgotten that the Spanish-American revolutions were fostered by curas and lawyers, who since they know both the native language and Spanish, have great influence with the masses. The influence of the friar parish priests is now very much weakened, for they have almost entirely abandoned the spiritual administration to their native assistants. These assistants, by working on the superstitious character of the natives, can rouse them to any act that will satisfy their own desires for vengeance.]

4th. The eternal abolition of the sentences of residencia, to which, as governors, the captains-general of the provinces of Ultramar are still subject. [These sentences have been of no use to the inhabitants of the islands, but on the contrary of great harm. Appeal lies to the Audiencia from the judicial acts of the governor, and to the Spanish court from his purely administrational acts. The free press, in which all things are bruited, is also of great use. Communication with Spain is now frequent. The governor and the chief of the treasury have been divested of almost all governmental authority through the residencia. The judicial and contentious have invaded everything and obscured the action of the provincial chiefs as well as the superintendent and intendant and the governor. The chief authorities of the islands need more energy and freer action.]

5th. [The adoption of various other legislative [107]and economic measures which Matta has before proposed to the government.]

[Capitalists and workers are needed in the islands, but, in order to attract them, there must be governmental and administrational reforms. The natives must be considered and various reforms made concerning them, and the heavy tribute on the Chinese must be reduced to not more than the twelve reals per annum for those engaging in agriculture. The public wealth of the islands must be increased. Whites, Chinese, and mestizos must be encouraged to go to the islands in greater numbers, in order to correct the laziness of the natives, and, by their wealth and prestige, to offset the numerical majority of the natives. The increase of consumers in the islands will give a greater outlet to Spanish products from the Peninsula. The revenues must be increased in proportion to the public wealth, in order to sustain the increase of necessary forces.]

[The reforms looking toward security and conservation which are urgently demanded by the moral condition of the country are as follows:]

1st. The reëstablishment of the well-organized military commission of police, vigilance, and public safety. [This would be able to check all sorts of disorder and conspiracy. Its members should be paid by the state, such pay to come from the licenses issued to travelers going to the interior, from licenses to carry arms, from fines, and from the fourth part of all contraband goods confiscated.]

2d. The institution of night-watches in the city and villages outside its walls, which require them, as almost all the traders and a considerable portion of the white population live therein. [These night-watches [108]would relieve the troops of patrol duty in many instances. They would be under the alcaldes-in-ordinary, and paid from the municipal funds.]

3rd. The constant maintenance of a guard of at least one thousand European troops. [These are necessary for the garrisoning of the fort at Santiago, the palace, the Parián gate, and the other necessary points. Matta’s plan also calls for the reëstablishment of the Spanish guard of halberdiers of one hundred men, to act as interior palace guard, and serve as a source of supply for sergeants for the native regiments. He recommends the establishment of Tagálog academies in order that the Spanish officers and sergeants may learn the native language.11 Certain privileges are proposed for the European soldiers, whereby their pay may be greater than that of the native soldiers, for their necessities are greater. The term of service in the Philippines ought to be eight years, as provided by royal order of July 26, 1836; but those who are fit ought to be allowed to reënlist and be transferred to the revenue guard [cuerpo del resguardo], in order to save cost on transportation. Matta is against having fewer Europeans in the service as has been urged by many persons of experience in the Philippines. The system outlined by him is not one merely of military occupation, but looks to a close bond with the mother-country and to the industrial development of the islands. Agriculture is the best occupation for the whites, and is in fact the only one that will give a good comfortable living. A greater number of Europeans will mean [109]a greater proportion of mestizos;12 and if these, together with the Chinese and some of the whites, engage in agriculture they will throw their influence on the side of the government, because of self-interest. Exaggerated ideas are voiced regarding the Peninsulars. They are never more dangerous than during the first few years in the islands; but, as they become accustomed to the climate and learn to know the inhabitants, their ideas moderate. Consequently, for this reason, and because of the expense, Matta is against frequent reliefs of soldiers. Vacancies in the ranks should always be filled with recruits from Spain, and never with natives. Discipline must not be relaxed on the voyage from Spain; and the soldiers must be kept in good form physically. A special boat is recommended for the transport of soldiers to and from Spain; and cost of transport can be reduced.]

4th. The completion of the organization of the valuable corps of the revenue guards [cuerpo del resguardo]. [This can be done by carrying out the royal order of October 18, 1837, and the three parts of the regulations drawn up by Matta’s predecessor June 4, [110]1841, the first two parts of which have already been approved. Matta has endeavored without avail, and supported by various officials, to gain the governor’s approval to the third part. The corps of the revenue guards is always loyal to the governor. With the increase provided in the plan for organization, this corps will be the most suitable to defend the country either against foreign or internal foes. Since the immediate object of the revenue guards is the custody, defense, and guard of the revenues, they ought to depend immediately on the treasury department, although they may be available when the public safety demands it for any other duty. By a decree of Matta’s predecessor, of April 25, 1839, the revenue guards of the various departments—those of the Bay, and of the tobacco and wine and liquor monopoly revenues—were united into one corps. This extensive corps, which absorbs annually the sum of 191,589 pesos, has no adequate organization, a matter to which immediate attention should be given.]

5th and last. That the attempt be made, in a truly impartial and foresighted system, to conciliate the minds of people, and to put an end to that pernicious mistrust that has been introduced between the peninsular Spaniards and the sons of the country [i.e., the Spaniards born in the Philippines], which is so contrary to the common interest. [The government must not be partial to any one class of men, for each class contains good men who should be rewarded and advanced, and bad men who should be closely watched and punished. Merit should be the only cause for advancement. In closing Matta says that his private life in the islands and his long public service [111]have given him abundant opportunity to observe and study people and conditions. This memorial is dated Manila, February 25, 1843.]13 [112]

BY JAMES A. LEROY

The “modern era” in the Philippine Islands—which indeed, in certain respects, did not really begin until after the establishment of American rule—coincides roughly with the last half of the nineteenth century. It is impossible to assign arbitrarily any date as precisely that of its commencement. One will be inclined to lay stress upon this or that circumstance, and to choose this or that date, as he places importance mostly upon matters connected with economic development, or with social progress, or with political reforms. The truth is that there was advancement in all these lines, as also there were hindrances to progress in each of them, and that only by surveying it in each of these phases of its development can we come to understand in how considerable a degree Philippine society was remade during this period.

Looking primarily at the expansion of trade and foreign relations, we might date the new era in the Philippines from the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Yet that event, while greatly stimulating trade and agricultural development, did not inaugurate the [113]modern era in that respect. The presence of foreign traders, introducing agricultural machinery and advancing money on crops, was the chief stimulus to the opening of new areas of cultivation, the betterment of methods of tilling and preparing crops for the market, and the consequent growth of exports; indeed, one may almost say that certain American (United States) and English trading houses nurtured the sugar and hemp crops of the Philippines into existence. And their pioneer work in this respect was done before the opening of the Suez Canal brought the Philippines into vital touch with Europe by means of steam navigation—American influence being then, in fact, already on the wane. One might more readily, from this point of view, assign importance as a date to 1856, when Iloilo (and soon after Sebú) was opened to foreign trade (hitherto confined to one port of entry, Manila) and foreigners were permitted to open business houses outside of Manila and to trade and traffic in the provinces; or, even, to 1859, when the first steam sugar-mill was set up in Negros island. But the entering wedge had been driven by foreign traders into Spain’s policy of exclusion even before the cessation of the galleon-trade, the monopoly which confined Manila’s trade to a few Spaniards resident there and their backers in Mexico, who saw in Manila only a depot of exchange for Chinese and other Oriental commodities, and commonly despised the idea of giving any attention to the crude products of the Philippines or endeavoring to stimulate Philippine agriculture and exportation properly so called. From the date when this ruinous monopoly expired with the occupation by Mexican insurgents of Acapulco, the port to which [114]the galleons brought their silks, cottons, etc., attention was perforce turned upon Philippine products as a source of trade, and Philippine exports began to grow.1 Spanish traders being too few, and utterly untrained in the ways of competition, and Spanish ships being scarce in the Orient, foreign traders and foreign ships gathered the bulk of the business even in the face of useless and annoying restrictions, until finally these foreigners had broken down the barriers sufficiently to enter and take a hand in actively fostering agricultural development in the Philippines. Hence, the opening of the Suez Canal only gave a new turn and a great acceleration to a movement that, as regards Philippine internal development, may more logically be dated from 1815, the year of the last voyage of the galleon.

In one sense, indeed, the opening of the Suez Canal tended to lessen, relatively, the influence of foreign business and banking houses in the development of the Philippines, in that it led to direct steamship connection with Spain, awakening interest at home in this hitherto neglected colony and bringing to the Philippines for the first time in three hundred years more than a mere handful of Spaniards. After the early adventurers and encomenderos had disappeared, the number of Spanish civilians in private life was few indeed, numbering the favored merchants who had shares in the galleon trade-monopoly, and an occasional planter, descended perhaps from a family of encomenderos rooted in the Philippines, or being [115]an ex-army officer who had remained in the islands. Moreover, the small army maintained in the islands was to a considerable extent officered by Mexican creoles or half-castes, its soldiers being mostly Filipinos and Mexicans. The list of civilian officials was itself small, the governor (alcalde mayor) of a province combining with his executive functions and (very commonly) his command of the troops garrisoned therein, the powers of a superior judge for both civil and criminal jurisdictions. The members of the religious orders constituted the largest numerically, as well as the most influential, element of Spaniards in the Philippines. Outside of this class, the Spanish population of the archipelago, always very small even in its total, was mostly gathered in a few places, Manila containing by far the greater proportion. The general rule in the provinces was that only one white man, the friar-curate, was to be found in a town, a number of the smaller towns, moreover, not having a friar-curate, but a Filipino secular priest.2 The movement of Spaniards to the Philippines [116]had, indeed, begun before the opening of the Suez Canal. The inauguration of the Spanish-Philippine Bank in Manila in 1852 afforded evidence [117]much less, however, of the growth of Spanish commercial interests than of a desire to foster the growth of such interests by supplying credit facilities more nearly up to date than those hitherto available (at ruinous rates of interest) from the old “pious funds” [obras pías] of various sorts, especially since the foreign trading houses were virtually performing the functions of banks in their ways of extending credit to agriculturists, or were being aided by private bankers associated with them.3 The loss of Spain’s colonies on the mainland, besides turning many loyal or proscribed Spaniards toward Cuba and the Peninsula, had in a small degree encouraged such emigration to the more distant Philippines, and the history of certain of the most prominent Spanish families in the Philippines dates from the decades immediately following the political upheavals in Spanish-America. In the main, however, such immigrants as came to the Philippines in this way were government employees who, being ousted from the American continent, must rest as pensioners on the home government if the latter could not find them places in the Spanish Antilles or the Philippines. Such immigration, it need not be said, was not altogether an unmixed good; and some of the various “administrative reforms” designed for the Philippines in the fifties and sixties showed the influence of this pressure to provide places for officeholders with a claim on the government. The number of Spaniards who came to the Philippines on their private initiative was very small until direct [118]steam communication with the Peninsula was opened, and though it never became large during the last thirty years of Spanish rule, Spanish commercial interests in the islands gained relatively on those of foreigners after the opening of the canal. A direct steamship line from Barcelona was soon established under subsidy. The domestic shipping laws of Spain were even more fully extended over the Philippine archipelago, and the already existing preferential customs duties and regulations aided the growth of Spanish trade in the islands thereafter more than they had done before.4

The opening of the Suez Canal and the entry of Spaniards into the archipelago in greater numbers marks an epoch even more in a social way than as respects trade and commerce. And the new social era then inaugurated was closely allied thenceforward with the discussion of political reforms, with the essay of some such reforms on the part of government, and finally with an organized Filipino propaganda for greater social and political freedom. When the Spanish revolution of 1868 occurred the Philippines were still far remote from the mother-country, with its disturbing agitations, wherein violence and utopianism were destined to prepare the way for the reaction; the new governor-general sent out by the reformers who expelled Isabel II came to Manila by the Cape of Good Hope, the old voyage which took four months or more to bring even the news of what was going on in Spain. The Constitution of 1868 had been proclaimed in the Philippines [119]but a few months back when, early in 1870, the first steamer arrived direct from Barcelona via Suez. Thenceforward, the capital of this remote Spanish outpost in the Orient was but one month distant from Barcelona for mail and passengers; soon after ocean cables to the ports of China (eventually extended to Manila) put the Philippines in daily touch, as it were, with important occurrences in Spain. The old régime of slumbering exclusion, already breaking down under the influence of trade, was ended.

The influx of Spaniards from this time forward had in it, from the first to the last, more of “politics” than of individual initiative. More of them came out to take governmental positions than to engage in trade, or, less frequently, in agriculture, though many who lost their places by changes in administration stayed in the islands and occupied themselves in private enterprises. It was the “reformers” of the revolutionary period in Spain who first undertook to make a “clean sweep” of the offices in the Philippines, putting in their friends. Administrative reforms, and to a considerable extent a change of officials, was needed; but a more or less complicated bureaucracy was introduced along with some laudable reforms, and there was then inaugurated the pernicious custom of changing the lower Spanish officials in the Philippines, as well as the higher, with every change of administration in Spain—the “dance and counter-dance of employees,” as one writer has named it.5 [120]

There is undoubtedly some truth in the charge made by the defenders of the Philippine friars that the entry of Spaniards, especially officeholders, during the latter part of the nineteenth century lowered the prestige of the Spanish name in the islands, and was a cause (the friars would make it the chief or sole cause) of the discontent, eventually the rebellion, of the Filipinos. Administrative reforms, some of which were highly beneficial, such as the abolition of the tobacco monopoly6 and the reorganization of provincial governments, nevertheless had the chief effect, in the eyes of the Filipinos, of raising direct taxes and of burdening them with the support of new sets of officeholders, whose presence was not infrequently distasteful. By far too large a proportion of these officeholders, who came out to an unhealthful clime to take places which were miserably paid and might be taken away from them in two or three years, were concerned rather with the “pickings” than with the duties attached to their offices. Some were openly contemptuous of the natives, and thus helped to destroy the former good feeling between the races. The grievance of the friars was, however, far more frequently vented upon a class of Spanish officeholders quite different from those who gained odium through tyranny or corruption or both; the special hostility of the friars was visited upon their countrymen who gained great popularity with [121]the natives, because of their more democratic beliefs and manners. Such men were commonly of the anti-clerical party in Spain, and the bitterest element in home politics was thus transferred to the Philippines. One may recognize that such men were all too commonly quixotic and indiscreet, as Spanish Liberals notoriously are. To refuse to kiss the friar’s hand, and to speak contemptuously of him and all his kind (perhaps even to stir up scandal against them), may have seemed to such men a very natural and proper method of asserting their political beliefs and their sense of individual independence; yet the friars have rightly said that such actions, and the many things growing out of them, struck a blow at the very foundations of the structure upon which Spanish supremacy had been built in the islands. Hence it was that not infrequently a more far-seeing Liberal, after some years of experience in the islands, would come out as a defender of the Philippine friars and their views as to the political régime to be maintained there; he would perhaps explain it by saying that he was “a Liberal at home, but in the Philippines all ought to be Spaniards and only that.”

Even if we give full faith to the complaints of the friars’ defenders on this score—and their representations of the last half of the nineteenth century are very one-sided—even if we admire and accept as truthful the picture they draw of a sort of Eden in the Philippines back of 1860, and particularly in the two preceding centuries, wherein the humble Filipino lived practically free of taxation, exempt from abuses from above, guileless of serious crime, and watched over by a paternal superior who directed his steps to the eternal bliss of the other world: still, [122]accepting the friars’ case at its face value, it is plain that they asked for and expected the impossible when they fought to perpetuate medieval conditions in a country opened to trade and commerce and to modern thought and contact with the world at large. We may doubt that ignorance was bliss even in the “good old days;” but it was certain that those days must come to an end when the Philippines were awakened by steamships, telegraph lines, newspapers, and books (even though under clerical and political censorship). Clear-sighted prophecy was that of Feodor Jagor, the German scientist who traveled through the Philippines just before 1860, and who, though he found much to praise in the old paternal régime, said:

“The old situation is no longer possible of maintenance, with the changed conditions of the present time. The colony can no longer be shut off from the outside. Every facility in communication opens a breach in the ancient system and necessarily leads to reforms of a liberal character. The more that foreign capital and foreign ideas penetrate there, the more they increase prosperity, intelligence, and self-esteem, making the existing evils the more intolerable.”7 [123]

The echoes of Spanish partisanship and the talk of nineteenth-century reforms had been heard in the Philippines before the revolution of 1868 and the [124]opening of the Suez Canal, though it was only after these events that the people generally began to be stirred, and then only in the most populous districts. Because the clerical influence was all-powerful anyway, and the whole fabric of Philippine government reposed upon it, Carlism was felt in the islands before 1850 rather as an influence in certain military mutinies and as a source of strife between rival sets of civil officials than as involving primarily a defense of ecclesiastical privilege. Foremost among the events of the decade preceding the revolution of 1868 may be put the return of the Jesuits to the islands in 1859 (allowed by decree of 1852) and the beginning of educational reform with the decrees of 1863 ordering the establishment of a normal school and of primary schools under government control and supported directly by the local governments.8 The Jesuits had already opened a secondary school in Manila, introducing for the first time something besides merely theoretical instruction in natural sciences, [125]and more modern methods of instruction generally. Their secondary school was subsidized by the city government of Manila, their meteorological observatory was subsidized by the insular government, which also employed them to inaugurate and conduct the new normal school.9 From this time forward the Society was both directly and indirectly a stimulus to educational progress in the Philippines, was influential both in diffusing more generally primary instruction and in improving methods and widening curriculums of higher instruction. In a large degree, the educational program remained to the end of Spanish rule a pretentious but most superficial thing, more sounding brass than solid achievement. But we may fairly date a new epoch in this respect from the return of the Jesuits and the decrees of 1863.

In another way the return of the Jesuits is to be associated with the beginning of a new era in the islands. They were not permitted to resume the parochial benefices which their order had held prior [126]to their expulsion in 1768, but were to engage in missions in Mindanao and in educational and scientific work. Their resumption of the old missions in Mindanao was accomplished at the expense of the order of Recollects, which was thereupon given the provision of certain parishes, including several wealthy parishes in Luzon, which had for greater or less intervals been held by the more prominent and able of the secular priests, Filipinos of pure native blood or half-castes.10 The cabildo of the Manila cathedral, including the more notable of the secular priests, and the curates of the few conspicuous parishes (in central Luzon) which it fell to the lot of the secular clergy to occupy, had come to regard these benefices as their property, in a “corporate” sense, as it were, quite as each religious order felt that certain parishes, or whole provinces “belonged” to it as an order. It is significant that here, for the first time, one notes a feeling of solidarity among the Filipino secular clergy—for the demonstration of which feeling one has looked in vain, except in isolated cases, prior to that time, above all in connection with the effort (1770) of the Spanish archbishop Santa Justa y Rufina, to secularize the parishes and displace the friars with native priests. Only the bolder of the Filipino priests expressed the complaints of their fellows, even now, and open talk of a campaign for secularization of all the parishes was [127]scarcely heard until some courage was infused into these few and the small party of Filipino Liberals (mostly half-castes or Spaniards of Philippine birth) after the revolution of 1868 and the arrival of a governor-general who permitted public demonstrations in behalf of Liberal reforms. From the time of the execution of three Filipino priests for alleged complicity in the Cavite mutiny of 187211—the proofs of whose guilt the public has not seen, if the military courts which tried them did—there was added to the campaign for the expulsion of the friars12 on account of their landed estates and of their stifling of intellectual freedom the demand that Philippine parishes be entrusted to a native priesthood. Only since American occupation has the demand for a national clergy found full expression, but it had for a quarter of a century before that been an important phase of the sentiment of nationality, a sentiment that was growing steadily, though slowly and in the main secretly until 1896 in the Tagálog provinces and 1898 in the archipelago at large.

The reactionary party had partially regained the [128]upper hand when the mutiny occurred in Cavite in 1872. Instead of treating it as its comparative insignificance demanded, and as prudent statecraft would have counseled, they employed it as an excuse for vengeful violence, as a means for resuming full control of Philippine policy, and continued for twenty-five years thereafter to point to it as their most useful “horrible example,” as an evidence of what must follow the inauguration, even in the slightest degree, of a liberal policy in the government of the islands. Rightly or wrongly, the people of that and the succeeding generation in the Tagálog provinces, and to a less degree in the others, were schooled in racial resentment through the belief that the native priests had been done to death, upon a pretext of manufactured evidence, by the malevolence of the friars. The proscription of the more conspicuous of the then small Liberal element among the Filipinos had consequences of no less importance. Those who were sent into exile for alleged complicity in the Cavite mutiny were certain conspicuous half-castes and a few Spaniards of Philippine birth or of long residence in the islands. The native element proper was for the moment scarcely affected, even in Manila and its environs; and no one has ever demonstrated that the few more advanced men of Spanish blood who were moved by the revolution in Spain to take a stand for Liberal measures in the Philippines were engaged in anything but legitimate political discussion, or indeed that they talked of going so far in this direction in the Philippines as had already been done in the Peninsula. These proscriptions powerfully stimulated the idea of a “Filipino cause.” Some of the exiles escaped to [129]Hongkong, and there founded a Filipino colony. Others settled eventually in Europe; the more progressive and ambitious Filipinos began sending their sons to Madrid and Paris for education in contact with the thought of modern Europe; and in these capitals, and later in Japan, little Filipino colonies became centers of discussion of political reforms, and through letters, publications in the Liberal periodicals of Spain, and finally through their own books and periodicals of propaganda, greatly influenced the growth of a public opinion in the backward society of the Philippines. Spanish Masonry gradually extended the circle of its initiations and of its secret operations (necessarily secret to an extraordinary degree) in the islands. At first only Spaniards had been admitted to a few lodges, then mestizos were admitted, and finally natives of some degree of education without regard to race. In the eighties and nineties, there seems to be no doubt, a sort of independent Grand Lodge in Spain (asserted by some to be of spurious Masonry),13 managed by zealous Liberal propagandists with whom certain of the Filipino propagandists in Barcelona had associated themselves, directed the active organization of lodges in as many Filipino towns as contained favorable material, for the purpose of fostering in the islands a demand for political reforms, of distributing the literature of the propaganda, and of collecting funds to support the campaign in Spain for the extension of greater social, political, and religious freedom to the Filipinos. The Spaniards associated with this movement were for the most part men of no standing and quixotic visionaries. Some of the [130]Filipinos who figured in the propaganda abroad were quite as unpractical, being inexperienced and excitable youths, full of jealousy of each other, while some few of them, moreover, misused the funds raised for them by their fellows at home. The whole program for “assimilation” of the Philippines to Spain as a province of the Peninsula, giving a distant archipelago in the Orient with its widely different population, social status, and economic conditions and needs, a government just like that of European Spain was manifestly absurd and inimical to the interests of the Filipinos themselves, not to add that its realization was an utter impossibility. But these things should not have been allowed to hide the justice of the demand for such reforms and privileges as were practical and compatible with the needs and conditions of the archipelago and its people: for a spokesman or spokesmen of the Philippines in the Cortes at Madrid; for reforms in judiciary and fundamental laws, not blindly copied from those promulgated in Spain but adapted to the Philippines, or if necessary especially drafted for them; for administrative reforms, above all as to the civil service and looking toward an increasing recognition of the native element in government, and toward a decentralization that should be gradually extended as far as deeply rooted habits and long-standing customs would permit; and, finally, for greater individual and social freedom, both in a political and a religious sense. This last was really the crux of the whole situation, so far as the continuance of Spanish sovereignty should not come to depend purely on force. In the old days it had rested on religious teachings, on the friars in fact, with the [131]sense of race-prestige in the background to support Spanish authority. It was futile for the friars to cry out for a return to the old conditions, and to denounce as dangerous any reforms in the direction of freedom of thought or of speech; the pages of history could not be turned back. The idea of future independence from Spain was, to be sure, in the minds of some at least of the Filipino propagandists. But their present campaign was for greater political liberty, and the measures they advocated, and even the methods they employed almost to the last, would have been legitimate in any free country—were, in fact, legitimate even then in the Peninsula itself, where they could advocate publicly what they must whisper among their fellows at home. The very fact that such organizations as these spurious Masonic lodges were under the ban, and that even to be suspected of belonging thereto was to invite the danger of deportation from home as a “conspirator,” is sufficient proof of the essential righteousness of the propagandists’ cause. And the campaign that began with a few Spanish-Filipinos in Manila and gradually extended to the more independent men of education in the provinces eventually, under half-educated leaders of the small middle class, reached in a perverted form the masses themselves, especially in central Luzon, and found expression at last in violence and an outburst of race-hatred. The Katipunan was not Masonic, as the friars asserted, only copying some of the Masonic formulæ; but it was a natural and logical outgrowth of the smothering of what had been a legitimate movement for the expression of Filipino reform sentiment. [132]

The title to these notes has indicated the year 1860 as marking in a general way the opening of the modern era in the Philippines, without reference to any one particular event. It is proposed to give here, briefly, such further notes as will afford a working bibliography on this period, while calling attention to some subjects and certain points that are commonly disregarded in the bibliographies and published works dealing with the last years of Spanish rule in the Philippines. No pretense to completeness is made. The aim is to call attention, under their proper heads, to the more distinctly useful (or, in some cases, the more unreliable, and hence to be avoided) titles already listed in the Philippine bibliography that is to be most readily obtained, and which is also the most complete and satisfactory work of this sort, viz., that published at Washington in 1903;14 and also to supplement these titles with others there unnoticed and with other data not easily found. In the main, only such works are cited as the writer has himself consulted, though in some cases the notes or recommendations of others have been followed.

The first essential to a study of this period is a fair and comprehensive survey of Philippine conditions in the years just preceding—the “old régime,” as we may call it, though it was then breaking down in certain particulars. One book alone will serve the student’s purpose in this respect; and, whatever others [133]are read, Jagor’s15 is indispensable. Next to him, and in addition to the documents appearing in this series immediately preceding the present volume may be cited the 1842 Informe of the Spanish diplomat in the Orient, Sinibaldo de Mas, and the two-volume treatise of 1846 by the Frenchman, J. Mallat. In certain respects, the latter has closely followed Mas; but his is no mere translated plagiarism, like that of John Bowring (1859), who was only a temporary visitor entertained by Spanish officialdom in Manila. The work of Paul de la Gironière, not his Twenty Years in the Philippines, but his more serious work of 1855 (Aventures d’un gentilhomme breton aux îles Philippines), merits attention as containing the observations of a cultivated foreigner who had the advantage of years of residence in Manila and a neighboring province.

As was indicated at the beginning of these notes, to make a thorough study of this period, we should consider it under three heads, viz., economic development, social development, and political development. Not only has there been no comprehensive review of the period as a whole, but there exists no review of it under any one of these heads, nor even any group of writings which can be offered to the inquirer as covering the field of inquiry in any one of these respects. For one thing, we must draw mainly upon Spanish sources of information, official and private, and rare indeed is the Spanish writer [134]who does not either proceed regardless of the economic point of view, or else give entirely secondary consideration to the vital matter concerned in the economic and social progress of a people independently of political forms and governmental influences. The result is that Spanish writers, with them the Filipinos, and to a great extent the writers of Philippine treatises in other languages (drawing hastily upon Spanish sources), have over-emphasized the political history of this Philippine period. Of course, in Spain and the Spanish countries long-standing habit makes it the tendency to look to government for everything, and to think of all amelioration of evils and all incitements to progress as coming from above; while social and economic conditions in the Philippines are such as to emphasize this tendency, the aristocracy of wealth and education standing apart from the masses and being, to the latter, identified in the main with the government, with the “powers above.” Nevertheless, it is to be insisted that social and economic progress in the Philippines during the last half-century should be considered separately and studied more particularly than they have been thus far.

It need hardly be said, for another thing, that it is not possible to make an absolute separation of this subject under the headings thus indicated. Such a thing cannot be done with any people in any period of history. In this particular case, one need only mention the Religious Question, with its phases as a contest between friars and native clergy, as a demand for modern freedom of thought and speech, and as an agrarian question, to show at once that matters social, economic, and political are here interwoven. [135]So also the Spanish administration cannot be considered wholly apart from its bearing upon economic and social as well as purely political matters. No rigid classification is possible, but the student who approaches the history of this period—which, apart from its own interest, has had ever since 1898 the most vital bearing upon a public question of great importance in the United States today—will avoid confusion by giving consideration to these separate points of view.

This period, opening with the coming of Governor Marcelino de Oraá Lecumberri, and closing during the governorship of Rafael de Izquierdo y Gutierrez, is one of the most important and critical in the history of the Philippines. It witnessed the insurrection of Tayabas (1841) under the leadership of Apolinario de la Cruz (q.v., ante, pp. 92, 93); the use of steamships against the Moros (1848), whereby the Spaniards gained great advantage; approval for the Spanish-Filipino bank, August 1, 1851, with a capital stock of 400,000 pesos, and 2,000 shares of 200 pesos each, of which 1,000 shares were to be acquired by the obras pías and 1,000 were open to the public (the bank beginning operation in 1852); the reinstatement of the Jesuits (October 19, 1852; although the first band did not arrive until the middle of 1859), whereby education was given a slightly freer movement;1 the famous educational laws of [211]December 20, 1863, and other educational orders, decrees, and regulations (q.v., VOL. XLVI); the Spanish revolution of 1867–68, and the new constitution; the opening of the Suez Canal (November 17, 1869), [212]by which communication with the mother-country was rendered quicker and easier, and liberalism given more decided tendencies; and lastly, the Cavite insurrection of 1872, which ended with the execution of three native secular priests. During this period [213]there were in all fourteen regularly-appointed governors, and eleven provisional terms, in the latter, Ramon Montero y Blandino serving three times, and Joaquin del Solar twice—the average of each term (regular and provisional) being slightly over one year. This was comparatively a period of newspaper activity, about thirty newspapers being founded during these years. The entire period may be called the period of adolescence.

Conditions in Spain were to a certain extent reflected in the islands. Confusion and uncertainty in the Peninsula had their counterpart in the colony. The administrational experiments of the Madrid officials extended to the government of the colonies, and there were many changes which vitally affected the Philippines. Some of the new laws were good; others show a greater or less ignorance regarding the islands. Throughout, however, the prevailing tone is one of greater liberalism.

To be classed under foreign politics of the period were the laws regulating foreign commerce; the slight contact with the Dutch who appeared to be making overtures for a settlement in the Southern Islands; some negotiations with the celebrated Rajah Brooke; and the campaign of Cochinchina, in which the Spaniards aided the French. [214]

Local politics show great activity. Provincial limits were changed and fixed, and new provinces were created. Special subordinate governments were created for the Visayan Islands and for the Marianas. Police regulations were made, and bodies of police created. There were city improvements in Manila. Reforms were instituted in the various provinces in regard to the alcaldes-mayor. Various departments of the government were also reorganized. In 1867–68 new regulations were adopted for the management of the Audiencia of Manila.

In nothing is the upward trend more strongly marked than in economic lines. The measures passed were often groping, it is true, but yet on the whole looked toward the greater light. There was an attempt to exploit the coal mines of the islands, and mining regulations were made. Agriculture received attention (see post, appendix on agriculture). Commerce was given greater concessions, and the customs duties were revised. Provincial chiefs were forbidden to engage in trade. Various acts of legislation regarding monetary conditions, the establishment of a mint, and the coinage of special money for the Philippines attest the greater commercial activity. There was considerable legislation in regard to tobacco. The many laws regarding the Chinese have a purely economic basis. Topographical maps which were ordered made and the new roads ordered constructed indicate a desire to know the country and its conditions better. Exhibits of Philippine products were made at the world’s fair in London in 1851 and 1862. Telegraphic regulations were made in 1869.

For religious and educational influences of this [215]period see the religious appendix in our VOL. XXVIII, and the educational appendices in VOLS. XLV and XLVI. An important order of January 15, 1849, forbade the religious orders to alienate their property. A decree of June 20, 1849 gave the Recollects charge of the island of Negros, and they did considerable work there and developed the island somewhat, although they but built on previous efforts, and did not accomplish as much as has been claimed. The reëstablished Society of Jesus was given control of the mission work of Mindanao in 1861. The suppression of the house of St. John of God in Manila and the establishment of the Sisters of Charity were asked from the pope in 1852, at the time of the reëstablishment of the Jesuits. The conciliar seminaries were given into charge of the Fathers of St. Vincent de Paul on their establishment in the islands. The Franciscans were allowed to maintain a college in Spain for the training of missionaries for the Philippines.

The history of the development of the people during this period has been greatly neglected. There was a decided advance educationally and politically, as well as a growing discontent, that were due to a complexity of factors, among which were the easier communication with Spain, the greater number of Spaniards in the islands, and the spread of books and papers through the capital and provinces. On the side of the government there were expeditions into the north country against the Igorots and other tribes. In the south there were almost continual campaigns against the Moros, over whom some important victories were obtained. The usual decrees ordering good treatment of the natives were issued, with as little effect as of old. The liberal policy that the government [216]was inclined to adopt toward the natives is evidenced by the efforts made to secure educational laws, and by the regulations of 1863. By an order of October 31, 1844, a casino was opened for the natives in Manila. Another order prohibited the smoking of opium by Chinese and natives. Discontent in the native body is seen in the revolts of native soldiers and police. It was forbidden to carry arms without a license. The lottery established in 1850 had a bad influence. The vaccination board established at Manila and the leper hospital established in 1850 at Cebú, were on the other hand good measures, but were not welcomed so heartily as the lottery. The surreptitious introduction and circulation of books and plays caused the government in 1854 to attempt to regulate the book trade. Government pawnshops were opened in 1860 in Manila. Pensions were granted to the parents of those natives who were killed in the service of the country. The earthquake of 1863 proved especially disastrous, and the cholera epidemic of the same year, while not so severe as that of 1820, decimated the people considerably. The Moret decrees (see VOL. XLV, pp. 163–165) were distinctly in favor of the natives, but were never carried out. The discontent ever grew more pronounced, and at last broke out actively in the Cavite rebellion, which was instigated and promoted by the secular clergy and others. There has been no attempt to do more than point out general tendencies during this period, and to note some of the most important matters. For a good working bibliography, which will be found to cover this period see Mr. LeRoy’s article The Philippines, 1860–1898—Some comment and bibliographical notes, which immediately precedes the present document. [217]

Ends:

1. To unite the whole archipelago into one compact, vigorous, and homogeneous body.

2. Mutual protection in every want and necessity.

3. Defense against all violence and injustice.

4. Encouragement of instruction, agriculture, and commerce.

5. Study and application of reforms.

Motto: Unus instar omnium [i.e., one like all.]

Countersign: …

Form:

1. To set these ends in operation, a Popular Council, a Provincial Council, and a Supreme Council shall be created.

2. Each Council shall consist of a Chief, a Fiscal, a Treasurer, a Secretary, and members.

3. The Supreme Council shall consist of the Provincial Chiefs, just as the Provincial Council shall be composed of the Popular Chiefs.

4. The Supreme Council shall have command of the Liga Filipina, and shall deal directly with the Provincial Chiefs and Popular Chiefs.

5. The Provincial Council shall have command of the Popular Chiefs. [218]

6. The Popular Council only shall have command of the members.

7. Each Provincial Council and Popular Council shall adopt a name different from that of their locality or region.

Duties of the Members:

1. They shall pay monthly dues of ten centimos.

2. They shall obey blindly and promptly every order emanating from a Council or a Chief.

3. They shall inform the Fiscal of their Council of whatever they note or hear that has reference to the Liga Filipina.

4. They shall preserve the most absolute secrecy in regard to the decisions of the Council.

5. In all walks of life, preference shall be given to the members. Nothing shall be bought except in the shop of a member, or whenever anything is sold to a member, he shall have a rebate. Circumstances being equal, the member shall always be favored. Every infraction of this article shall be severely punished.

6. The member who does not help another member in the case of need or danger, although able to do so, shall be punished, and at least the same penalty suffered by the other shall be imposed on him.

7. Each member, on affiliation, shall adopt a new name of his own choice, and shall not be able to change the same unless he become a Provincial Chief.

8. He shall bring to each Council a service [trabajo; evidently a service done for the organization], an observation, a study, or a new candidate.

9. He shall not submit to any humiliation or treat anyone with contempt. [219]

Duties of the Chief:

1. He shall continually watch over the life of his Council. He shall memorize the new and real names of all the Councils if he is the Supreme Chief, and if only a Popular Chief those of all his affiliated members.

2. He shall constantly study means to unite his subordinates and place them in quick communication.

3. He shall study and remedy the necessities of the Liga Filipina, of the Provincial Council, or of the Popular Council, according as he is Supreme Chief, Provincial Chief, or Popular Chief.

4. He shall heed all the observations, communications, and petitions which are made to him, and shall immediately communicate them to the proper person.

5. In danger, he shall be the first, and he shall be the first to be held responsible for whatever occurs within a Council.

6. He shall furnish an example by his subordination to his superior chiefs, so that he may be obeyed in his turn.

7. He shall see to the very last member, the personification of the entire Liga Filipina.

8. The omissions of the authorities shall be punished with greater severity than those of the simple members.

Duties of the Fiscal:

1. The Fiscal shall see to it that all comply with their duty.

2. He shall accuse in the presence of the Council every infraction or failure to perform his duty in any member of the Council. [220]

3. He shall inform the Council of every danger or persecution.

4. He shall investigate the condition of the funds of the Council.

Duties of the Treasurer:

1. He shall enter in a ledger the new names of the members forming the Council.

2. He shall render strict monthly account of the dues received, noted by the members themselves, with their special countermarks.

3. He shall give a receipt and shall have a note of it made in the ledger in the hand of the donor, for every gift in excess of one peso and not over fifty.

4. The Popular Treasurer shall keep in the treasury of the Popular Council, the third part of the dues collected, for the necessities of the same. The remainder, whenever it exceeds the sum of ten pesos, shall be delivered to the Provincial Treasurer, to whom he shall show his ledger, and himself writing in the ledger of the Provincial Treasurer the amount delivered. The Provincial Treasurer shall then give a receipt, and if it is in accordance with the accounts, shall place his O. K. in the ledger of the other. Like proceedings shall follow when the Provincial Treasurer delivers funds in excess of ten pesos to the Supreme Treasurer.

5. The Provincial Treasurer shall retain from the sums handed to him by the Popular Treasurer one-tenth part for the expenses of the Provincial Council.

6. Whenever any member desires to give the Liga Filipina a sum in excess of fifty pesos, he shall deposit the sum in a safe bank, under his vulgar name and then shall deliver the receipt to the Treasurer of his choice. [221]

Duties of the Secretary:

1. At each meeting he shall keep a record of proceedings, and shall announce what is to be done.

2. He shall have charge of the correspondence of the Council. In case of absence or incapacity, every authority shall name a substitute, until the Council name one to fill his place.

Rights of the members:

1. Every member has a right to the moral, material, and pecuniary aid of his Council and of the Liga Filipina.

2. He may demand that all the members favor him in his trade or profession whenever he offers as many guaranties as others. For this protection, he shall transmit to his Popular Chief his real name and his footing, so that the latter may hand it to the Supreme Chief who shall inform all the members of the Liga Filipina of it by the proper means.

3. In any want, injury, or injustice, the member may invoke the whole aid of the Liga Filipina.

4. He may request capital for an enterprise whenever there are funds in the treasury.

5. He may demand a rebate of all the institutions or members sustained directly by the Liga Filipina, for all articles [sold him] or services rendered him.

6. No member shall be judged without first being allowed his defense.

Rights of the Secretary [sic; Chief?]

1. He shall not be discussed unless an accusation of the Fiscal precede.

2. For want of time and opportunity, he may act by and with himself, as he has the obligation to perform the charges which may be laid on him.

3. Within the Council he shall be the judge of every question or dispute. [222]

4. He shall be the only one who shall be empowered to know the real names of his members or subordinates.

5. He shall have ample power to organize the details of the meetings, communications, and undertakings, for their efficacity, security, and rapid despatch.

6. Whenever a Popular Council is sufficiently numerous, the Provincial Chief may create other subordinate Councils after first appointing the authorities. Once constituted, he shall allow them to elect their authorities according to the regulations.

7. Every Chief shall be empowered to establish a Council in a village where none exists, after which he shall inform the Supreme Council or Provincial Council.

8. The Chief shall appoint the Secretary.

Rights of the Fiscal:

1. He shall cause every accused person to go out or appear while his case is being discussed in the Council.

2. He shall be able to examine the ledgers at any time.

Rights of the Treasurer:

He shall dispose of the funds in an urgent and imperious necessity of any member or of the Council, with the obligation of giving account and answering before the tribunal of the Liga Filipina.

Rights of the Secretary:

He may convoke extra meetings or assemblies in addition to the monthly meetings.

Investment of the funds:

1. The member or his son, who while not having [223]means, shall show application and great capacities shall be sustained.

2. The poor shall be supported in his right against any powerful person.

3. The member who shall have suffered loss shall be aided.

4. Capital shall be loaned to the member who shall need it for an industry or for agriculture.

5. The introduction of machines and industries, new or necessary in the country, shall be favored.

6. Shops, stores, and establishments shall be opened, where the members may be accommodated more economically than elsewhere.

The Supreme Chief shall have power to dispose of the funds in needy cases, whenever he later renders an account to the Supreme Council.

General Rules:

1. No one shall be admitted without a previous and unanimous vote of the Council of his village, and without satisfying the tests to which he must submit.

2. Offices shall end every two years, except when there is an accusation by the Fiscal.

3. In order to obtain the posts, three-fourths of all the votes present shall be required.

4. The members shall elect the Popular Chief, the Popular Fiscal, and the Popular Treasurer. The Popular authorities shall elect the Provincial authorities; and the Provincial authorities shall elect the Supreme authorities.

5. Every time that a member becomes the Popular Chief, that fact shall be communicated to the Supreme Chief, together with his new and old names; [224]and the same shall be done whenever a new Council shall be founded.

6. Communications in ordinary times, shall bear only the symbolical names both of the writer and of the persons for whom they are intended, and the course to be pursued shall be from the member to the Popular Chief, from the latter to the Provincial Chief or the Supreme Chief, and vice versa. In extraordinary cases alone shall these formalities be omitted. However, in any time or place, the Supreme Chief may address anyone directly.

7. It is not necessary for all the members of a Council to be present to render decisions valid. It shall be sufficient if one-half the members are present and one of the authorities.

8. In critical moments, each Council shall be considered as the safeguard of the Liga Filipina, and if for any cause or other the other Councils are dissolved or disappear, each Council, each Chief, each member, shall take upon himself the mission of reorganizing and reëstablishing them.1 [227]

His Excellency, the Minister of the colonies:

We, the superiors of the corporations of the Augustinians, Franciscans, Recollects, Dominicans, and Jesuits, established in Filipinas, in fulfilment of the statement of the telegram presented to his Excellency, the governor-general and viceroyal patron,1 on the first instant, to be transmitted officially to your Excellency, and which has been done by the said superior authority, as he has condescended to inform us, have the honor of presenting this exposition to his Majesty, King Don Alfonso XIII (whom may God preserve), and in his royal name, to her Majesty, the queen regent, Doña María Cristina, to the president and members [vocales] of the Council of Ministers of the Crown [Ministros de la Corona],2 and most especially to your Excellency, as minister of [228]the colonies. We send it directly to your Excellency, in accordance with law and custom, so that, in due time, you may condescend to lay it before the lofty personages above mentioned, and even, if you deem it advisable, before the entire nation, duly assembled in the Cortes of the kingdom.

In writing this exposition, to us, the religious of the corporations existing in the country from ancient times, united in one soul and one heart, as faithful brethren, is reserved the honor in the very beginning of fulfilling respectfully the most acceptable duty of reiterating our traditional adhesion to the king, to his government, and to all the authorities of the fatherland, to whom we have always considered it an honor to keep ourselves subject and obedient, by the law of conscience, which is the strongest human bond, endeavoring continually and in all earthly things, from our respective sphere of action, to coöperate with every class of endeavor for the maintenance of public order in Filipinas, for its legitimate and holy progress, for the development of its intellectual and even material interests; and, in a very special manner, for the propagation and conservation of the divine teachings of Catholicism, for the encouragement of good morals, and for the security of the moral prestige, the only force which has been until now the great bond of union between these beautiful lands and their dear mother the mother-country [metrópoli].

Motive for this exposition. Truly, your Excellency, if extremely troublesome circumstances, by which Spanish authority in the archipelago is threatened, and the bitter campaign (or better, conspiracy) of defamation and anti-monastic schemes, incited [229]against us, especially since the outbreak of the insurrection, did not compel us to talk, very willingly would we leave it to politicians to occupy themselves with the problems that concern this country, and we would maintain the silence that has fittingly been our norm of procedure for many years, not speaking except when questioned officially, being jealous, by that manner of retirement, of avoiding the criticism which has so often been heaped upon us with audacious flippancy or malice, that we meddle with the temporal government of these islands.

But now the hour is come, when, as loyal patriots and constant supporters of Spanish authority in Filipinas, we must break that silence, in order that one may never with reason repeat of us, either as religious or as subjects of España, that terrible accusation of the prophet, canes muti non valentes latrare.3 The hour is come, also, when we must emerge in defense of our honor, atrociously blemished in many ways, of our prestige that has been trampled upon, of our holy and patriotic ministry, which has, finally, been subjected to the most terrible calumnies and the most unqualified accusations. Though private persons may at any time make a noble renunciation of their good name that has been defamed, offering to God the sacrifice of what civilized man esteems highest, never is that allowed in any form, according to the teachings of the holy doctors of the Church, to public persons, to prelates, to superiors, to corporations, who must defend and preserve their prestige, their credit, and their reputation, in order to worthily fulfil their respective functions. A religious corporation [230]discredited and publicly reviled, is in its class like a nation whose flag is insulted or whose laws are disavowed. It should die struggling for its honor, rather than allow its good name to be trodden under foot, and its rights to become unrecognized and unrevered.

Abandonment of the religious corporations and their patience and prudence under these circumstances. Truly, one cannot qualify us as hasty and imprudent, in that we now address ourselves to the exalted authorities of the fatherland. We have borne patiently the continual insults and vilifications for more than eighteen months of masons and filibusters, open or hidden, in newspapers, clubs, and public assemblies, who have attributed to us the blame for the insurrection, and heaped dishonor on our persons and ministries by the most unjustifiable attacks, cast in their majority in the mold of demagogism and free thought. With Christian meekness have we endured the return to the Peninsula of a multitude of persons who have resided a greater or less period in the islands, who have shown so little honor to our habit and profession; but if, instead of being religious, we had been seculars, and if, instead of being a question of ecclesiastical corporations, it had been one of civil or military corporations, they would have refrained from speaking ill of us—and we can be quite sure of that, and there are eloquent daily proofs of this assertion—for the effective means that such corporations generally practice would have tied their tongues, and would have made them recognize their flippancy and their injustice by imposing a vigorous corrective to their extensions. We religious have no sword; we cannot pronounce judgment; we do not [231]glitter with gilt braid; we do not belong to a corporation, whose individual members take part in the government of the fatherland, or in exalted considerations of the same; we are neither military men nor functionaries of the judicial or administrative profession; we do not have weight in any political party; we do not intervene in elections; we do not form (for conscience forbids us) great federations that become feared; we do not incite the public, except to obedience and submission to all constituted authority; we are unable in determined cases to distribute appointments, or offer promotions or remunerations; we are not accompanied by a fattened retinue of friends or flatterers, who defend us for their own personal advantage, and who are the blind paladins of the general, of the politician, of the exalted dignitary, of the opulent banker; neither have we any influence over the press; we do not possess a nucleus of attached partisans to shout for us and overexcite so-called public opinion: in one word, we are without all the methods that are used in modern public life to gain respect and fear, to influence the nation, and cause all the shots of slander or ignorance to strike ineffectually against us.

The religious of Filipinas, far remote from Europa, alone in their ministries, scattered even throughout the farthest recesses of the archipelago, without other associates and other witnesses of their labors than their dear and simple parishioners, have no defense other than their reason and right, which, although established on justice and law, and secured by the protection of the divine Providence—which mercifully has not failed us hitherto and which we hope will not fail us in the future—do not have, nevertheless, [232]in their favor (nor ever, although we might have done so, would we avail ourselves of them) those most powerful modern auxiliaries which are attaining so much vogue and so great success in societies in which the great Christian sentiments having grown cold, reason is not heard easily unless supplied with the force of cannon or with the armor-plate of the high bench, of vast political parties, or of fearful popular movements.

Alone with our reason and our right, although with our conscience satisfied at always having fulfilled, yea always, our duties, of having been as patriotic as the greatest, or more so, and of having fulfilled the obligations of our sacred ministry, we have endured silently and in all patience, in accordance with the advice of the apostle, the insults and vilifications, even of persons to whom we have offered in Christian sincerity our affection and civilities, even by persons who call themselves very Catholic, but who, perchance, infected with the contagion of the practical Jansenism of certain present-day reformers, forget the remark of that great Christian emperor, who said that if he should see a priest who had fallen into any frailty, he would cover him with his cloak, rather than publish his weakness.

Alone, with our reason and our right, and confident that reason would at last clear the pathway, and that light would at last illumine the dense obscurity created by hatred of sect, by the separatist spirit, and by flippancy, envy, and the false zeal of certain persons, we have endured the insinuations, made in the Cortes [parlamento]4 of last year which showed [233]scant respect to the orders; the assertions made, not only in private, but also in centers of great publicity, and by persons of considerable popularity in military circles [politica militante], that the religious prestige of Filipinas was so broken that it was necessary to substitute it with armed force; the publishing of the recourse of an eminent politician, sacrificed by anarchy, to the orders for information and advice in Philippine matters, as a dishonorable censure; the grave accusations directed against us, as well as against a most worthy prelate, in a memorial presented to the senate, although veiled under certain appearances of impartiality and gentle correction; the different-toned clamoring from day to day, with more or less crudity, in order that the historic peninsular period of 1834–40 might be reproduced in the islands, and in order that measures might be adopted against us, so radical that they are not taken (and the discussion of them is shameful) either against the centers of public immorality, or against societies and attempts that have no other end than to discatholicize the nation and to sow in it the germs of thorough social upheaval.

Why the religious have been silent until now. We believed and thought that our prudence and long silence, adorned with the qualities of circumspection and magnanimity which religious institutions should always possess, ought to be sufficient for discreet and [234]fair-minded people, so that they would immediately impugn those accusations and form a judgment by which those repeated attacks would not make a dent in our credit and prestige. We supposed that that campaign of diatribes and reproaches would vanish at last as a summer cloud formed by the effluvia cast off from the forges of masonry and filibusterism.

But instead of being dissipated the storm appears to be increasing daily. The treaty of Biac-na-bató5 has again placed in the mouth of many the crafty assertion, made now by the rebel leaders that the institutes of the regulars have been the only cause of the insurrection. The secret society6 of the Katipunan, which is extending itself throughout the islands like a terrible plague, has established by order of its Gran Oriente,7 the extinction of the religious as one of the first articles of their program of race hatred. [235]In the Peninsula and here, the masons, and all those who, in one way or another, second them, have rejuvenated [recrudecido] their war against us. Manifestos have been published in Madrid, in which misusing the names of Filipinas, measures highly disrespectful and vexatious to the clergy are demanded. Even in the ministry of the colonies, although officiously, persons have managed to introduce themselves, who, pursued by the tribunals of justice as unfaithful do not hide their animadversion to the religious corporations. Now, if we were to continue silent in view of all these circumstances, our silence would be taken with reason as cowardice, or as an argument of guilt; our patience would be qualified as weakness; and even firm and sensible Catholics who recognize the injustice of the attacks directed upon us, could with reason infer that we were stained, or that we had come to such a prostrate condition that one could with impunity insult and mock us, as if in downright truth we were old and decayed entities whose decadence is the last symptom of death.

Prius mori, quam fœdari,8 said the ancients; and the most loyal Maccabæans, “It is better to die in the battle than to see the extermination of our nation and of the sanctuary.”9 As long as the corporations exist, they will glory, as they ought, in repeating with St. Paul: “Quamdiu sum Apostolus, ministerium meum honorificabo.”10 We have always [236]endeavored to honor our ministry, and we shall always continue to honor it, now and in the future, by the grace of God, which we trust will not fail us. Consequently, we do not vacillate in addressing ourselves today to the exalted authorities of the nation, taking shelter in our confidence, that, though we are poor and helpless, and have no other protection than our spotless history, our immaculate honor, and our secure rights, we are talking to those in whom intelligence and good sense are brothers to nobility of thought, who are always ready to listen, especially to the poor and weak, and in whom their respect and love to Catholic institutions and to the so eminently glorious and meritorious title “Regular Clergy of Filipinas,” shelter them from the suggestions of sects and the prejudice of anticlerical and separatist parties.

They are persecuted because of their religious significance. What reason have the religious corporations of Filipinas given that they should be persecuted with so great passion? Ah! your Excellency, that reason is no other than because they are very Catholic, because they are very Spanish, because they are effective supporters of the good and sane doctrine, and because they have never shown weakness toward the enemies of God and of the fatherland.11 If we [237]religious had not defended here with inviolable firmness the secular work which our fathers bequeathed us: if we had shrunk our shoulders in fear before the work of the lodges and before the propagation of politico-religious errors that have come to us from Europa; if we had given the most insignificant sign, not only if not of sympathy, yet even the least sign of mute passivity, to the advocates of the false modern liberties condemned by the Church; if the flame of patriotism had become lessened to us; and innovators had not met in each religious in Filipinas an unchangeable and terrible adversary to their plans, open or hidden: never, your Excellency, would we religious corporations have been the object of the cruel persecution now practiced on us; but on the contrary, we regulars would have been exalted to the clouds, and so much the more as our enemies are not unaware that, granting the influence that we enjoy in the archipelago, our support, even if passive and one of mere silence, would indisputably have given them the victory.

But they know that our banner is none other than the Syllabus of the great pontiff, Pius IX,12 which has been so often confirmed by Leo XIII, in which all rebellion against legitimate authorities is so vigorously [238]condemned. They know that, as lovers of the only true liberty—Christian liberty—we would rather die than consent, in whatever pertains to us, to the least lack of the purity of the infallible Catholic teachings, of the holiness of Christian customs, and of the most complete loyalty due the Spanish nation. Consequently, they hate us; consequently, veiled under divers names and with divers pretexts, they are making so cruel war upon us, that one would believe that the masons and filibusters have no other enemies in Filipinas than the religious corporations. In such wise does that honor us that we can very well say with the prince of the apostles: “If you be reproached for the name of Christ, you shall be blessed: for that which is of the honor, glory, and power of God, and that which is his spirit resteth upon you (1 Peter iv, 14).”13

And for their patriotic significance. Apart from their essentially religious character, the regulars of the archipelago have another significance that makes them odious to the separatists. They are the only permanent and deeply-rooted Spanish institution in the islands, with a suitable and rigorous organization, perfectly adapted to these regions. While the other Peninsulars live here in the fulfilment of their duty more or less time, as is convenient to their private interests, and with no other bond that follows them to Filipinas than their own convenience, being ignorant of the language of the country and having no other relations with the natives than those of a superficial [239]intercourse, we religious come here to sacrifice our whole life. We form as it were a net of soldiers of religion and of the fatherland in the archipelago, scattered even to the remotest villages of the islands. Here we have our history, our glories, the ancestral house, so to speak, of our family. Bidding an eternal farewell to our native soil, we condemn ourselves voluntarily, by virtue of our vows, to live forever consecrated to the moral, religious, and political education of these natives, for whose defense we have in all ages waged campaigns, which, without the pious boastings [crudezas] and exaggerations of Las Casas,14 have constantly reproduced in Filipinas the figure of the immortal defender of the American natives.

Craftiness of the insurgent leaders of filibusterism. In this point it must be confessed that the insurgent leaders of filibusterism are logical. “Do the regulars,” they have asked themselves, “who are the Spaniards most deeply-rooted and most influential in the country, and the most beloved and respected by the people, agree to, or will they ever agree to our projects? Then let us petition their expulsion, and their disappearance in one way or another. If we do not succeed in it, let us destroy them. Since there are many peninsulars, who, influenced by modern errors or carried away by ignorance or evil passion, lend ear [240]to those who inveigh against the religious, let us inveigh loudly. Let us form a powerful cry against them. Let us conspire in lodges and political clubs. Let us petition at any risk measures looking to the lowering and destruction of the regular clergy. Those peninsulars will listen to us without us having any fear that they will hold us as filibusters. It will be said of us that we are liberals, that we are reformers, that we are democrats, that we are even masons and free-thinkers: but that does not matter. Many peninsulars are the same. They also inveigh against the religious. They also petition freedom of thought, freedom of the press, freedom of association, secularization of education, ecclesiastical disamortization, suppression of the privileges of the clergy. They also inveigh against the terrible theocracy, and do not cease to defame the religious and to impute to them all sorts of crimes.”

That, your Excellency, is the watchword that has been given to all the filibusters, and to all who will procure the emancipation of the country in one way or another, for their separatist ends, and especially since the treaty of Biac-na-bató. “There is nothing against España, nothing against the king, nothing against the army, nothing against the Spanish administration: say if you have seized arms that it has been exclusively because of the abuses of the clergy, that you were not attempting separation from the mother-country; that you wished only modern liberties and the disappearance of the orders. And even though all the documents, judicial and extrajudicial, in which appear the plans of the conspirators, and all the acts of the canton of Cavite, during its ephemeral emancipation, demonstrates the contrary, let us exert [241]ourselves to say that that was not the intention of the rebels, that that was an affair of some enthusiasts or madmen, but that the great mass of the insurgents seized arms only through coveting those liberties. The multitude of lay Spaniards of every class and profession sacrificed; the countless natives killed or harassed in innumerable ways, because of their unswerving loyalty to the fatherland; the cries of ‘Death to the Castilas!’ and ‘Long live the Tagálogs!’ the stamps of a Tagálog republic, a Filipino republic,15 an army of freedom; the speeches and circulars of the assembly or supreme council; the fiery Katipunan constitution written in characters of a mysterious key, and that written at Biac-na-bató; and in their style, an infinite number of deeds and documents, many of them very recent, which even to satiety evidently demonstrate the anti-Spanish and separatist character of the insurrection: all that we shall now conceal by crying ‘Down with the friars!’ ‘Long live democratic liberties!’ ‘Long live España!’ and with those cries are we certain of being heard, and in that way shall we be able to more easily attain the final goal of our desires.”

That is the logic and the tactics of the filibusters, and it must be confessed that in it they show themselves to possess practical talent, and to be thoroughly acquainted with the society that surrounds them. Had they said that the insurrection had been provoked by the excesses of the government employes, of the military, of the governors, of the directors of [242]the treasury; had they placed in relief the multitude of abuses that have been committed against the native in one form or another (although never by the nation, or by the majority of its sons); had they attributed the armed insurrection to that: they would now be opposed by all the peninsular element, and their voice would have had not the slightest echo, as it would have been stifled by the more powerful voice of others who would have cried out in defense of the Spanish name, and who would have locked on them the door to all the means of propaganda and agitation which they are now exploiting. But when they declaimed against the clergy, when they demanded the liberties that the clergy cannot in conscience approve, they had at least assured their campaign, and in part, perhaps, the success of the same.

Their real purposes. Does not this show, your Excellency, that, in talking of the supposed or enormously exaggerated abuses of the clergy, they are not moved by love of justice and morality, and much less by love for España? What then, do they not recognize that for one religious who has committed abuses, it is to be surmised, from their employment, that there have been many more laymen in proportion (and let it be clear that we accuse no one, and least of all the worthy official corporations) who have converted their office, totally or partially, into a means for illegal advancement? Have the insurgents not cried out at other times, and during the preparatory period of the insurrection, against the meritorious civil guard, against judges and alcaldes, against the army, against the peninsular resident in the island, against the administration in general, and even against the superior authorities of the archipelago? [243]Is not this proved by the books of the unfortunate Rizal, by the Solidaridad,16 and other documents and pamphlets of the laborers, although one must not forget that their favorite watchword was always to cruelly attack the religious? Undoubtedly so, but it was not now advisable for them to declare it. Now was come the opportunity to show themselves very Spanish, very loyal to the king (they who were affiliating themselves to the extent of their ability with the most radical parties), very fond of the army, and to attack only the religious!

Accusations against the orders. They work deceitfully, we shall say with the Psalmist (Psalm 35),17 they talk of peace and of love outwardly, but evil and hate are hid in their hearts; supervacue exprobaverunt animam meam. Most vainly do they wrong us, we shall add, in respect to the accusations that they direct against us. “Unjust witnesses rising up have asked me things I knew not. They repaid me evil for good: and have sworn my destruction. But thou, O Lord, wilt destroy their plans, and wilt save my existence.” (Psalm 35.)18

Yea, your Excellency, unjust witnesses, for where [244]are those abuses, those excesses, those vices, those outrages, of which their mouths are so full, and which furnish them matter for their speeches of a demagogical club of the rabble? What do the religious corporations maintain, when viewed with a deep synthetical standard, which is not in accordance with the canons of the Church and the rules of their institute; which is not fitting to the holy ministry that they profess; which is not greatly beneficial to the supreme interests of the fatherland? We turn our eyes in all directions, and however quick-sighted may be our eyes, unless one views the orders through the pharisaical or separatist prism, they discover nothing that does not merit the heartiest applause. “Laudet te alienus,” says the sacred book of Proverbs, “et non os tuum.”19 But it is not our intention to praise ourselves here. It is our intention to vindicate ourselves; to defend our honor unjustly impeached; to demonstrate our eminently Spanish mission; and to maintain our good name, which is our treasure, which is the great title of nobility that we can never abdicate nor allow to be vilified. “By your good works stop the mouth of the ignorance of foolish and senseless men,” says St. Peter to us. (1 Peter ii, 15.)20

“We walk not in craftiness, nor by adulterating the word of God; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience, in the sight of God; that is our glory, the testimony of our conscience,” is also taught us by St. Paul. [245](2 Cor. iv, 2.)21 From our dishonor follows the dishonor of the holy and Spanish mission that we exercise; and God has told us that we should be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and that we should shine in such manner that men may see our good works, and glorify our father who is in heaven.22

How they have fulfilled their duties. Our good works are in the gaze of all men, and our good works, thanks to God, are the brightest gem of the corporations. Not only do we preach the gospel here; not only do we carry the Christian and civilized life to the barbarous and fetish-encumbered inhabitants of these islands; not only did we obtain the incorporation of the archipelago into the Spanish crown, working in harmony with the other official entities, and preserved it, as is well known, in a peaceful and happy condition for the space of three centuries; but also, in all time, even now when we are wronged so deeply by some ingrate Filipinos, whom we pity, have we been the constant defenders of the Indians, enduring for that reason innumerable loathings, and all kinds of persecution on the part of many peninsulars, who did not understand the devotion and patriotism of our conduct. In all time have we been zealous for the purity of the faith and for the conservation of good morals; and illegal exactions, bribery, extortions, outrages, ease, immoral gambling, and a licentious or little restrained life, have [246]always had in us a severe judge and the most inexorable censor.

Can it be said of the religious institutes, whether collectively or in the vast majority of their individual members, that they have prevaricated; that they have ever abandoned the duties entrusted to them in the administration of the sacraments, in the celebration of divine worship, in Christian preaching and catechising, in the vigilance of good manners, in the tutelage of moral interests, in protection and relief to the needy and weak, in advice and consolation to all about us, in the maintenance of obedience to the mother-country, in the extension of education, in the campaign against every kind of superstition and erroneous practice, in repression of concubinage, and of other public irregularities and scandals? Does not the tenet enter the head of the most exalted sectarian, if he has any lucid moment, that we religious have fulfilled with assiduous self-abnegation the obligations of our ministry?

We have become wearied with reading, your Excellency, whatever has been written and published against us for years, and we know also how much is said now in assemblies and gatherings. With our hand upon our heart, with our foreheads raised aloft, as one who walks in the light and fears not to have his deeds examined and discussed in the light, we challenge and defy our detractors and calumniators, and those who flippantly, or by any other unjust and inaccurate motive, talk and murmur, to show us with exact data and with perfectly authentic information, not only the accuracy of all their accusations, but the mere probability of whatever they allege against our honor and well-established credit, touching the [247]fulfilment of our duties, both religious and patriotic.

Their procedure in respect to parochial obventions, to education, and intercourse with intelligent persons. It is said that we commit abuse in the exaction of parochial fees. Let the laws of the Church be consulted, let the doctrines of the moralists and the principles of positive natural and divine law be cited; and then submitted to that only sure rule as a criterion, let them tell us whether we abuse the public in that matter, and whether our procedure, within just bounds, is not that employed by the most disinterested priests.

It is said that we are hostile to education and the advancement of knowledge. But if by education and knowledge, doctrines not condemned by the Church, our Mother, are not meant, let them tell us whether the islands have any education that has not been established, protected, sustained, and encouraged by the clergy, in all branches of instruction, both primary, and secondary and superior.

It is said that we despise the intelligent men of the country, and that we make them the object of every kind of persecution. That assertion is so rare and stupendous that we wonder whether our enemies will write in imaginary spaces. A multitude of youths are graduated annually with the degree of bachelor or after the conclusion of some higher course, from the Ateneo Municipal, from the colleges of Manila and the provinces, and from the university. We are honored by the friendship of the vast majority of them, and take no little satisfaction in seeing them prosper and in knowing that they respect the Christian and solid education that they have received. It is known that very few of the [248]great number of students that attend our lecture halls, and of the not few graduates that are scattered throughout the islands, have taken part in the rebellion; and that the vast majority of them have kept loyal to España, in fulfilment of the oath that they took on receiving the investiture of their professions. But what happens in the old world with the apprentices of free thought happens here: all those modestly call themselves intelligent who think that they exhibit signs of knowledge and talent by showing contempt for priests and religious; while it is a fact that a goodly proportion of those who express themselves in that manner have been unable to complete their courses with us, and are the refuse of our lecture halls.

Regarding the sanctity of their private life. An outcry is being made against the vices and immorality of the regulars in terms that seem to be inspired in Protestant and anticlerical centers of low quality. But in that, as in other things, saving what can never be avoided even in the communities most sanely organized, by the severest legislation and the most exquisite care, all who view us near at hand are not ignorant that nothing can be thrown into our face.

The words of Father St. Augustine, when defending his institute against accusations similar to those directed against the orders of Filipinas, are very opportune and efficacious in this matter. “Tell me, brethren, is my congregation, peradventure, better than Noah’s ark, in which, of the three sons Noah had, one was evil? Is it, peradventure, better than the family of the patriarch Jacob, in which, of his twelve sons, only Joseph is praised? Is it, peradventure, better than the house of the patriarch Isaac, in [249]which, of the two sons born to him, one was chosen of God, and the other damned? Is it, peradventure, better than the household of Jesus Christ, our Savior, in which, of His twelve apostles, one was a traitor, and sold him? Is it, peradventure, better than that company of the seven deacons filled with the Holy spirit, chosen by the apostles to take charge of the poor and widowed, among whom one, by name Nicholas, became a heresiarch? Is it, peradventure, better than heaven itself, whence fell so many angels? Can it be better than the earthly paradise, where the two first parents of all the human race, created in original justice and grace, fell?”

Ah! the religious corporations of Filipinas, caring for the sanctity and salvation of all its sons, on seeing one of their individual members fail in his duties, after correcting him, and after taking, in accordance with law and religious prudence, measures efficacious to repair, if he did it, the scandal, and even, if necessary, to destroy and fling aside the rotten branch, cry out in pity with the apostle like a true mother: “Quis infirmatur et ego non infirmor? Quis scandalizatur et ego non uror?” “Who becomes sick spiritually and I do not suffer with him? Who suffers scandal and I am not burned?” That is what all should say who learn of the backslidings of their neighbor; that is the dictate of charity and of justice; that is demanded by respect and consideration to the ministers of the church. And so long as our systematic accusers do not prove that the orders consent and do not check the sins, in great part humanly inevitable—considering the conditions under which those dedicated to the ministry live—of the very few religious who have the misfortune and weakness to fall, they [250]have no right to dishonor us and to cry out against what we are the first to lament and to try to correct.

Will they prove it sometime? We are quite assured of the opposite; and that though they have at hand, as many methods of inquisition and proof as the judge most interested in any cause can desire. Our convents, our ministries, our persons, are in sight of all. Our parish priests and missionaries are alone and surrounded by a multitude of natives. Whatever we say, do, or neglect to do, is seen and spied by all the people. Our habitations are of crystal for all classes of people. Our publicity as Europeans and our condition as priests place us in such relief in the missions and parishes, that it would be stupid simplicity to try to hide our doings and actions. Consequently, everything is favorable to our adversaries in the trial to which we provoke them, and to which each regular voluntarily submits himself, from the moment that, faithful to his vocation and obedient to his superiors, he sacrifices himself to live among these natives, his very beloved sheep of the flock of Christ. Our honor, our reputation rests in their hands. It would be easy for our adversaries to confound the religious institutes if truth presided over their accusations. But since truth is that which does not glitter in their words, the saying of Holy Writ becomes verified in their conduct: “They spake against me with a lying tongue, and with the speech of hate did they attack me;” and in regard to us the saying of St. Peter: “You shall keep an upright conscience with modesty and fear, so that as many as calumniate your upright procedure in Christ, shall be confounded.”23 [251]

Other equally unjust charges. We shall not compare our conduct with that of the respectable and very estimable native priests of the secular clergy, whom the majority of the separatist Filipinos flatter, undoubtedly because it is not to the purpose of their plans to combat them. We shall not rebut the shamelessness of supposing that part of our property has a criminal origin, and that we are certain despots in our rural estates who suck the blood of our tenants by various methods, an infamy so often refuted with authentic data of overwhelming proof. We shall not speak of the vast imposture of imputing to us all the executions by shooting, imprisonments, tortures, trials, and confiscation of property of those implicated in the last insurrection. We scorn the absurd fable that we are absolute masters, not only of consciences, but of all the archipelago, at the same time that they, obviously contradicting themselves, as error is wont to do, declare that our prestige and influence in the islands is lost. We neglect to attribute to ourselves whatever hate and censure, according to them, have been made in the country by the military [institutos armados], the governors, the judges, and all the public organisms, in deportations and other kinds of punishment; as if we religious managed to our liking the machine of the government and administration of this territory, and as if, from the governor-general down to the last agent of the police, all were but the blind executors of our will. We lay aside those and other things—poorly executed arguments—which certain misguided sons of this country are still employing, [252]and which are unfortunately repeated by certain peninsulars, in order to manifest their hatred or prejudice against the clergy; and pass on to speak of the insurrection and of the imperious necessity of remedying the extremely embarrassing situation of the religious corporations in the archipelago.

Fundamental causes of the insurrection, and who are to blame for it. The government is able only too well to recognize the causes that have produced the insurrection, and we shall not be the ones who try to give it lessons in that regard. The government is aware that until several years ago, every separatist idea, every rebel tendency in the country, which was enjoying the most enviable peace and felt respect to authority with the same unreflecting, although patent and holy, force, with which domestic authority in all parts is obeyed and respected, was exotic and an anachronism. Then was submission to España and subordination to all authority an element truly social, rendered incarnate by the religious in the mass of the Filipino population, which neither dreamed, yea, your Excellency, neither dreamed of ideas of political redemption, nor imagined that, in order to keep themselves loyal to the mother-country, one single bayonet was necessary in the country. The public force of the cuadrilleros and of the guardia civil24 (the latter of very recent creation) was necessarily created to check and restrain thieves and tulisanes;25 while every one thought that the [253]wretched army then in the archipelago had no other object than to combat Mindanaos and Joloans, and to be ready for any conflict with the neighboring powers. España was able to be sure of its dominion here, and to live so carelessly, with respect to political movements as in the most retired village of the Peninsula. All authority was obeyed, was respected, by conscience, by education, by tradition, by social habit, passively and by custom, if one wishes, but with so great strength and firmness, with so indisputable and universal submission, that more indeed than individual virtue it was the virtue of the mass of the whole population, it was the spontaneous homage to God, which, represented in the powers of the fatherland, all felt and practiced, not conceiving even the possibility of rebellions and insurrections. Thus had they been taught by the religious, who always unite the names of God and His Church with the names of their king and of España. Consequently, by bonds of conscience, did all the archipelago love and obey him, and no one thought then of political liberties, nor in lifting yokes that existed for no one.

Are there then no abuses? No, your Excellency it could have very well happened that there were abuses on a greater scale than in the epoch immediately preceding the present events. But since these people were educated in the doctrine that it is never legal to disobey authority, under pretext of abuses, even if some are true; since these people had not yet been imbued with the new modern teachings, condemned a hundred times by the Church; since no one had spoken here of popular rights, many of them as false as senseless; since the propaganda against priests and religious had not yet reached Filipinas: [254]it resulted that, considering those abuses, as one of so many plagues of humanity (from which regulated societies are not free, according to the principles of the newest erroneous law, but rather they are, on the contrary, suffered with greater intensity and with greater loss to the fundamental interests of the social order) these inhabitants tolerated them patiently, and had recourse for their remedy to the just methods taught in such cases by Catholic ethics, with the greatest advantage to individuals and to nations.

Consequently, as many as have contributed, in one way or another, to introduce those revolutionary doctrines, and those germs of social and political disturbance into the archipelago, whether peninsulars or islanders, of whatever class or rank, are the true authors, conscious or unconscious, of the great weakening of the traditional obedience to the mother-country, of which the whole archipelago was in peaceful possession until thirty years ago, that was disturbed by no one or by no influence. The introducers of those doctrines and tendencies are beyond all doubt the culprits of the insurrection, for they are the ones who have done their utmost to prepare for it and with success to unroll it, even supposing that they have not directly and deliberately procured it.

Who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind; who introduces principles must accept the consequences; who generates hate must not wonder that war results; who teaches the pathway of evil cannot declare himself free from responsibility for the disorders originated by his teaching.

Partial causes: masonry. Will it be necessary to explain this simple consideration? We do not think so. But should we desire to unfold it, it would be [255]easy for us to add that the anti-religious propaganda; the ideas of erroneous liberty and forbidden independence, incited and aroused in certain Filipinos by European politicians and writers; the antipathy and opposition, clearly shown by certain Spaniards, even by those ruling and by government employees, against the religious corporations; the establishment of masonry and of other secret societies, the former’s legitimate offspring; the most favorable reception that the revolutionary Filipinos found for their plans in many centers and papers of Madrid and other places; the lack of religion in many peninsulars; the ease with which the ancient laws of Filipinas have been changed; the mobility of public functionaries which, giving opportunity for many irregularities, has contributed greatly to the continual lessening of the credit of the Spanish name; and in part, the backwardness, which has been observed sometimes in the sons of the country with regard to public appointments: [all these] are partial aspects, various phases and confluent factors (of which we do not attempt to enumerate all) of the fundamental and synthetical cause that we have expressed.

No one is unaware that the chief of all those partial phases and factors of the social disorganization of the archipelago has been masonry. The Asociación Hispano-Filipina of Madrid was masonic. Those who encouraged the Filipinos in their campaign against the clergy and against the peninsulars here resident, were masons in almost their totality. Those who authorized the installation of lodges in the archipelago were masons. Those who founded the Katipunan,26 a society so mortally masonic, that [256]even in its terrible suggestive pact of blood it has done naught but imitate the masonic carbonarios, were masons.

Practical consequences of that. The traditional submission to the fatherland, diffused and deeply settled in the archipelago by the religious corporations, having disappeared in part and having been greatly weakened in part; the voice of the parish priest, thanks to the above-mentioned propaganda, having been disregarded by many natives, especially in Manila and conterminous provinces, who were taught in that way to give themselves airs as intelligent and independent men; the prestige of the Spanish name having been greatly tempered, and the ancient respect with which every peninsular was formerly regarded in the islands having been almost annihilated in many towns: is it strange that race instincts should have asserted themselves strongly, and, considering that they have a distinct language, and distinct lands and climate, that they should have discussed and have attempted to raise a wall of separation between Spaniards and Malays? Is it not logical that, after having been made to believe that the religious is not the father and shepherd of their souls and their friend and enthusiastic defender, but a vile exploiter, and that the peninsular here is no more than a trader constituted with greater or less authority and rank, that they should madly and illegally have imagined that they could easily separate from España and aspire to self-government?

Gloomy situation of the archipelago and omens of its future. We shall not insist, your Excellency, on this order of consideration, for it rends our soul, it [257]cleaves our heart in twain, to consider how easily so many rivers of blood, so great and extravagant expenses, and so extraordinary conflicts, might have been spared, which in a not long lapse of time, may, perhaps, result in the disappearance of the immortal flag of Castilla; how easily the military situation, originated by the insurrection, a situation that was threatening to make of Filipinas another Cuba, might have been avoided; and with how little trouble the archipelago might have been continuing at present in the same tranquillity and peacefully progressive situation as it had years ago: if having the power, as was a fact, but that was not attempted or thought of, the door had been shut on the disturbers; if masonry had never been allowed in the country; and if every tendency contrary to the moral prestige, the most powerful social bond, immensely superior to all armies and all political institutions which united these countries with their beloved and respected mother-country, had been effectively restrained in their beginnings.

Has the present most gloomy situation any remedy?

It is somewhat difficult, and even dangerous, to answer the question, for if the Katipunan was six months ago relegated to the hills of Laguna and Bulacan among the rebel leaders who were fugitive there, or was dragging out a shameful existence in certain villages that were in communication with the insurgents, today the plague has spread. For the ones pardoned at Biac-na-bató, breaking the promise given to the gallant and energetic marquis de Estella,27 obedient to the watchword received, have spread through the central provinces; and by using threats [258]and terrible punishments, which have no precedents in the pages of history, nor even of the novel, have succeeded in attracting to their ranks a great number of Indians, even in villages which gave eloquent proof of loyalty to the holy cause of the Spanish fatherland before the submission of Biac-na-bató. They have also succeeded in establishing themselves in Cápiz and in other points of the Visayas: and indeed the movement of Zambales, of Pangasinan, of Ilocos, of Cebú, and of the Katipunans, are at present open in Manila.

The thought of what may happen to this beautiful country at any moment terrifies us, for we do not know to what point sectarian fanaticism may go, exploiting the suggestibility of this race and their weak brain by the deeds that they are heralding, brought to a head by them, in regard to the army, whose increase in the proportion that would be necessary to establish a complete military situation, they know to be impossible; by the published exemption from the cédula28 and other tributes; by the supposed immunity of amulets, called anting-anting; by the illusion that none but Indians will hold office, and that the alcaldes and generals will be from their ranks; by the remembrance that money and confidence were given to the rebels of Cavité, Bulacan, and other points; by the news that their partisans were sending them from Madrid and Hong-kong; by the example of goodly numbers of peninsulars, who are not on their guard against showing their hostility to the religious, [259]in order by that manner to procure the latter’s disregard by their parishioners, who even dare to lay hands on them; and by innumerable other methods, too many, in short, to enumerate, but terribly destructive, and of maddening and vigorous influence in these Malayan villages.

The thought of what consist the secrets of the revolution, which the learned gentleman, appointed as arbitrator29 by the so-called government of the insurgents to arrange with the superior authority of the islands as to the conditions of submission and the surrender of arms, swore to keep secret, as appears from the justificative document of his authorization, is also terrifying. We are ignorant of what those secrets may be, which apparently are not the politico-ecclesiastical reforms which are now demanded in Madrid, since those matters are mentioned openly in the abovesaid document signed by Aguinaldo in the name of the rebel assembly; and the most courageous heart is terrified at the fancy that there might be an organization more powerful, more far-reaching, more general and active of revolution, somewhat like the Katipunan, which we now see to be rapidly spreading, and which at a moment’s notice, would effect a general rising, whose most saddening results one can easily foresee, and avoid with the greatest difficulty, unless every labor association be effectually prosecuted and extirpated in time.

Remedy for that situation. Laying aside for the meanwhile those dangers, which are daily obscuring the Filipino horizon more deeply, and supposing, as we desire, that peace may be obtained throughout the islands, the situation of the archipelago has a [260]remedy, and one, as is clear, that consists in removing all the causes that have produced so deep a confusion and in prudently and with justice adopting the measures that, assuring peace, will protect and encourage the legitimate interests of these inhabitants. The great mass of the country is not corrupted. It suffers from an access of hallucination and fanaticism produced by sectarian preachings and practices, but its heart and head are not perverted. If it be attended with care, it will return to its former pacific habits and submission. The wealthy and intelligent classes, still healthy, protest against all those movements, and since they are loyal and friendly to us, desire the normal mean to be reestablished as soon as possible, and will contribute, together with the institutions of the mother-country, to the most glorious undertaking of restoring order and the pacific and progressive trend of the archipelago.

It pertains to the government to direct and manage those forces in order to obtain so satisfactory an end, by reestablishing the mainsprings of government, now so nearly disappeared or very much weakened; by giving prestige to all the conservative elements; and with an administration, grave, intelligent, active, stable, moral, acquainted with, and fond of the country, and one dissociated with every political doctrine, to continue and perfect the just and benevolent, and Catholic and Spanish regimen: whereby the mother-country would gain the sympathies of these inhabitants and establish its dominion securely.

This is strange material for the peculiar objects and character of this exposition, which has no other purpose than to defend the honor of the religious [261]institutes and demonstrate the necessity of supporting and invigorating their ministry, if they are to continue their noble and patriotic mission in the archipelago. We do not intend to mix in politics, however much we may have as much or more right than any society or individual to speak of these things. But indeed we must be the defenders of the rights of the Church, and of the regular clergy. We are indeed under obligations to watch over Spanish interests, which are not at variance with, but perfectly amalgamated with religious interests.

What the orders need and claim. As religious then, and as Spaniards, we address the government, and without circumlocutions or subterfuge (for these are not the times for paraphrases and euphemisms which cloak the truth), we believe that we can tell the government that if the interests of Spanish domination in the archipelago have incurred and are incurring so serious danger of shipwreck, it is because they have rather been, and are, profoundly combative of the interests of religion; and that if the revolutionists have succeeded in making themselves heard by a multitude of natives, it is because they have been taught, before and during the ingrate rebellion, to despise and even to persecute the religious who taught them a doctrine of peace and obedience. He who does not see this, suffers great blindness, or it is an obvious sign that he is infected with the terrible evil that has brought so dire consequences to Filipinas. He who closes his ears to the lessons of Providence—sorrowful, but indeed healthful lessons—and believes that it is possible to restore order here and establish a prosperous and tranquil progress without strengthening religious influences, [262]is not far from the separatist camp, or shows that he is unable to learn from great social catastrophes.

It is not sufficient for that purpose to recognize the need of morality and of religion. One must recognize them in all their integrity and purity, such as our holy Mother, the Church, makes them known. It is not sufficient to talk to the people of the great doctrines of the Crucified, and instruct them not to attempt to attack the legitimate interests of Catholicism—vagaries that so very often cover mischievous and pharisaical intentions, in order afterward, under pretext of abuses, to tell them by word and deed, not to listen to the priests who preach those doctrines to them and inculcate in them respect for those interests. If one would attempt to effectively establish the peace of the archipelago upon a firm base, he must support in toto and in solido the mission of the religious corporations, so that they may be fruitful in the proportion that these inhabitants demand, who are still affectionate to the faith and to civilization, and so that the natives may be strengthened in the solid conviction that they are obliged to obey and respect España, their true fatherland in the social and civic order, by bonds of conscience and not by human considerations which are always unstable and shifting.

Consequently, we regulars who have more than sufficient reasons to recognize to their full extent the evils that affect the archipelago, so beloved by us, and who have been for some time experiencing the fact that, far from religious action being strengthened, it is restricted and opposed in various ways, do not waver in telling the government with blunt frankness that, if it do not consent to give that [263]support, daily more necessary, to the Church, the social disturbance of the country will continue to increase daily, and that by not applying any remedy to that evil, the stay here of the religious is becoming morally impossible.

Of what use is it for us to force ourselves to fulfil our religio-patriotic duties, if others take it upon themselves to destroy that labor on the instant; if they, by methods that flatter evil passions so greatly, gain the favor of the same people whom we have taught to be docile and submissive, by saying to them continually that they should pay no attention to us? Would it suffice, peradventure, to preach respect to property, if, at the same time, there were no laws that protected it and public force that effectively restrained those covetous of another? Would any professor be assured of the effects of his teaching, whose pupils were to be told by respectable persons or through vexatious methods, as they left the lecture room, to forget or despise the lessons of their masters? Then in like case do we find ourselves in Filipinas.

We do not want, your Excellency, temporal honors or dignities, which we have renounced by choosing for our profession a life hidden in Jesus Christ. We do not belong to those who, in whatever they do, think immediately, even when deserving them, of recompenses and decorations. We do not desire, as our enemies believe (who judge us, perhaps, from themselves), to preponderate in the civil government and administration of the villages, nor even at least to continue our slight official intervention assigned to us in certain secular matters by law and tradition. If one desires to strip the parish priest [264]or the missionary of all administrative, gubernatorial, and economic functions, in which, without us ever claiming it, yea, ever, the secular authority has come to solicit our modest cooperation, let it be done at a seasonable time. Those who adopt such an inclination will see what is most advisable for the exalted interests of the fatherland; but from them and not from us, who have ever (even enduring because of that intervention, annoyances, censures, and persecutions, and considering it a true burden) been docile auxiliaries of the civil authority, will be demanded the responsibility of the consequences that may be occasioned by so far-reaching a measure.

We have come to the islands to preach and to preserve the Christian faith, and to instruct these natives with the celestial food of the sacraments and the maxims of the gospel; to prove that the principal intent of España, on incorporating this territory with its crown, was to christianize and civilize the natives. We have not come to become alcaldes, governors, judges, military men, agriculturists, tradesmen, or merchants; although the concord and fast union that should prevail between the Church and State be granted, and the fact that we constitute here the only social Spanish institution, never have we refused to contribute with our might as good patriots and submissive vassals to whatever has been demanded of us, and which we have been able to perform, without dishonor to our priestly and religious character.

What they as Catholic institutions contradict. All who have written upon Filipinas consider the benefit that the country, and very chiefly the Spanish dominion, has obtained, from that system in which the parish priest and the missionary were the intermediary, [265]more or less direct, between the public authorities and the mass of the Filipino population. It does not belong to us to demonstrate that, for well does the history of this archipelago show it, and it is being told in eloquent, although tragic voices by the present fact, with the deplorable consequences that España is feeling, and to which it has been guided by a senseless and suicidal propaganda against the religious orders. What we have to say at present is, that if the civil authority be not most diligently attentive to the maintenance, encouragement, and guaranty of religion and morality in the islands, as it must be through its solemn promise contracted before the supreme pontiffs and before Christian Europe, in accordance with the teachings and precepts of our most holy Mother, the Church; if it do not oppose a strong wall to the avalanche of insults, taunts, and systematic opposition to the religious of Filipinas, which is coming down upon the peninsula and the archipelago; if it do not prosecute the secret societies with the firmness of a foreseeing government; if it do not cause us to be respected and held as our quality as priests and Spanish corporations demand, in public and in private, in all the spheres of the social order, in whatever concerns España and its agents, repelling every project that in one way or another attempts to remove our prestige and to lessen our reputation, hindering the fruit of our labors: there is no suitable and meritorious way—and we say it with profoundest grief—in which we can continue in the islands.

We cannot be less, your Excellency, in our order, than military men, to whom their profession is an [266]honor and exaltation, as well as an exaction; less than the class of administrative functionaries whose rights and prerogatives are defended and guaranteed by the State; less than the mercantile and industrial companies and undertakings, who are considered and protected as impelling elements of public wealth; less than legal, medicinal, and other professional—scientific, artistic, or mechanical—associations, which are honored and respected in every well-organized society. We believe, and this belief is not at all exaggerated, that, as Catholic institutions, we have a right to all the honors, exemptions, and privileges, that the Christian Church and State, and the laws—in accordance with which the religious orders were established in Filipinas—extend to ecclesiastical persons and corporations, and especially to the regulars; and that as Spanish institutions, we ought to have the same consideration as the other entities that have arisen and exist under the protection of the flag of the fatherland.

As Catholic institutions, we must, with all the energy of our soul, repel, as contrary to the imprescriptible and supreme laws of the true and the good, and to the original laws of the Church, freedom of worship, and the other fatal and false liberties that are the offspring of the thought, of the press, and of association, which certain men are trying to bring to this archipelago, and which conflict with the most rudimentary duties of the patronage that España exercises here, as is clearly set forth in various places in the Recopilación de Indias. In like manner do we repel, inasmuch as it contradicts the rights of the Church, the pretended secularization of education, in accordance with what we are taught [267]in propositions 45, 47, and 48,30 of the Syllabus, and which are obligatory on all Catholics, and very especially on Christian princes and governments. Contrary to those rights, and entirely abusive and tyrannical, would be every measure that the secular power might try to adopt in regard to the religious orders of the archipelago: whether in meddling with their regular regimen and discipline; whether in secularizing them; whether in disentailing their property, or fettering their free disposition of the same; whether in freeing their members from their obedience; whether in depriving them of the honors or privileges which they possess according to the canons, the laws of the Indias, and Christian common law, as is expressed in proposition 53 of the above-mentioned Syllabus.31 Every law that attempts [268]to suppress, diminish, or weaken the sacred laws of personal, royal, or local ecclesiastical immunity is contrary to the sacred rules of the Church. Also contrary to the Church, and smacking of the heresies of Wickliffe and Luther, is every ordinance that denies the clergy the right to the stipends and fees that are due them from their holy ministry, and that tries to meddle with matters of parochial fees, a thing that is peculiar to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It is contrary to the honor and sanctity of the religious estate to suppose it incapable of exercising the care of souls, and to say that, in governing the parishes, we violated the canons, when in exact accordance with them, we christianized this country, and since have continued to minister it. It is vexatious to the regular clergy, and opposed to the rights legitimately acquired, for the civil authority to attempt to despoil the religious corporations of the ministries and missions founded and ruled by them, under the protection of the Leyes de Indias and the sovereign ordinances of the apostolic see. Incompatible with the vow of obedience that binds every religious, is the complete subjection of the individuals of the regular clergy who discharge the care of souls to the authority of the diocesan, depriving his prelate of the attributes that he possesses over his subjects; and the bishop cannot be allowed, to the loss or detriment of the rights of the regular superior [269]to suppress the regular curacies at his pleasure, since the ministries depend immediately on the corporation which appoints those religious who are to fulfil the duties of them.

The need of keeping intact the authority of the regular prelate over his curas and missionaries. No one is ignorant that the religious corporations of the archipelago are communities composed in their vast majority of parish priests and missionaries. If that be so, and it must be so, in order that the orders fulfil the peculiar end for which they came to Filipinas, how could the jurisdiction of the regular prelate he maintained, if the attributes that he has received from the holy see, the only immediate authority to which the regulars are subject, for the government of his subjects, of whatever class they be, be lessened? By pontifical laws, the religious assigned to the doctrinas and missions are considered absolutely as viventes intra claustra, which signifies that they are governed by their peculiar superiors, rights, and attributes, which are binding on every subject strictly conventual. If it were not so, the individual life would be established to a greater or less extent in the orders; their communal bonds would disappear; the regular prelates would become mere figureheads; and the religious corporations, losing the internal discipline that gives them so much vigor and strength, would be converted into associations of priests [presbiteros], who although they pronounced religious vows one day, would afterwards have no other bonds with their superiors than the corporative habit and name, and too, perchance, the possession of the open door in order to take refuge in the convent whence they went out, whenever they so desired or the bishop ordered it. [270]

The action of the regular prelate over the curas and missionaries of his order must be so active, immediate, energetic, and universal, that he can change, remove, or transfer them, or give them another occupation and appointment, and his authority over them must remain in everything as powerful as if it were a question of the last one of the conventual religious. That is required by the regular discipline; that is demanded by the vow of obedience. In proportion as the attempt is made with the individual to restrict or weaken the jurisdiction of the order, it is equivalent to jesting at the intention of us religious, who do not profess to be subjects of the bishop, but only to occupy ourselves in the business of religion which our prelates assign us; it is equivalent to disnaturalizing the religious corporations, and consequently, to destroying them, the very thing that the separatists are attempting.

Such a thing will not happen, we are sure; for the moment that a law freeing the parish priests and missionaries from subordination to their prelate, or lessening or restricting the latter’s power, is dictated, no religious, by bonds of conscience, would dare to continue at the head of his parish or mission, and all would retire to their convents at Manila. Such a thing will not happen, for the bishops themselves would be energetically opposed to it, and would confess, as they do, that precisely because the vast majority of their parish clergy are regulars, their clergy live so morally and apply themselves so assiduously to their ministry, and that scarcely would they find that in secular priests [presbiteros] or in regulars not fully subject to their order, and that they are consequently interested, through love of [271]their flock, in having the parish ministries of the archipelago continue to be ruled by the same laws as hitherto. And such a thing will not happen, we say, because the holy see, jealous guardian of the interests of Christianity in the islands, not less than of the prestige of the regulars, will not permit it; while, at the last, the government would be placed in the dilemma, namely, that either a suitable and sufficient personnel be proposed to it, which might replace the religious corporations of Filipinas in a stable and worthy manner, or, on the contrary, that the latter continue discharging their actual duties, without the least diminution of the jurisdiction of their respective regular prelates.

España’s obligation to send ministers of the Catholic religion to these islands and to solidly guaranty that religion. Such a thing will not happen finally, for the government of the country can never forget (regarding this point and the others with which the present exposition is concerned) the will of Isabel the Catholic, the fundamental and capital law of these dominions, by which the government is obliged to send here prelates and religious and other learned and austere persons of God, in order to instruct their inhabitants in the Catholic faith, and to instruct and teach them good morals; for nothing must be desired ahead of the publication and extension of the evangelical law, and the conversion and conservation of the Indians in the holy Catholic faith. “Inasmuch as we are directing our thought and care to this as our chief aim, we order, and to the extent we may, charge the members of our Council of Indias that laying aside every other consideration of our profit and interest, they hold especially in mind the matters [272]of the conversion and instruction, and above all that they be watchful and occupy themselves with all their might and understanding in providing and appointing ministers sufficient for it, and take all the other measures necessary so that the Indians and natives may be converted and conserved in the knowledge of God our Lord, the honor and praise of his holy name, so that, we fulfilling this duty which so tightly binds us and which we so desire to satisfy, the members of the said Council may discharge their consciences, since we have discharged ours with them.” (Law i, tít. i, book ii and law viii, tít. ii, book ii of Recopilación de Indias.)

The Council of Ministers together with the ministry of the colonies32 has been substituted for the Council of Indias, of whose devotion and zeal in fulfilling the fundamental duties of their trust, we cannot harbor the least doubt.

Very expressive also to the question in hand is law lxv, tít. xiv, book i of the same Recopilación. “We order the viceroys, presidents, auditors, governors, and other justices of the Indias, to give all the protection necessary for that service to the religious of the orders resident in those provinces and occupied in the conversion and instruction of the natives, to our entire satisfaction, by which God has been, and is, served, and the natives much benefited, and to honor them greatly, and encourage them to continue, and do the same, and more, if possible, as we expect from their persons and goodness.”

Words of the instructions to Legaspi; of the laws of Partìdas;33 of Felipe II. Thus was it commanded [273]scores of times to the authorities of these islands, and in harmony with that legislation, in the instructions to the great Legaspi, it is expressly stated:

“You shall have special care in all the negotiations that you shall have with the natives of those districts to have with you some of the religious, both in order to make use of their good counsel, and so that the natives may recognize and understand the great consideration in which you hold them; for seeing that and the great reverence given them by the soldiers, they will also come to respect them. That will be very important, so that, when the religious impart to them the matters pertaining to our holy Catholic faith, they may give them full credit; since you know that his Majesty’s chiefest end is the salvation of the souls of those infidels. For that purpose, in whatever district, you shall take particular care to aid the said religious … so that, having learned the language, they may labor to bring the natives to the knowledge of our holy Catholic faith, convert them to it, and reduce them to the obedience and friendship of his Majesty.” (Colec. de Doc. Inéd. de Ultramar, ii, p. 188.)34

That is the genuinely Spanish spirit, the glory of the human race, and especially of Christianity, which caused our legislators to write in the Partidas (Partida i, tít. vi, law lxii, and tít. xi): “Laymen must honor and regard the clergy greatly, each one according to his rank and his dignity: firstly, because [274]they are mediators between God and them; secondly, because by honoring them, they honor Holy Church, whose servants they are, and honor the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is their head, for they are called Christians. And this honor and this regard must be shown in three ways; in speech; in deed; and in counsel.” “The churches of the emperors, kings, and other seigniors of the countries, have great privileges and liberties; and these were very rightfully [given them], for the things of God should have greater honor than those of men.”

That is the spirit that was expressed by the mouth of Felipe II when he answered those who proposed to him the abandonment of these islands, in consideration of the few resources that the public treasury derived from them: “For the conversion of only one soul of those there, I would give all the treasures of the Indias, and were they not sufficient I would give most willingly whatever España yields. Under no consideration shall I abandon or discontinue to send preachers and ministers to give the light of the holy gospel to all and whatever provinces may be discovered, however poor, rude, and barren they may be, for the holy apostolic see has given to us and to our heirs the duty possessed by the apostles of publishing and preaching the gospel, which must be spread there and into an infinite number of kingdoms, taking them from the power of devils and giving them to know the true God, without any hope of temporal blessings.”

Duties of the government and of others in regard to religious interests in the islands. Consequently, those offenses that should be most prosecuted in Filipinas, and against which the government should [275]prove especially active, are offenses against religion and against ecclesiastical persons, as such offenses are those which wound the greatest social welfare, and are most directly opposed to the fundamental obligation that España contracted on incorporating these islands with its crown. Hence, masonry, an anti-Catholic and anti-national society, ought not to be permitted, but punished severely; every propaganda against the dogmas, precepts, and institutions of our holy Mother, the Church, ought to be proscribed; outrages against the clergy and religious ought to be punished with greater rigor than when committed against any other class of persons, giving such outrages the character of sacrilege, which they positively possess; all, from the governor-general to the lowest dependent of the State, ought to exert themselves to demonstrate by their word and example, in public and in private, and without those conventional exteriorities of pure social form (a Catholicism that becomes naught but mere observance and courtesy, and which, unfortunately, abounds so widely), that they love and respect the Catholic religion, and that they esteem more the duties toward God and toward His holy Church that proceed from it, than any other duty and obligation, however exalted and respectable may be the institution that imposes it.

Hence the government of the nation and exalted authorities must be the first who ought to destroy, not only in their official, but in their private acts, and as politicians, authors, government employees, military men, in the different orders of social life, the ridiculous and contemptuous idea that free thought has sown against priests and religious, permitting [276]themselves to talk of them in a tone that honors the clergy so little, and which when known by the elements of other inferior social classes, cause respect to the Catholic priest to become weakened daily, many judging that the religion of officials is frequently nothing more than a social hypocrisy and a practice of pure political convenience. Hence the government ought to very carefully see that all its personnel in the archipelago be sincere and earnest Catholics, in order that the sad spectacle may not be again seen, that we have so often and so prodigally witnessed, by which the chief ones, in opposing the apostolic labor of the religious corporations, are the very ones, who, inasmuch as they are functionaries of a Catholic state, ought to be those who support and strengthen it the most. Hence every association, assembly, or undertaking which is trying to sow here anti-religious or anti-clerical ideas, under any color or pretext, even the exercise of political rights, ought to be prevented at all hazards from having any representation or branch in these islands; and the previous censorship over every kind of book, pamphlet, and engraving that comes from outside, and over those which shall be published here, should be restored, or better said, strengthened. Hence, the close union of all the peninsular element here resident becomes more necessary, so that, all united for the protection of our divine religion, by all respected and obeyed, we may resist the enemies of the fatherland with greater force; may not by our discords give the rebel camp opportunity to gain strength; and as far as possible, may succeed in elevating the moral prestige, today, unfortunately fallen so low. Hence, likewise, is the [277]great necessity of the disappearance in gubernatorial circles of an erroneous idea, most fatal and extremely disrespectful to the orders, which, propagated by sectarian spirits or by bad or lukewarm Catholics, seems now to be a postulate of many politicians in Madrid, and of the majority of peninsulars who come to this archipelago.

Infamous idea in regard to the importance of the orders and the manner in which they are generally regarded. We refer to the idea which began to spread after the revolution of ’68, which looks upon the religious of Filipinas as an evil necessity, as an archaic institution, with which differences must be composed for reasons of state; as a purely political resource, and a convenience to the nation, which cannot be substituted with others. That infamous idea, manifested at times frankly, and at times with reticence or with insinuations that cut more deeply than a knife, is known by our declared enemies. It is known by the natives of the country who have been in the Peninsula. It is known, because it has been propagated in newspapers and other products of the press that have penetrated the archipelago, by a vast number of natives, who, with having left Filipinas, are notably offended by it. All the peninsulars who make war on us, whether by anti-religious prejudices, by doctrinal compromise, by personal resentment, by flippancy, or by envy (for among all those classes do we have enemies) help to spread and propagate that idea throughout the islands.

From that idea many deduce the opinion that we are dragging out in this country an existence of pure compassion and condescension; that we are living [278]here, tolerated and as if on alms, instead of honored and respected as any other institution of the mother-country; that in many ways, one would believe that we religious are less and have less value than the military, than the government employes, or than those of other professions and careers; and that with wonderful facility one imputes to us, as to the most abandoned and destitute, the blame for all the evils that afflict the country, governors and other representatives of the government and administration of the islands availing themselves of our name of obliged appeal, in order to evade and shun responsibilities, whenever any calamity comes upon them or whenever there is any unpleasant event to bewail in their conduct. For all, there is indulgence, for all, excuse, for all kindness and the eyes of charity. The epoch is one of adjustment and respect for all manner of extensions, although with the loss of morality and justice. Only in what concerns priests and religious must one look with contemptuous pride, with extreme rigor, and with despotic exaction. The religious has to pay it all; on him must all the blame be cast; to him belong the feelings of anger, the aversions, the censures, the expressions of contempt. We appear, your Excellency, to be only the anima vilis35 of the archipelago.

It is evident that we, as the priestly and religious class, and as a Spanish corporation, cannot in any manner consent to this humiliating position, which, as private persons, obliged to greater perfection than the generality of Christians, we endure patiently, remembering the words of the apostle “tamquam purgamenta hujus mundi facti sumus omnium peripsema [279]usque adhuc,”36 and of which we would not speak if the evil were restricted to one of so many annoyances annexed to our ministry; so much the more as we unfortunately see that that injurious and erroneous idea is greatly injuring our ministry, and is daily causing our influence among the people who are entrusted to us to become lessened, since they are assailed strongly and tenaciously by all the disturbing agents that have caused the insurrection.

Respect that they merit as religious and as Spaniards. The religious corporations ought to be greatly honored and distinguished (and it grieves us deeply, your Excellency, to have to speak of these things): firstly, because their individual members are adorned with the priestly character, which is the greatest honor and dignity among Christians that men can have; secondly, because their apostolic mission has here propagated and preserves the splendors of Catholicism. They are priests and they are religious: thus they unite the two devices that inspire the greatest veneration among any society, which feels some needs superior to the material, or those of their proud reason divorced from Jesus Christ.

Not less respect do they merit in their character as Spanish entities. Besides being here ministers of the official religion, they are public ecclesiastical persons, recognized by the state. They live under its safeguard, as do the military and civil entities. They have labored, and are laboring, for the fatherland, at least as much as any other class of Spaniards residing in the archipelago. And in the point of intelligence, within their respective profession and of morality [280]and private and civic virtues, they rise not only collectively, but individually, to so great a height as the class that is considered the most high and reputable in the archipelago.

There is one most special reason and one of extraordinary importance which demands that that respect should be sanctioned by the laws and supported by customs, namely, that the religious in his respective duties, becomes, as a general rule, the only peninsular, and, therefore, the only representative of the mother-country in the majority of the Filipino villages. Consequently, Spanish prestige is greatly interested in that he be the object of such considerations and guaranties that these inhabitants far from seeing, as unfortunately they have not a few times seen, that he is despised and humbled, be daily more fortified in the traditional idea that their cura or missionary is, at once the minister of God and the representative of España, a lofty idea that has redounded, and redounds, so greatly to the favor of the mother-country, and says so much in honor of all the Spanish entities.

We came to the archipelago through our love to religion and España, and have remained in it more than three centuries, ready to continue here so long as conscience does not dictate the contrary to us. Gross temporal considerations do not move us, nor sentiments of pride and of mere personal dignity. In the fulfilment of our duties, we have striven to attain even sacrifice and by the grace of God, we shall continue the sacrifice. A good proof of this is offered the impartial critic by the present epoch of rebellions and insurrections. The cura and missionaries, in spite of persuasions that they were putting their lives [281]in great danger by the continual plots of the ferocious Katipunan, have steadfastly maintained themselves in their posts, foreseeing that if they abandoned their parishioners, a general rising of the islands was almost certain. This procedure, if not heroic, is sufficiently near it, and has cost us many victims, snatching away our dearest brethren from us, some treacherously assassinated and others immolated by reckless mobs seduced by filibusters and masons. And although this sad sacrifice has seemingly not been bewailed and appreciated, as perhaps it ought to be by the loyal sons of España, we trust that God, the compassionate and generous remunerator of every good deed, will in His infinite mercy, receive it as a propitiation for the evils of this unfortunate country, and will have rewarded the martyrs of religion and of the fatherland.

Character and objects of this exposition. May the nation, government, and your Excellency, pardon this slight extension of our sentiments of dignity, offended as religious and as Spaniards. This is not a memorial of merits and services, since we have never solicited applause or recompense, which never constitute the lever of our labors. Neither is it a panegyric, which we are not called upon to make, and which we do not believe is wanting, since the history of the religious corporations of Filipinas detaches itself so patiently and cleanly in all kinds of just and upright progress. It contains some apologetic matter and much of most sensible complaint because of the unjustifiable injuries that almost daily are received by us. It is the weak expression of the profound bitterness that seizes upon us at contemplating and viewing from anear the condition of vast disturbance [282]in which this beautiful portion of the fatherland finds itself. With the utmost respect and submission, laying aside absolutely whatever proceeds from political parties and much more from private persons, it tells the government with Christian simplicity and synthetically that it should adopt and maintain a perfectly logical criterion with regard to the religious corporations of Filipinas; and that, therefore, if it thinks, as is just and decorous, that we, the religious corporations, exercise a most lofty and necessary mission in the archipelago, honorable and worthy of the greatest consideration, of its own accord and without utilitarian considerations and false reasons of state, it so manifest clearly and with nobility, making a beginning by giving a practical example of that in its laws and decrees, and in its instructions to the authorities of these islands, and that it do not allow us to be annoyed or insulted; and so much the more since being weak and helpless, and bound as we are by religious weakness and patience, we have no other means of defense than our right and the protection of the good, and we can never appeal to the means of repression and influence to which we allude in the beginning of this expository statement.

But if the government, on the contrary, by an error that we would respect, not without qualifying it, in our humble judgment, as most fatal to the interests of religion and the fatherland, should believe that the religious have terminated their traditional mission here, let it also have the frankness to say so. We shall listen to its resolution calmly. But let it not imagine, in adopting measures which, attaching, although without claiming it, the privileges of the Church, our profession as priests and regulars, and our honor as refined Spaniards, that in practice it [283]might appear that it was trying to burn one candle to Christ and another to Belial, that it was trying to please masons and Catholics, good patriots and separatists, by placing the orders in a so graceless situation that they might become like the mouthful that was thrown into the jaws of the wild beast in order to silence its roars for the time being.

Synthesis of the same. Such would happen if the secularization of the regular ministries; the secularization of education; the disamortization of the property of the corporations, or the expression of the liberty that belongs to them to enjoy and dispose of them; the declaration of the tolerance of worship; the establishment of civil marriage; the permission of every kind of association; and the liberty of the press became law. Such would happen, in what more directly concerns us, if the government continuing here and there its campaign against us, unjustifiable from every point of view, were to show by its acts that it actually conceives that we have been the cause of the insurrection, and that we are opposed to the progress of these islands, and to the unfolding of their legitimate aspirations. Such would happen, if the government, failing to rigorously prosecute secret societies, and to effectively correct the seditious ones who are exciting the ignorant masses of the people against the regulars and against all that is most holy and Spanish in the islands, should desire the religious to continue in their ministries, liable at any moment to be sacrificed, as is the terrible watchword of the sect, and which has already unfortunately occurred, without, perhaps, their having even the consolation that those sacrifices are appreciated.

If we religious are to continue to be of use in [284]the islands to religion and España, no one can have any doubt that it must be by thoroughly guarantying our persons, our prestige, and our ministry, it must be by knowing that the fatherland appreciates and treats us as its sons, and that it must not abandon us as an object of derision to our enemies, and as victims to the rancor of masonry and separatism. Martyrdom does not terrify us, but only honors us, although we do not consider ourselves worthy of so holy an honor: but we do not desire to die as if criminals, enveloped with the censures of friends and enemies, and perhaps, abandoned and despised by those who ought to protect and esteem us.

That is the extremely gloomy and graceless situation in which the orders find themselves, especially since the beginning of the Tagárog insurrection, and above all, since the extension of the Katipunan, a situation that threatens to become worse, if the government becomes the echo of the filibusters, of the masons, of the radical elements, which, it seems, have conspired together to give the finishing stroke to the great social-religious edifice, raised in these islands by Catholic España.

By that no one should be surprised that we religious, placed in so imminent a peril, desirous of not offering abstracts to the policy of any government, and of avoiding the censure that we are the cause of the evils of the country and the bar to its progress, should choose the abandonment of our ministries, exile, and expatriation, in preference to our continuance in the islands in a situation, which, if prolonged for a longer time, will result as decidedly dishonoring to our class, and would make our permanence in the archipelago unfruitful. [285]

We have fulfilled our duty here as good men; such is our firm conviction. Should we go elsewhere, there, by the grace of God, we shall also be able to fulfil our duty. And for that result, the holy see, if contrary to all our just expectations, it cannot succeed in making itself heard by the Spanish nation, will not deny us the opportune permission.

Fortunately, we have trust in the noble sentiments and deeply-rooted Catholicism of her Majesty, the queen regent; we trust in the devotion and patriotism of the ministers of the crown; we trust in the sensible opinion shared by the majority of the Spanish people; we trust in the intelligence and spirit of justice of the Catholic minister of the colonies; and we trust that, after listening to the most dignified prelates of these islands, and after taking into consideration the prescriptions of natural and canonical law, the exalted advantages of the fatherland in these regions, and the undeniable services that the religious orders in Filipinas have contributed, no resolution contrary to the teachings and precepts of our holy Mother, the Church, will be adopted, and which is contrary to the prestige of the regular clergy, but that, on the contrary, the Catholic institutions of this archipelago will be once more affirmed and strengthened, as is imposed by both religion and the fatherland.

In this confidence, and reiterating our traditional adhesion to the throne, and to its institutions, we conclude, praying God for the prosperity and new progress of the monarchy, for the health of his Majesty, the king, and of her Majesty, the queen regent (whom may God preserve), and for prudence of the Cortes and the government in their resolutions, [286]and very especially for your Excellency, whose life may God preserve many years.37

Manila, April 21, 1898. Your Excellency.

Fray Manuel Gutierrez, provincial of the Augustinians.

Fray Gilberto Martin, commissary-provincial of the Franciscans.

Fray Francisco Ayarra, provincial of the Recollects.

Fray Cándido Garcia Valles, vice-provincial of the Dominicans.

Pio Pí, S.J., superior of the mission of the Society of Jesus.

Notice. Because of the impossibility, due to the length of this exposition, of drawing up the copies necessary for the archives of each corporation, it has been agreed by the respective superiors, to print an edition of fifty copies, ten for each corporation, which are destined for the purpose stated above.

Collated faithfully with its original, and to be considered throughout as an authentic text. In affirmation of which, as secretary of my corporation and by the order of my prelate, I sign and seal the present copy in Manila, April 21, 1898.

Fray Francisco Sadaba Del Carmen, secretary-provincial of the Recollects.38

There is a seal that says: “Provincialate of the Recollects.” [287]