East India Islands in James Bell’s System of Geography (Glasgow, 1836)

[From copy in Library of Harvard University]

The Philippine Islands, 1493–1898

Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century,

Volume LII, 1841–1898

Edited and annotated by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson with historical introduction and additional notes by Edward Gaylord Bourne.

The Arthur H. Clark Company
Cleveland, Ohio
MCMVII

CONTENTS OF VOLUME LII

[Preface]13
[Documents of1841–1898]
[Internal political condition of the Philippines].Sinibaldo de Mas; Madrid, 184229
[Matta’s report]. Juan Manuel de la Matta;Manila, February 25, 184391
[The Philippines, 1860–1898: some comment andbibliographical notes]. James A. LeRoy; Durango, Mexico, 1907112
[Events in Filipinas, 1841–1872]. [Summarizedfrom Montero y Vidal’s Historia deFilipinas.]208
[Constitution of the Liga Filipina]. JoséRizal; Tondo, July 3, 1892217
[The friar memorial of 1898]. Manuel Gutierrez,O.S.A., and others; Manila, April 21, 1898227
[Bibliographical Data]287
[Appendix: Agriculture in Filipinas]. Joseph Basco yVargas, and others291
[Errata and addenda to VOLUMESI–LII]325

ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

In this final documentary volume of our series we present matter which is planned to bring out the salient points of the highly important period from 1841 to 1898, a little more than the last half-century of the Spanish régime, together with such bibliographical aids as will enable students to find readily the best and most available sources for the history of that time. The first two documents (written respectively by a civil official and a military commander) furnish a reliable and intelligent survey, by eyewitnesses, of political, economic, and social conditions in the islands in 1842–43; and thus supplement the similar relations (in VOL. LI) dated fifteen years earlier. The admirable paper by James A. LeRoy who is well known as the leading authority on Philippine affairs, places before our readers a clear and orderly review of the last four decades of Spanish rule in Filipinas—with keen but impartial comments on conditions, events, and men therein; and with full and well-selected bibliographical references to the best works on the subject. It gives us pleasure to present here the hitherto unpublished constitution of the Liga Filipina, from Rizal’s own MS. draft; and the friar memorial of 1898 (a curiously mediæval document for the end of the nineteenth century), which heretofore had appeared only in a limited Spanish edition and a partial and unsatisfactory English translation. To these documents is added an appendix on agricultural conditions in Filipinas, giving a view of these in 1784 and another in 1866; an outline of the projects, efforts, and achievements of the noted Economic Society of Manila; and bibliographical references for the use of the reader. Following is a synopsis of the above documents:

Of exceeding interest and importance is the third volume of Mas’s Informe, on the policy of the Spanish government as regards internal affairs in the Philippine Islands. Intended almost exclusively for the use of the government, but comparatively few copies were published, and hence the volume is of great rarity, and is not mentioned by most of the bibliographers. We know with certainty of four copies: two owned in the Philippines, one by the heirs of Clemente Zulueta, and the other by Epifanio de los Santos (our translation being made from a typewritten copy of the latter); one in the Peabody Institute, Baltimore, and one in the collection of the Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas, Barcelona. Its chief value and importance lie in its treatment of various vital questions that had already begun to present themselves to some minds more or less clearly—the relation of the Filipino-Spaniards to those of the Peninsula; questions concerning the natives, Chinese mestizos, and Spaniards; separation from Spain; and lastly, the proposition to free the islands. The document, while containing many things that are general in nature, and which even appear childish and visionary, is in many other things clear-sighted, and shows deep and keen observation. The first two volumes of Mas’s work (which have been cited so frequently in this series) were written in order to form a suitable background to the third volume, and thus lead to it naturally, by giving a résumé in succinct form of the history, government, and social and economic conditions of the islands. Proceeding to his purpose, the author states that the intentions of Spain in regard to the colony may be one of three: perpetual possession; utter neglect; or emancipation. He treats only of the first and third. To ensure perpetual possession, there are three principles to be borne in mind and acted upon: the reduction of the white population; the subordination of the natives; and the general reform of the Spanish administration. The growth of the white population fosters the spirit of independence, for the Spaniards of the Philippines look upon the islands as their own country, and have no affection for Spain. Their only concern is to hold possession of the government posts, but they are lazy and ignorant. They are naturally disgruntled by the appointment of peninsular Spaniards to posts in the islands; for, since the promotions are limited, they cannot hope for the advancement that they believe is due them. Their discontent was seen in practical form in the insurrection instigated in 1822 because of the officials brought from Spain by Antonio Martinez; and there was evident discontent because of the new contingent that appeared in 1825. There are more than one thousand Filipino-Spanish males in the Philippines, but only four hundred posts, and their hopes continually wane at the appearance of officials from Spain, although Spain has an evident right to send whom it will to the islands. To obviate the trouble, Mas suggests that only single men be sent to the islands from Spain to act as officials, and that they be required to return to the Peninsula after twenty years’ service, with the option of returning in ten years. These men will probably marry Spanish women in the islands, and on their return to Spain will take their families with them, thus reducing the white population considerably. It is a mistake to send women to the colony, and a grave error to endeavor to increase the white population there. A plan is proposed for the further reduction of the white population by sending all males to Spain at the government expense, at the age of sixteen, where they shall be educated at the expense of the Manila treasury. The sending of the situado from Spain for the support of the islands was formerly a large factor in keeping the colony loyal, but since that has become unnecessary the one great check on the colony has disappeared. But separation now would mean that the whites would disappear in the mass of the natives, and would even become inferior to them. It is wrong to infer that the whites and the natives will work together, for there is a barrier between them, and the recent outbreak in Tayabas cannot in any way be ascribed to the former. The salvation of the whites lies in agriculture, and great profits are to be acquired therein, although the Spaniards are loath to engage in such work. Their fields can be cultivated by Chinese labor, and by captured Moros, and contracts can be made, in addition, with individual Filipinos, under certain exemptions. Mas favors the system of indentured servants, for self-interest will dictate good treatment to them. To ensure native respect for the whites, the education of the former must be very restricted, and the colleges at Manila be closed. Filipino soldiers shall not rise above the rank of private or corporal. Filipino secular priests must be reduced in numbers, and must, in general, act only as the assistants of the regulars. Filipinos cannot maintain the dignity of the priestly office, and instead debauch it, as Mas proves by various letters. Religion is the mainstay of the islands, and the regular curas must be given as much power as possible, and officials must work in harmony with them. The friars must, however, live morally, abstain from trade, and not meddle in temporal affairs. Emancipation will be the ruin of the friars; and, in order that they may conserve Spanish interests, all the curas must be Spaniards from Spain. Curas lose respect among the natives because they are compelled to collect the marriage and burial fees, and the government should come to their aid by collecting these under the form of a specified tax. Above all, the whites must observe religious ceremonies, which they now almost utterly neglect. The laws of the Indias are executed too rigidly, and are too favorable to the natives. The latter are becoming arrogant and impudent, and will end by driving out the Spaniards. Mas would require a distinctive dress for the natives, the chiefs to be the only ones who may wear jackets. The priests have been guilty of destroying rank among them. Natives must salute all Spaniards and show great outward respect. The title of “Don” must be given them no longer, for this gives the idea of equality with the whites. All government officials must be given decent pay, and must be made to spend it liberally. Offices should not be given in order that their incumbents may amass money. Only Spaniards of good character should be allowed to go to the islands. If the treasury officials are decreased in number and the collections farmed out, this work should be done by natives and mestizos, as this is an odious office, and engenders much ill-will. Race hatred must be developed between the Filipinos and Chinese mestizos as much as possible. The latter are the richer and more intelligent, and in case of emancipation at this moment would soon gain the upper hand. They are hated by the natives. It is highly important to have a respectable and moral Spanish force in the islands, for should the native troops mutiny nothing can be done as matters now stand. Curas should have the power of intervention in the meetings of the principales, as this method will avoid conspiracy. Natives should not be taught how to cast artillery or make firearms and powder. Indeed, the powder factory recently established should be suppressed, as the contract under which it was allowed is not advantageous, and better powder is manufactured in Murcia. Steam vessels are needed for quick communication among the islands, and to repel Moro invasions, and suppress insurrections. Spanish should not be taught to the natives. Newspapers may be allowed, under proper censorship; and curas should translate into the native dialect such articles as are important for the natives. A complete system of police is necessary. Trouble is to be expected from China, but it will be quite safe to allow the entrance of a certain number of Chinese laborers to work on the estates of the whites. They can be counted on in case of trouble with the natives, and in case they themselves revolt native hatred will soon finish them. It is advisable to watch the intercourse between foreigners living in the islands and the natives. A complete reform is needed in the administration of the government, which, as now constituted, is honeycombed with laxity and graft. The laws of the Indias are confused and contradictory, as is proved by numerous citations. Government is too little centralized. Spanish statesmen have been guilty of strange errors in regard to the Philippines, through their ignorance. Mas proposes a regency of three men, the president to be a Spanish grandee. The duties of this body are outlined, which in general correspond to those of the governor-general and Audiencia. The plan contemplates a Council of State; and thorough judiciary reforms, in order to render the judiciary independent of the government. The prestige of rank is to be observed, as this is a large factor in preserving the status quo. In the provinces, the provincial chiefs (who are to be sent from Spain) shall hold all the power, as at present. The treasury reforms suggested look toward a lessening of graft, and greater economy. In case the Spanish government decides to emancipate the Philippines, the exactly opposite course must be chosen to the one outlined so fully for their conservation. Education and the arts must be encouraged, newspapers allowed with but a mild censorship, and the population must become amalgamated. To effect the last, dowries should be paid to the women in all crossed marriages. Native assemblies should be established in order to train them in political matters. Mas favors emancipation. The islands have been a drag on Spain from the first, and, if a violent separation comes, it will result in a further loss of life and treasure. It is interesting to note that he adds a plea for the greater humanitarianism of the emancipation plan.

Matta’s report of 1843 in regard to the moral condition of the Philippines, and the reforms necessary in administrational and economic matters for the conservation of the islands is of great practical value. The report was called forth by the sedition of Apolinario, the founder of the cofradia of San José, and the revolt in 1843 of a portion of the troops. It sets forth the loss of prestige by both the government and the regular clergy (once the prime support of Spanish authority in the islands), and the confusion that is rife throughout Manila and the provinces, a state approaching anarchy. Political factions, the troubles arising from the contradictory character of the natives, the demoralization in military circles, all demand radical reforms. A system of law taking into consideration the character of the natives is needed, as well as greater centralization in the government, with well defined powers granted to subordinate officials; suppression of various religious educational institutions as breeders of discontent and trouble, and the establishment of commercial and other schools; abolition of the residencia; and other legislative and economic measures. For the development of the islands capital is needed, but reform must precede in order that capital may be attracted. Agriculture is the main support of the islands, and must be developed by the whites, mestizos, and Chinese, who will support the government, and thus offset the immense numbers of the natives. The report calls for extensive military reforms and the establishment of a good police system. Tagálog academies are proposed, so that Spanish officers may learn the native language. It is of great importance to conciliate both Peninsulars and Spaniards born in the Philippines, and to show partiality to neither, in order that prosperity may reign.

Mr. LeRoy’s contribution to this volume consists of two parts: a general editorial comment on the modern era of the Philippines, and some bibliographical notes and further comments for the study of that period. The first shows the influences working in and through the Philippines and the Filipinos, and is necessarily treated on broad lines, detail being scrupulously avoided. The second part is written in the same spirit, but in notes and titles gives the student full material for the study of the modern era. By the modern era, Mr. LeRoy means roughly the last half of the nineteenth century, but necessarily, in speaking of it, he has been compelled to go back to influences beginning to be felt before that time. Very briefly he sketches the elements making for a broader life in economic and social and political lines; the break-down of old ideas, whose longer continuance was untenable in material, intellectual, and religious progress; and the rise of the greater respect and self-consciousness of the Filipinos. In his bibliographical section, the author treats fairly and impartially of the threefold development of the Filipinos and the Philippines: viz., the social; the economic—under which are discussed general considerations, agriculture, land, etc., the Chinese, industries, commerce, internal trade, navigation, etc., and currency—and the political, under which are discussed the Spanish administration and the Filipino propaganda and revolution. Under the first division of the latter are treated the administrative organism, the administration as actually working, taxation, legal and judicial matters, science and material resources, the Moros and pagan peoples; and under the second, the religious question, the friar estates, the Filipino clergy and their cause, the revolt of 1872, reform and demands for more “assimilation,” the propagandists, Masonry, the Liga Filipina, etc., the Katipunan, the insurrection of 1896–97, the pact of Biak-na-bató and the question of independence. By its mass of comment and titles, this section fully supplements the first part, and presents to the student a comprehensive survey of Philippine life and development, that will be found the most useful material yet published for detailed study of the modern era.

In “Events in Filipinas, 1841–1872,” the attempt is made only to indicate general conditions in the islands, by citing very briefly some of the more important matters during that period in social, religious and economic lines. In addition to this, we have added a short bibliography, from which the student may gather abundant and accessible material for this period.

Through the kindness of Sr. Epifanio de los Santos we are enabled to present in full for the first time the constitution of the Liga Filipina (which was organized by Rizal on July 3, 1892) from a copy made from the manuscript of Rizal. This constitution shows the Liga not to have been formed for the purpose of independence, but for mutual aid and protection of its members, and the fostering of a more united spirit among Filipinos. Nowhere does it contain a word against the sovereignty of Spain or against religion. In it are declared the ends, form, duties of members and officials, rights of members and officials, the investment of funds, and general rules. The one exception that might be taken to the constitution is that implicit and unquestioning obedience to all superior commands is required from the members.

As the last document proper in this series we present the Friar Memorial of April 21, 1898, which voices the protest of all the orders (Augustinians, Franciscans, Recollects, Dominicans, and Jesuits), but which was destined never to reach officially those for whom it was intended (the Spanish government, through the minister of the colonies), because of the appearance in Spanish waters of the American squadron, and the defeat of the Spanish fleet. It is fitting, however, to present this document in this series, as it is a complete statement of the friars’ standpoint, and especially as the last document of the series, as it marks the passing of the old Spanish régime. The beginning and ending alike express the loyalty of the orders to the Spanish government, and throughout the document is noted the expression of the patriotism of all the members of the orders as Spaniards. The memorial, as a whole, is a protest against the charges brought against the friars from both Spanish and Philippine sources; against free-thought; against Masonry and other secret societies; against the secularization of the orders, episcopal visitation, secularization of schools, and all the other demands of the separatists and insurgents. That the friars are the cause of the insurrection, they indignantly deny. They have ever done their duty, and have worked in the interests of religion and the Spanish fatherland. The insurgents, the filibusters, the separatists, of both Spain and the islands, have directed their whole cry against religion in order to veil their real purpose. The friars have borne all the vilification that has been directed against them patiently, but they cannot for their own honor do so longer. They are proud of their record throughout the history of the islands, and are mindful that, as the only permanent peninsular social factor in the Philippines, they have christianized the islands, have maintained peaceful relations therein, and have kept them for Spain. Only since the entrance of those imbued with the revolutionary free-thought, and of Freemasons, have the islands been disturbed—a period of about thirty years. The Katipunan society is nothing else than a society constructed on Masonic principles, and its rapid diffusion of late throughout many districts greatly complicates the problem and renders the remedy more difficult. Had the orders been silent in the face of the attempts of the Masons, of the filibusters, and of the insurgents, they would not have become an object of persecution; but since they always stood out for the traditional religion and for Spain, the storm of abuse and ill-treatment has fallen upon them. They challenge their detractors and calumniators to prove charges that they have not fulfilled their duty, and those of personal immorality. They have not committed abuse in the taking of parochial fees; they are not hostile to education (indeed, all the education of the islands has been established and fostered by them); they do not despise the educated natives, but, as is easily proved, are good friends with them. Most of the graduates from their institutions have remained loyal, and the same is generally true of the wealthy classes. The real cause of the rebellion can be traced back to the government in allowing the entrance of free-thought into the islands and the dissemination of Masonic doctrines, which have led to the lessening of respect for religion and for Spain; and, as this has come about, it has been natural for race hatred to spring up. The only way of obtaining peace is to strengthen the religious life of the islands, and to force out all the revolutionary forces of free-thought and Masonry. The mission of the friars must receive government support and respect, else it will be impossible for them longer to remain in the islands. They do not desire temporal honors, or to take part in the civil affairs of government; they are even willing to relinquish the slight official intervention that they possess: but they must demand the honor due to religion which has always been theirs by right. They are governed in their actions by the Syllabus errorum of Pius IX. The laws of the Indias, the actions of the sovereigns, the instructions to Legazpi: all commit Spain to the maintenance of friars in the Philippines, and to the greater interests of religion. Even earlier, the Siete Partidas of Alfonso the Wise command respect to ecclesiastical persons. This respect, therefore, the friars demand, if they are longer to remain in the islands, and be the support of the government. This memorial is one by those who are fighting for life, and who see dimly ahead the fate that may overtake them.

The subject of agriculture in the islands is briefly treated in an appendix, showing conditions in the islands in 1784 and 1866, as described by Governor Basco and the German traveler Jagor respectively; the aims and achievements of the Economic Society of Manila; and references to the more important writings on agriculture in the islands. All show how backward were the conditions of that industry, even to the end of the Spanish régime, although various efforts were made by Spain to institute reforms and promote the cultivation of the soil; but most of these were too superficial and partial to be successful—indeed, they were continually hindered by the whole system of Spanish colonial administration and the deficiencies in the native character and training.

In conclusion, the Editors desire to express their cordial thanks and acknowledgments for information, suggestions, and other assistance rendered by the many friends of this undertaking. The majority of these have been already mentioned in previous volumes, especially in annotations furnished by them; and the names of several more appear in the list of “Errata and addenda” (at the end of this volume) which is unavoidable in any series so extensive as this. Therein is contained much information which reached the Editors too late for insertion in its proper place, or was furnished by those whose personal knowledge enabled them to correct misstatements in works cited as authorities. The following persons may be mentioned as meriting special thanks for aid rendered to the Editors: Manuel de Yriarte, chief of Division of Archives, Manila; Epifanio de los Santos, Malolos, Bulacan, Luzón; T. H. Pardo de Tavera, of the Philippine Commission, Manila; and Rev. Anthony Huonder, S.J., Luxembourg, Europe.

The Editors

June, 1907.

DOCUMENTS OF 1841–1898

Sources: The first of these documents, the rare volume iii of Mas’s Informe, is obtained from a typewritten copy furnished by Epifanio de los Santos from the printed original in his possession; the second, from an unpublished MS. in the possession of T. H. Pardo de Tavera, who furnished to the Editors a typewritten copy of it; the third is written especially for this series by James A. LeRoy; the fourth is summarized from volume iii of Montero y Vidal’s Historia de Filipinas; the fifth is obtained from a copy, furnished by E. de los Santos, of Rizal’s original MS.; the sixth, from James A. LeRoy’s copy of one of the printed originals, revised by a printed copy belonging to the Madrid edition.

Translations: All these documents (outside of the third) are translated by James Alexander Robertson.

INTERNAL POLITICAL CONDITION OF THE PHILIPPINES, 1842

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 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, 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-Filipino[4] 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, 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 Indias[5] 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 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 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 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 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 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 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?

Map of the Dolores or Garbanzos Islands (the Carolinas), 1731; drawn by Juan Antonio Cantova, S.J.

[Photographic facsimile of original MS. map in Archivo general de Indias, Sevilla]

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 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 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 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 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 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 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]

[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.]

[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 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.

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 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. 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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. “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 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 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. 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 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 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 Moros[20] with better effect than the small squadron of sailing vessels now employed, and will be more economical. Coal 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 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 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 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 1754[24] 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 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 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 expedientes[28] 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 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 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 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 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 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 Urrijola[30] 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 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 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 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 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 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; 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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]

[1] This is Sinibaldo de Mas, a noted Spanish traveler and diplomat. He was born at Barcelona, in 1809, and studied at Madrid, especially the classic languages, Arabic and other modern languages. In 1634, he was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Orient, where he visited successively Constantinople, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Calcutta, the Arabian desert, and lastly Manila, where he lived for some months. After his return to the Peninsula, he was appointed Spanish minister plenipotentiary to China. Pardo de Tavera says of him (Biblioteca Filipina, p. 253): “The work of Mas is highly interesting, only that, having sojourned a very short time in Filipinas, during which he was sick most of the time, he wrote his work by reference to others, and taking from the chronicles of the friars the elements necessary for the history and the races. He does not cite sources, and it is cleverly written, and passes with some persons as a classic work on Filipinas …. His vanity led him to suppress his name ….” Pardo de Tavera does not seem to know the third volume. Retana [who possessed a copy of the third volume (No. 2432 in his library, which was sold to the Compañía general de tabacos de Filipinas), says in Bibliografía filipina, p. 524]: “This third and secret part has never been described. The author published very few copies of it because of the gravity of its contents. Sinibaldo de Mas contrary to what those who know his Estado [i.e., the first two volumes] may imagine, pronounced in favor of preparation of independence for Filipinas.” In this third volume Mas precedes the text as follows: “Of this secret chapter, the last of the Informe sobre el estado de las Islas Filipinas en 1842, only some few copies have been printed for the ministers, gentlemen of the Council of the Government, and other persons influential in the affairs of the nation. Consequently, your Excellency is requested to keep it for your own use, without allowing it to circulate or permitting a copy to be made of it.” The copy belonging to the Peabody Institute Library belonged to Javier de Burgos. See (in addition to Pardo de Tavera and Retana) Dic. encic. Hisp.-Amer., xii, p. 537. [↑]

[2] The first two volumes have separately paged chapters as follows: I. Origin of the inhabitants of Oceanica. Condition of the Filipinos at the arrival of the Spaniards. History of the Spanish domination in Filipinas from their discovery until our times. Continuation of the last chapter. Population. Animals. Climate. Minerals. Topography. II. Languages. Vegetables. Agriculture. Interior commerce. Foreign commerce. Industry. Territorial division. Administration of government and the captaincy-general. Public instruction. Ecclesiastical condition. Administration of justice. Army. Navy. Direct and indirect taxes. External political condition. Vol. i contains a chart showing the ancient alphabets of the Filipinos; and vol. ii, a map of the archipelago. [↑]

[3] A note by Mas at this point discusses the other admissible plan, “namely, to cede the country to some foreign power.” But the religious, the majority of the military and civil employes, and the Filipino-Spaniards would prefer independence to transfer, and the simple announcement of such transfer would lead to almost universal insurrection. The fatal results that ensued from the former English policy of sending convicts to their colonies declares against making the Philippines a penal colony. Another plan, namely, to send out Spanish emigrants from the Peninsula, is also not feasible, for Spain has no surplus population, and in fact needs a greater population. On the matter of penal colonies, Forrest (Voyage, p. 198) says, “The Spaniards at Manila transport convicts to Samboangan, as England did to America.” In 1875–78, there was some discussion of the question as to whether Spain should establish penal colonies (like that of Botany Bay) in the Marianas Islands or in the Gulf of Guinea. [↑]

[4] By this term, as well as by “Filipino Spaniards,” as used in this document, are meant those of full Spanish blood born in the Philippines, or those who went to the Philippines in childhood. [↑]

[5] The Consejo Supremo de Indias, which was established, according to the best authorities, in 1511 by the great Ferdinand, was perfected by Cárlos I, and was reformed by Felipe II. It was composed of a president, a number of togated ministers, and an indefinite number of counselors by brevet, and they all received the same consideration as did members of the Consejo de Castilla. This corporation, which had had so great influence in Spanish colonial matters, was suppressed by royal decree of May 24, 1834, and in its place was erected the Tribunal Supremo de España é Indias, which was renamed Consejo de Estado in 1856. See Dic. encic. Hisp.-Amer., v, p. 827. [↑]

[6] The exact title of this work is as follows: Los diez y seis meses de mando superior de Filipinas, por el mariscal de campo D. Andres G. Camba (Cadiz, 1839). Pardo de Tavera (Bibl. Filipina, p. 79) says of it: “This pamphlet is full of curious revelations and explanations relative to the command of this general, which was so filled with incidents.” Retána (Bibliografía, p. 57) says that Camba was a democrat sui generis. The book is a long exposition of 101 pages, to which are appended various documents (53 pages) on which the exposition is based. The copy of this pamphlet now in the Boston Public Library was formerly in the Retana collection. [↑]

[7] See account of this mutiny in VOL. LI, pp. 47, 48. [↑]

[8] See post, pp. 92, 93, note 37. [↑]

[9] See post, pp. 91–111, the report by Matta. [↑]

[10] In a long note at this point, Mas severely criticises Camba’s book, which he has already mentioned. He declares it lacking in knowledge of the Philippines, and says that it was written to prove that the Philippines are thoroughly loyal in every respect. Mas’s own experience pointed to the existence of an independence party among the Spaniards of the colony. Mas condemns Camba’s policy of giving posts to the natives; as well as Camba’s assertions of the immunity of the governor from removal at the will of the monarch. Camba is accused of a change of sentiment from that which he had during his first years of residence in the country. [↑]

[11] Mas refers to the culture system practiced by the Dutch in the island of Java, 1830–1870. Clive Day (Policy and administration of the Dutch in Java, New York and London, 1904) compares it to the system of forced cultures established by Spain in the Philippines in 1780. In addition to the above book, see the following for the history of Dutch colonization in Java: J. W. B. Money’s Java, or how to govern a colony (London, 1861); P. J. Veth’s Java (Haarlem, 1896–); Jules Leclercq’s Un sejour dans l’île de Java (Paris, 1898); Wilhelm Krüger’s Das Zuckerrohr und seine Kultur (Magdeburg und Wien, 1899); and Pierre Gonnaud’s La Colonisation hollandaise à Java (Paris, 1905). [↑]

[12] A note at this point by Mas mentions a recent pamphlet by a Cuban who advocates complete autonomy for the colonies, and freedom of the press. This author says that long before the French revolution free negroes and mulattoes were being educated in Paris; but Mas says people of that class in Cuba do not travel in foreign countries or receive an education in European colleges. [↑]

[13] Mas cites a passage from Captain Gabriel Lafond’s Quinze ans de voyages autour du monde (1840) to the effect that the Philippine conquest was one of religion. The power of the friars grows because they are permanent in the colony. Their influence over the natives is all powerful, and they regard foreigners and even other Spaniards with suspicion. The friars asserted that the natives to be happy had no need of European civilization; yet they prevented progress by not allowing the entrance of industry. Spain did not suppress the orders in the Philippines, fearing lest it lead to independence. The native priests are those most hostile to the friars. They are almost without education and often dissolute; and are sure to be the first authors of a revolution. Natives should be excluded from the priesthood. [↑]

[14] The insurrection which occurred recently in Tayabas is a patent proof of these truths. The cura of the village where the confraternity of San José was established, advised the alcalde of the province in time of the suspicions with which it infused him. And since the alcalde-mayor refused to consider the matter, he wrote him: “You will be the first victim,” as in truth he was. The cura of the next village also took great interest in it, and so many letters were written to the archbishop of Manila from various places, that the latter sent an official communication to the captain-general. Orders were then issued for the arrest of Apolinario de Santa Cruz, but he fled. The brothers [of the confraternity] held their meetings in the village of Mahahay. The cura informed the archbishop thereof, telling him that, notwithstanding all that he had done, he had been unable to dissuade them from this undertaking. The archbishop sent this advice to the government. To the curas, then, was due the discovery of that crafty conspiracy; and it is almost beyond the pale of doubt that if there had been no others than Filipino parish priests in the villages (as has been once ordered by the government), there would not have been the slightest suspicion of it, until it had been so firmly and generally organized that our ruin would have been the work of a week. (Note by Mas.) [↑]

[15] Either Mas has simply indicated the letter in his heading, or the person who transcribed the copy from which we translate failed to copy the extract in question. It will be remembered that Mas published most of the letter in his vol. i, in the chapter on population. The reference is evidently to sections 95–100 (q.v., VOL. XL, pp. 270–277). [↑]

[16] Manuel Grijalbo (sic), O.S.A., went to the Philippines in 1810, and after acting as cura and holding the highest positions in the province, was appointed bishop of Nueva Cáceres, being consecrated Jan. 28, 1849. He died at the episcopal palace, Nov. 13, 1861.

Fausto Lopez, O.S.A., was born in 1811, took his vows at Valladolid in 1828, and went to the Philippines in 1829. He was located in Cebú until 1837, when he became provincial secretary. Afterwards he held several offices and acted as cura until his death at Manila, April 17, 1866.

Manuel Jarava, O.S.A., was born at Zaragoza in 1804 and professed at Valladolid in 1827. He was in the Philippines from 1829 to 1834, returning in the latter year to Spain. The date of his death is unknown.

See Pérez’s Catálogo. [↑]

[17] Manuel Maria Cambronero was a Spanish jurisconsult. He was born in Orihuela in 1765 and died in 1834. During the French invasion, he acted as secretary of the Council of State, on account of which he was compelled to leave the country when the French left. He later returned to Madrid, where he opened a buffet, which was the most celebrated one of his time. See Dic. encic. Hisp.-Amer., iv, p. 330. [↑]

[18] A tribute paid to the church by all Filipinos from the age of sixteen.

“Since 1852 the tribute amounts to 12 reals, and in some districts special rates are fixed. Not until 1841 was the payment of the tribute in cash made universal. There are, besides, three other taxes; the sanctorum, 3 reals; the comunidad, 1 real; and the recargo, ½ real. The total of imposts, then, is 16½ reals; or for each single person one dollar and ¼ real. The sanctorum is for [the expenses of] worship; but it is paid to the government, which pays the minister at the rate of 180 dollars for 500 tributes. The comunidad is a charge for the communal fund. The recargo is a charge introduced since the suppression of the brandy monopoly, to cover the deficit resulting therefrom. In Mindanao and the Bisayas no additional charge is collected. According to Agius (Memoria, doc. 5) each single tribute-payer now contributes 6.25 reals, plus 0.55 reals of recargo, in all 6.8 reals, not considering the sanctorum and comunidad. The inhabitants of Abra, Ilocos, and Union pay, besides, 1½ to 2¼ reals for the permission to buy their tobacco outside the monopoly dealers.” “Mestizos by a Chinese man and an Indian woman pay a tribute of $3.00 a year since 1852; earlier, it was less. The Indian woman married to a mestizo of this class pays the same tribute as he during their marriage; but when she becomes a widow she pays only as an Indian woman. Mestizos who, like the natives, cultivate the soil with their own hands, also pay only as the latter do. The mestizos form their own barangays when there are 25 to 30 tributes of them living together; otherwise they belong to the nearest barangay of natives. Every Chinaman—excepting tillers of the soil, from whom only 12 reals are collected—pays since 1852 a [capitation] head-tax of $6.00, and, besides this, an industrial tax of $100, $60, $30, or $12.”

“A law issued Nov. 3, 1863 (Legis. ultramar [compiled by Rodriguez S. Pedro, pub. at Madrid, 1865] iii), actually decided that every male inhabitant of the Philippines—European or native, Spanish or foreign—must render personal service for twenty-four days in the year, or else procure release from it by a money payment. But this law was not put into execution, and Europeans are free from all imposts. Mestizos by Spaniards and Indian women are similarly exempt, save that they pay 7 reals for the sanctorum, and ½ real as a tithe for the government; little care, however, is taken for exactness in the enumeration of the mestizos, especially of their women.” (Jagor, Reisen, pp. 293–295.) [↑]

[19] The Colegio de Agustinos, or Colegio de Filipinas, at Valladolid, would probably come under this category. [↑]

[20] The use of steam vessels against the Moros was introduced in 1847, and proved an immediate benefit. [↑]

[21] See VOL. LI, notes 6, 7, 14, 16, 31. [↑]

[22] This was Admiral Cyrille-Pierre-Théodore Laplace, who was born at sea Nov. 7, 1793, and died at Brest, Jan. 22, 1875. The book mentioned by Mas is the Voyage autour du monde par les mers de l’Inde et de la Chine (1833–39). The matte on the Philippines is contained in vol. i, pp. 353–470, 547–553, and is as follows: “Manille; description de Luçon; quelques details sur son gouvernement, ses habitants, leurs mœurs et leur industrie;” and notes. See La grande encyclopédie, xxi, p. 947; and the Philippine bibliography issued by the Library of Congress. [↑]

[23] The office of army intendant was created by royal orders of July 17 and 26, 1784, in accordance with the proposition of Governor Basco; to the office was united that of the subdelegate superintendency of the treasury. The new office was independent of the superior government of the islands. The first incumbent of the new office was Ciriaco Gonzalez Carvajal, then auditor of the royal Audiencia and assessor-general of the government. See Montero y Vidal, Historia general, ii, pp. 311, 312. [↑]

[24] The first edition of the Recopilación de leyes de Indias was published at Madrid in 1681. [↑]

[25] For the powers of the alcaldes-mayor, see VOL. XVII, pp. 323, 324, and 333, 334. [↑]

[26] i.e., A report of the matter must be made to the government, through its respective ministries, and after deliberation the course to be followed would be ordered. Throughout the history of the Philippines, this method often proved a great drawback to effective government, because of the distance from Spain and difficulty of communication; so much so that when the answer was received, the matter was already wellnigh or completely a dead letter. [↑]

[27] On leaving his office Francisco Enriquez left two printed documents as follows: Oficio al Secretario de Estado dando cuenta de haber hecho entrega de la Intendencia á D. Luis Urrejola (Manila, June 11, 1836; 2 leaves on rice paper); and Entrega que hace de sus funciones, en este dia, el Intendente general de Ejercito … al Ecsmo. Sr. D. Luis Urrejola (Manila, July 11, 1836; in 16 leaves). The document mentioned by Mas must be one of these. See Retana’s Bibliografia filipina, pp. 54, 55 (the title to the first document is made by Retana). [↑]

[28] i.e., All the papers belonging to any matter, judicial, legislative, or executive, consisting of orders, opinions, reports, and all other measures. [↑]

[29] A note at this point states that the polo and service tax had not been extended to the Chinese mestizos, who were not in existence when the tax was first imposed, or were but few, until a few years back, when the natives of Lingayen brought up the matter. Chinese mestizos formed the wealthiest part of many villages; and it was decided that since they were to the natives as 1:6, they should pay such taxes for one month to the natives’ six. At Vigan, Ilocos Sur, the natives also presented a petition against the mestizos because natives alone were compelled to furnish provisions, etc., to the troops in their province at the schedule price, while the mestizos escaped; and for which reason many of the natives joined the mestizo ranks, saying that the state profited thereby because as mestizos they paid a double tribute. Governor Oraá, however, imposed a fine for such denaturalization. As regards the petition against the mestizos, an expediente was formed, and in July, 1841, the natives were ordered to send a salaried agent to conduct a suit against the mestizos. But they being poor could not do so, while it was understood that the mestizos had paid a bribe of 1,000 pesos to the assessor. Consequently, it appears that notwithstanding the efforts of the alcalde-mayor and Mas, nothing could be done, as the governor was so hedged in. [↑]

[30] Francisco Enriquez succeeded Urrijola (who had been appointed October, 1820, as intendant-general of the army and treasury), in the office of intendant in 1828, being granted more ample powers than the latter had enjoyed. By a royal decree of October 27, 1829, it was ordered that the superintendency should be held by the intendant of the army and royal treasury, and accordingly Enriquez took such charge on September 9, 1630. See Montero y Vidal, Hist. gen., ii, pp. 457, 521. [↑]

[31] See José Cabezas de Herrera’s Apuntes históricos sobre la organización político-administrativa de Filipinas (Manila, 1883). This is an excellent treatise on the governmental administration of the Philippines. [↑]

[32] See the budget of receipts and expenditures in the Philippines for the year, July, 1885-June, 1886, in Montero y Vidal’s El archipiélago filipino, pp. 169–186. The expenditures involve: general obligations, 1,523,335.07 pesos; state, 125,000 pesos; grace and justice, 1,085,769.62 pesos; war, 3,494,923.31 pesos; treasury, 1,356,031.30 pesos; navy, 2,423,518.91 pesos; government, 1,267,007.43 pesos; public works (fomento), 349,322.87 pesos; total, 11,624,908.51 pesos. The receipts were 11,528,178 pesos. [↑]

[33] The administrative affairs of the colonies were placed in charge of the ministerio de la gobernación (ministry of the government) in 1832, and were added in 1836 to the ministerio de marina (ministry of the navy), which was after that called secretaría del despacho de marina, comercio y gobernación de ultramar (department of the navy, commerce, and colonial government). After various other changes, the ministerio de ultramar (ministry of the colonies) was established by royal decree, May 20, 1863. The duties of the ministry are outlined as follows: to modify the organization or administrational régime of the colonies; to fix or change the annual budget of receipts and expenditures; to dispose of the surplus products of the colonies; to adopt any rule relative to the establishment or suppression of imposts; to propose persons for the offices of governor and captain-general, intendants, and regents of the Audiencia; to grant titles, etc., to persons in the colonies; to adopt any measure affecting the exterior regimen of the Church or the royal patronage; to decide any serious matter according to the judgment of the minister; to draw up preparatory measures of resolutions allowing expenses or advances of funds by the public treasury of the Peninsula, which resolutions belong to the ministry of the treasury; to transmit communications of the ministers of state, war, and navy, to the authorities of those provinces, and the communications of the latter to the respective ministers. See Dic. encic. Hisp.-Amer., xiii, pp. 131, 132. [↑]

[34] In 1803 a Spanish pamphlet was published at Philadelphia, advocating the opinion that Spain “ought to get rid of all her colonies in America and Asia, in order to promote agriculture and industries in the Peninsula;” it is attributed to the Marqués de Casa Irujo (Vindel, Catálogo biblioteca filipina, no. 1797). [↑]

MATTA’S REPORT, 1843

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 guard[2] (whom he has advised in case 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 Apolinario[3] in the province of 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 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 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, 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.”]

[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, 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 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 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.

[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, 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 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. 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 pesquisidores[7] 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 have given him abundant opportunity to observe and study people and conditions. This memorial is dated Manila, February 25, 1843.][13]

[1] Matta took possession of the above office on June 2, 1841; he had long been connected with the affairs of the colony. In 1837 he had drawn up a detailed report on the advantage which would result from introducing steamboats into the islands. (Montero y Vidal, Hist. de Filipinas, ii, p. 573.) [↑]

[2] Cuerpo del Resguardo: the guards employed by the treasury to look after the customs and excise duties on the government monopolies of tobacco, wines, liquors, etc. [↑]

[3] For accounts of the confraternity of San José, see Manuel Sancho’s Relacion expresiva de los principales acontecimientos de la titulada Cofradía del señor San José (first published by W. E. Retana in La Política de España, no. 21, et seq.); Memoria histórica de la conducta militar y politica del Teniente General D. Marcelino Oraá (Madrid, 1851), probably written by Pedro Chamorro; and Montero y Vidal, Hist. gen., iii, pp. 37–56. This confraternity was founded by Apolinario de la Cruz, a Tagálog, a native of Lucban in the province of Tayabas, who was a donné in the hospital of San Juan de Dios in Manila. The new confraternity soon had many adherents in the provinces of Tayabas, Laguna, and Batangas, and in the middle of 1840 began to hold meetings in Lucban, to which both sexes were admitted, and at which letters from Apolinario were read. The attention of the friar parish priests was directed to the confraternity, and the meeting of October 19, 1840 was surprised and about 243 persons out of the 500 or 600 attending it, arrested. The governor of Tayabas province, however, who regarded the matter as entirely one of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, ordered the prisoners to be released. Through the representations of the parish priest of Lucban, the provincial governor finally intervened, and the adherents to the confraternity thereupon held their meetings secretly in Majayjay in Laguna Province. The meeting of Sept. 19, 1841, at the latter place, was surprised and some arrests made, although but few, as information of the intended raid had been received. The departure of the provincial governor of Tayabas, Joaquin Ortega, for Manila, was favorable to the new sect, as a native adherent or sympathizer was left in charge of the government. Through his acquiescence, the members of the confraternity who had gathered in armed bands at the village of Bay in Laguna (where they were joined by Apolinario, who had fled from Manila), were allowed to ensconce themselves in Igsaban, Tayabas. From thence they opened negotiations with the government at Tayabas to be allowed to occupy that city, the substitute governor requesting from the parish priest that they be allowed to hold a novena in his church. Negotiations failed, and Ortega, returning on the twenty-second of October, ordered the natives to disperse, and on their refusal attacked them the next day with a force of over three hundred men. The natives, aided by a band of Negritos who had joined them, repulsed this force and killed Ortega, and then retired to Alitao to celebrate a novena. There they were attacked on the first of November by a force composed of troops sent by Oraá, and those of the province of Tayabas, and after a severe engagement the natives were defeated. Apolinario, who fled, was soon captured and shot on the fourth, others of the leaders being also arrested. Apolinario was but twenty-seven years old, and evidently worked on the superstitious nature of his countrymen, who believed that he was immune from danger and that the rebel forces would be aided by the direct intervention of heaven. His followers baptized him under the name of “The king of the Tagálogs.” No one except pure-blooded natives were allowed to become members of the organization, from which circumstance the Spaniards have always professed to believe that the confraternity was political in nature and that religious motives were merely a blind. Some (as in Vindel’s Catálogo biblioteca filipina, no. 1895) assert that the confraternity was a sort of Katipunan. It is quite probable, however, that its origin was entirely religious, but religion mingled with superstition and fanaticism. The fact that Apolinario attempted to legalize the existence of the organization through both ecclesiastical and government centers, which was refused in both instances, indicates that the insurrection was forced by the Spaniards, through either fear or contempt. It is highly unlikely that the organization had at the beginning any political motive, and its attempted suppression was a mistake of the religious and civil authorities. [↑]

[4] The defeat and slaughter of the members of the confraternity of San José angered the native soldiers from the Province of Tayabas, who were quartered in Malate. Conspiring with some of the garrison of the fort of Santiago, also from the same province, they attacked and took that fort Jan. 20, 1843, under the leadership of two brothers (mestizos and officers of the regiment), after killing the officers on guard. The mutiny was quickly stilled by Oraá, and the commander of the insurgents, a sergeant, Samaniego, and some of the other leaders were shot on the twenty-second at the camp of Bagumbayang. The other native soldiers remained loyal and aided in quelling the mutiny. See Montero y Vidal, Hist. de Filipinas, iii, pp. 58, 59, and note. [↑]

[5] The Spanish government decided to aid France against England, and declared war against the latter power in June, 1779. The Spaniards aided the Americans against the British in Florida and Mississippi, and in March, 1780, captured Mobile. Martin A. S. Hume says in Modern Spain (New York, 1900), p. 6: “As Aranda himself foresaw, and set forth in a most remarkable prophecy, the aid lent by Spain to the revolt of the English North American Colonies formed a dangerous precedent for the separation of her own colonial dominions, and promoted the establishment of a great Anglo-Saxon republic in America, which in time to come should oust Spain from her last foothold in the New World. ‘This new federal republic,’ wrote Aranda to Floridablanca, ‘is, so to speak, born a mere pigmy, and has needed the support of two powerful nations like France and Spain to win its independence. But the day will come when it will grow into a giant, a terrible Colossus. It will then forget the benefits it has received, and think only of its own aggrandizement.’ ” [↑]

[6] See Mas’s remarks in this connection, ante, pp. 32–34. [↑]

[7] Magistrates appointed to inquire into the circumstances of a violent death. [↑]

[8] The college of San José sent out the following bishops: José Cabral, bishop-elect of Nueva Cáceres; Rodrigo de la Cueva Jiron, bishop of Nueva Segovia; Francisco Pizarro de Orellana, bishop of Nueva Segovia; Jeronimo de Herrera, bishop of Nueva Segovia; Felipe de Molina y Figueroa, bishop of Nueva Cáceres; Domingo de Valencia, bishop of Nueva Cáceres; José de Andaya, bishop of Ovieda, Spain, bishop-elect of Puebla de los Angeles, Mexico, and archbishop of Mexico; and Ignacio de Salamanca, bishop of Cebu. The college also sent out one auditor, one royal treasurer, two alcaldes-mayor; 39 Jesuits (of whom three were martyrs), 4 provincials, 11 calced Augustinians, 10 Recollects, 8 Franciscans, and 3 Dominicans. These statistics are given by Pablo Pastells in a letter in 1902, a translation of which is in the possession of Rev. T. C. Middleton, O.S.A. [↑]

[9] Vindel says (Catálogo biblioteca filipina, no. 756) that the school of agriculture in Manila was organized by Rafael García López. In regard to this school, which was founded in 1889, see VOL. XLV, pp. 314–318. [↑]

[10] On May 4, 1869, a society was authorized for “the promotion of instruction in the arts and trades in the Filipinas Islands;” but it was of short duration, as schools of this sort were soon afterward established by the government. (Vindel, ut supra, no. 1661; see also VOL. XLV of this series.) [↑]

[11] Vindel mentions (Catálogo biblioteca filipina, p. 50) “arrangements regarding the Philippine Institute, and chairs of Tagálog, Bisayan, and practical land-surveying,” in the Boletin oficial del Ministerio de Ultramar, vol. i. [↑]

[12] “There was still at Manila another caste of mestizos, originating from Japanese and the Indian women. These Japanese landed on the island of Luçon, about fourscore years ago, in a dismantled vessel, and destitute of everything; I saw them in 1767. They numbered, I believe, at most sixty or seventy persons, all Christians. But as the form of government doubtless did not please them, nor perhaps did the Inquisition, they had demanded to return [to their own country]; and all, or nearly all, actually departed in that same year, 1767, and returned to Japan, where they have probably resumed the faith of their fathers.” (Le Gentil, Voyage, ii, pp. 53, 54.) Concepción states (Hist. de Philipinas, vii, p. 6) that in 1658 a number of Christian Japanese were living in the barrio of San Anton, near Manila; some of them had come on a Japanese ship that was driven to Cavite by storms, and remained with their countrymen at Manila. [↑]

[13] A list of many practical plans and regulations for the benefit of the Philippine Islands, appearing in the Boletin oficial del Ministerio de Ultramar (Madrid, 1875–83) may be found in Vindel, ut supra, pp. 49, 50. Many other lists of interesting articles regarding the islands, found in periodical publications, are given therein, pp. 46–62; also in Beleña’s Recopilacion (p. 67). [↑]

THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

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 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 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 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 had, indeed, begun before the opening of the Suez Canal. The inauguration of the Spanish-Philippine Bank in Manila in 1852 afforded evidence 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 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 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]

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 monopoly[6] 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 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, 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]

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 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, 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 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 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 1872[11]—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 friars[12] 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 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 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 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 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.

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 are read, Jagor’s[15] 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 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. 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.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

One would welcome an attempt by some one of the more ambitious Filipino writers and students whose attention has been occupied almost exclusively with political controversy to write the social history of his people during this last period of Spanish rule. The materials for such a study, so far as they now exist in print, are very fragmentary, and the work could hardly be well done by any but a resident of the islands during that period. But few references need be given here, and the inquirer must derive most of his information on this line from the numerous books and pamphlets whose object is primarily political questions and from the economic and fiscal tables and studies which shed light upon the general status of the people.

General historical surveys of the period are lacking. Montero y Vidal’s three-volume history comes down only to 1873. And, though it is the best Philippine historical work for reference purposes, it is, after all, hardly more than a chronology of important events and compilation of official orders and projects, touching the life of the people scarcely at all. The same author’s work of 1886, El archipiélago filipino, merits attention also in this connection, though primarily it sets forth facts geographical, statistical, etc. The works of Manuel Scheidnagel deserve also citation as those of a Spanish official of long and varied experience in the Philippines, and as shedding, incidentally to the particular subjects which they treat, light upon the conditions of country and people in general.[16]

The foreigners who traveled in the Philippines during this period, and who have written thereon, were occupied in most cases with scientific pursuits, and have confined themselves mainly to these objects in what they have published. The Luçon et Palaouan (Paris, 1887) of Alfred Marche touches upon the customs and conditions of the people in its record of six years’ scientific research for the government of France. Edmond Plauchut’s contributions to the Revue des deux mondes for 1869 and 1877, in lighter vein and perhaps not always accurate, are, like Gironière’s writings of earlier date, interesting as presenting the observations of a resident foreigner. Among the works in English, revised or written since 1898 to meet the demand in the United States for information about the Philippines, Dean C. Worcester’s The Philippine Islands and their People (New York, 1898), brings us nearest to the life of the people, particularly in the rural districts and regions most remote from modern changing influences. The treatises of the British engineers and experts in tropical agriculture, Frederick H. Sawyer and John Foreman, are written by men who were, naturally, best prepared to discuss the agricultural conditions and the material resources in general of the Philippines. Outside of these matters, except when reciting personal experiences and observations, both are compilers whose reading in Philippine bibliography has been very fragmentary. Foreman in particular has undertaken to cover the entire field of Philippine history and politics, and has, to state the plain truth, made a very bad botch of it. He has been so often quoted in the United States as authority for erroneous statements that it is time to make this fact clear. It is commonly impossible to draw the line in what he has written between fact and gossip, conjecture, or partial truth. His latest edition (1906) contains most of the old glaring errors or even worse omissions, with a full measure of new ones in his recital of the history of events since 1896. Some data contained in Foreman’s book are not readily available to an American student outside of the large libraries; but a caution is to be uttered against relying upon him, even for his recital of fiscal details or for his statistical tables. Sawyer is very much more accurate and reliable, just as he is less pretentious in the program of his work.

In studying the social process of the Filipino people from about 1860 onward, the subject of education holds the first place.[17] It is, however, unnecessary to occupy ourselves here with the bibliography of the subject, which has been very fully covered in VOLS. XLV and XLVI of this work, the appendices to those volumes giving, in connection with other documents in this series and with the bibliographical notes, the most comprehensive treatment of the subject of education in the Philippines that is yet available in any language.

As we might expect from what has been said, the social life of the Philippines, at least from about 1875, may best be studied in the periodicals of Manila. In this connection it is only necessary to mention Retana’s El periodismo filipino, which covers the subject down to 1894. La Revista de Filipinas, edited by J. F. del Pan, 1875–77, deserves special mention among the many periodicals of short life. Among those of longer duration may be named El Diario de Manila, and also, for the closing years of Spanish rule, La Oceanía Española, La Voz Española and El Comercio.[18] One should also consult these Spanish periodicals of Manila for the political history of these years, particularly of 1896–98. It must be remarked, however, that, just as these periodicals reflected mainly the life only of the capital, and that quite exclusively from the Spanish viewpoint, so also they treated political and administrative matters not merely under the constraint of their editors’ notions as to “maintaining Spanish prestige” but also with a censorship in the background, maintained by and for the political and the ecclesiastical authorities.[19] Down to 1898 the Philippine law of censorship of 1857, modeled on that of Spain in the days of Isabel II, was in force, and it covered the publication of books and pamphlets of all sorts and of newspapers, the importation and sale of books, pictures, etc., and the regulation of theaters.[20] One will, therefore, look almost in vain in these periodicals prior to 1898 for expressions of the Filipino point of view, or, till the close of 1897, for any frank expression of liberal political views on the part of Spanish editors. The few Manila periodicals started by Filipinos before 1898, usually printed in Spanish and Tagálog, had but an ephemeral existence.[21] One must look for the expression of Filipino aims and ideas to the periodicals that have been published since 1898; indeed, even the Spanish press of Manila has treated Filipino questions with freedom only since American occupation began.

For population statistics, all practical purposes are served by the tables and comparisons of the American census of 1903.[22] Here one may find also the best data for reconstructing before his eyes the social and economic status of the Philippines and its inhabitants at the close of Spanish rule. The Spanish civil census of 1896 was unfortunately never published, nor completed in some provinces. The civil census of 1887, though published in very condensed form, merits attention.[23] Certain of the more notable statistical works of private individuals will require notice in connection with agriculture, industry, and commerce; here the student may be referred to the Bibliography under the names of Agustín de la Cavada, J. F. del Pan, and José Jimeno Agius.[24]

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Using, as throughout these notes, the Bibliography as a starting point, the student is referred to the first part of that work, viz., the List of the Library of Congress, under the headings Agriculture, Commerce, Finance, and Political and Social Economy; and to Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca under the alphabetical lists of Aranceles, Balanzas, Boletín, Estatutos, Exposición, Guía, Instrucción, Memoria, and Reglamentos. Some of the works therein cited are obviously indispensable, and occasional biographical and bibliographical notes are also afforded, especially by Pardo de Tavera under the names of authors cited, which will help in forming an opinion on the value of their works.[25] It is in point here to designate among these works those most useful as references in a general way upon Philippine economic matters, to add some not listed in the Bibliography, and to give some special references under the particular headings of Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry.

General.—Jagor’s book, already noted as the best introduction to the study of this period, is again mentioned here as affording data on the tobacco monopoly (which lasted until 1884, before its affairs were wound up), the attitude of the Spaniards toward the entry of foreign traders, and the part these foreigners played in developing the culture of abaká and sugar. Cavada’s Historia geográfica, geológica y estadística de Filipinas (Manila, 1876) has a good arsenal of data drawn chiefly from the civil statistical inquiries of 1870, though, like almost all such works in Spanish, it is without a topical index and is put together in a disorderly manner most exasperating to the searcher for facts or figures on a specific point of inquiry. Of the works of José Jimeno y Agius, his Memoria sobre el desestanco del tabaco (Binondo, 1871) and Población y comercio de las islas Filipinas (Madrid, 1884) should be especially mentioned. Gregorio Sancianco y Goson’s El progreso de Filipinas (Madrid, 1881), especially valuable on administrative matters just prior to the revision of the fiscal régime in connection with the abolition of the government tobacco monopoly, has also many data on land, commerce, and industry. Scattered through the eight volumes of the fortnightly La Política de España en Filipinas (Madrid, 1891–98) are useful items on Philippine currency and exchange, trade, etc., with occasional studies of these questions and those of Chinese and European immigration, in most cases hasty, unreliable pieces of work, often even fantastic for their utter disregard of the fundamentals of political economy. Foreman’s book has already been characterized; nevertheless, checked up with Sawyer’s, it is of use in this connection. Of the consular and other official reports, those of the British Foreign Office[26] are the most valuable as a series, though the comprehensive reports of the French Consul, M. de Bérard, covering the years 1888–92, merit first place as individual treatises.[27]

The testimony and memoranda presented before the American Peace Commission in Paris in 1898, together with some magazine articles on the Philippines, form appendices to Senate Document no. 62, 55th Congress, 3rd session; only the memorandum of General F. V. Greene (pp. 404–440) and Max L. Tornow’s Sketch of the Economic Conditions of the Philippines require any consideration in this connection.[28] The reports on civil affairs (1899–1901) of the United States military government in the Philippines and the reports of the Philippine Commission have much retrospective value in connection with the previous economic and fiscal régime, and merit a general perusal in that light; some of their more especially pertinent revelations will be hereinafter cited. The Report on Certain Economic Questions in the English and Dutch Colonies in the Orient (Washington, 1902) by Jeremiah W. Jenks, special commissioner of the United States government, is of course of comparative value primarily, but contains some general remarks on Philippine conditions as regards currency, labor, land, and taxation. In many respects the best economic study ever made of the Philippines is Victor S. Clark’s Labor Conditions in the Philippines (Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor no. 58, Washington, May, 1905); though discussing the labor question, and that under American occupation, it has been written with a view constantly to past conditions in the Philippines, social and political as well as economic.[29]

Agriculture, Land, etc.—Beyond the general references given, no special work can be recommended on the subject of Philippine agriculture. The reports and bulletins of the present Philippine Bureau of Agriculture (1902 to date) shed much light incidentally on past conditions and methods of cultivation. Numerous official provisions and some private treatises on the Spanish land laws are cited by Pardo de Tavera; but these remained for the most part dead letters, and for all practical purposes a little compilation in English[30] by the present Philippine Forestry Bureau suffices. In a report on the establishment of land banks in the Philippines, José Cabezas de Herrera provided a historical review and abstract of landed property in those islands.[31] In connection with his arguments in behalf of a tax on landed property as just and as also necessary in order to support a really efficient government in the Philippines, Sancianco y Goson gives considerable information on conditions of land tenure and cultivation down to 1881.[32]

Chinese.—Discussion of the Chinese in the Philippines is related more particularly to questions of industry and retail trade. Nevertheless, the Spanish government maintained almost to the end the theory—it was hardly more than an empty theory—that the Chinese immigration was being so regulated as to constitute a stimulus to agriculture. The subject also falls into place here because, from about 1886, when a campaign for the exclusion of the Chinese was started by Spanish merchants and newspaper men, a program for fostering the immigration of Spaniards into the Philippines, and especially into the undeveloped areas of Mindanao and Palawan, was quite regularly coupled with the arguments for Chinese exclusion. This program was usually presented without regard for the climatic and economic considerations involved; that it was a “patriotic” scheme was sufficient for some of these writers, who never stopped to ask themselves if their plans were practical.[33] Among the pamphlets on the Chinese in the Philippines cited by Pardo de Tavera, those of Del Pan and Jordana y Morera deserve attention. A good survey of the subject, though not accurate in its statistics, is G. García Ageo’s Memorandum on the Chinese in the Philippines in Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900, ii, pp. 432–445.[34]

Industries.—The general references already cited must be relied upon, and it is a rather wearisome task to uncover the data for a study of Philippine industries from statistical tables, treatises and pamphlets which have given the subject a cursory or fragmentary treatment. The British and French consular reports may, however, be especially remarked. Also, the reports of the Chief of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the reports of the Philippine Commission since 1904, when a new scheme of internal taxation was adopted, contain much information on industrial conditions, past and present.

Commerce, Internal Trade, Navigation, etc.—The Spanish statistical annuals, tariff regulations, etc., are fully listed by the Library of Congress and Pardo de Tavera, under the headings above noted for general references on economic matters. The most comprehensive survey of trade statistics, and one which almost serves the purpose by itself alone, is contained in the Monthly Summary of Commerce of the Philippine Islands, for December, 1904, published at Washington by the Bureau of Insular Affairs. It presents classified tables covering Philippine imports and exports for the fifty years 1855–1904; they were prepared from the best available Spanish trade statistics, reduced to terms of American gold currency at the average rate of exchange for each year, and, so far as the writer has checked these figures, they are the most reliable that are presented anywhere.[35] Among the very few Spanish writings, Azcárraga’s Libertad de Comercio (Madrid, 1872) and Jimeno Agius’s Población y comercio (1884) deserve special mention, also once more the useful little book of Sancianco y Goson, for brief but useful data for 1868–80 in its appendices.[36] For 1891–98, La Política de España en Filipinas has some scattering figures on trade and commerce, year by year, highly unsatisfactory for the most part. Besides the general references upon the Spanish customs tariffs, one will find in Senate Document no. 134, 57th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1902), in its Exhibit D, a comparison of the 1901 tariff with the Spanish tariff of 1891.[37]

Currency.—The List of the Library of Congress, under the heading Finance, cites a few Spanish and foreign treatises on Philippine currency prior to 1898, and the earlier American official reports on the subject. One will get more enlightenment upon the actual conditions prevailing during the last years of Spanish rule from memoranda and testimony in certain of these American reports than from any of the printed sources of date earlier than 1898. Nevertheless, the petition of the Manila Chamber of Commerce in 1895 reproduced in La Política de España en Filipinas, v, no. 105, brings out in part the highly unsatisfactory conditions produced by the Spanish government’s inaction and disregard of well-established economic principles. In ibid., vii, p. 217, is given the text of the decree of April 17, 1897, providing for the new Philippine silver peso which was beginning to circulate in the islands when American arms intervened, and which was proclaimed as a “settlement” of the Philippine currency evils, yet would obviously not have proved sufficient, unsupported as it was by provisions to sustain it in the face of the decline of silver. In much of the loose talk about economic depression in the Philippines since the wars of 1896–98 and 1899–1901, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that “hard times” had really begun before, during 1891–95 particularly, and that an unstable currency and exchange fluctuations had then played their part in producing these conditions; also that it was the Filipino laborer and small producer who was especially mulcted of his due by conditions produced in part officially and in part by governmental neglect.[38] In addition to the American documents listed by the Library of Congress, reference should be made, as regards currency and exchange evils before 1898, to the survey of the subject by the Schurman Commission (Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900, i, pp. 142–149), and the testimony of Manila bankers and business men in the same report (vol. ii); to magazine articles by Charles A. Conant printed as appendices in Report of the Commission on International Exchange (Washington, 1903); and, for a few details on previous conditions, with exchange tables, to the reports of E. W. Kemmerer, Chief of the Division of Currency, for 1904 and 1905.[39]

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—SPANISH ADMINISTRATION

Our object here being primarily the political progress of the Filipino people, we are concerned incidentally, as it were, with the subject of Spanish administration considered by itself alone. A good study of that subject, be it said, is lacking, and it may be recommended as an opportunity worth improving.

No one who has read even a little about the Philippines and Filipinos need be told that it is necessary to trace the political development of this people along two lines—unfortunately, it proved for Spain, lines that are divergent in considerable degree. Hence the subdivision of this heading, regarding, first, development under Spanish Administration and then the Filipino Propaganda, first of Reform and finally of Revolution. We are concerned in the first instance, that is, with reforms and progress realized in consequence of measures “from above.” It has already been said that very considerable progress had been made by the Spanish government from about 1860 onward, and was being made when the Tagálogs appealed to arms in 1896.[40] It is also true that the stimulus to the Filipino reform propaganda came in considerable degree from the movements toward betterment of the government itself, and from the agitations for reform in Spanish home politics.[41] But the development of the Filipino people, social, political, and economic, proceeded at last more rapidly, or less haltingly at least, than the progress in reform from above; the reform measures were only partial, often unpractical or ill-adapted to Philippine conditions; abuses of administration continued under so-called Liberal periods as well as in times of full clerical domination; in the action and reaction of Spanish politics, in which so often are party divisions merely nominal and superficial, the course of progress was so irregular and uncertain as to lend justification to the feeling of the Filipinos that they were being treated with insincerity; and all the while, in the midst of bitter partisan and religious controversy, conducted on both sides by writers most rabid and intemperate, the two peoples were constantly growing apart from each other, and were losing the mutual good-feeling of past years which, though always superficial in large part (as in any such domination of one race by another), had nevertheless had a foundation of genuine esteem.

The administrative organism.—For present purposes, it almost suffices to refer simply to the List of the Library of Congress under the headings Finance, Law, Political and Social Economy, and to Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca under the names of authors cited in the above List and the alphabetical headings Aranceles, Balanza, Boletín, Colección, Disposiciones, Exposición, Guía, Memoria, Proyectos (those of 1870 for all sorts of reforms proposed after the Spanish Revolution of 1868), and Reglamentos. The bibliography of Colonization published by the Library of Congress, besides these special works on the Philippines, lists also works on Spanish colonies and works on colonization in general.[42] Of the compilations, annuals, etc., listed in these bibliographies, special attention may be directed to those cited under the names of Rodriguez San Pedro (to 1869) and Rodriguez Berriz (to 1888). The most complete reference work on Spanish legislation, executive regulations, etc., is the Colección legislativa de España, and this work contains provisions enacted at Madrid with regard to the Philippines down to and including 1898. For the full official record, not only of enactments at Madrid, but of the forms under which these were carried into effect in the islands themselves, the Philippine governmental regulations, proclamations, etc., covering this entire period down to the end of Spanish rule, the official gazette of the Philippines (published under the name La Gaceta de Manila, 1860–1898) is the final source; but the writer knows of no full collection thereof in any library of the United States, though there is of course one in the archives at Manila. In this connection, it should be remarked that the governor-general had very wide, and in some respects not very exactly prescribed, powers, one of the most indefinite and sweeping of which was that requiring any general law or special provision of Madrid, before it actually acquired force in the Philippines, to be published with the governor-general’s “cúmplase” (“let it go into effect”). This might be, and usually was, a mere formality; but it was capable of being used so as at least to postpone the execution of a legislative decree or ministerial order which was distasteful to the chief authority of the Philippines, was violently opposed by the influential interests in the islands (particularly the ecclesiastical element), or, as happened in some cases, was manifestly inapplicable to Philippine conditions. Of course, the governor-general could readily be overruled, but even so, he could, if he desired, secure thus a delay and possible reconsideration of the matter, and the frequent changes of party administration in Spain encouraged delays of this and like sorts, not a few reform decrees remaining thus dead letters in the Philippines. It is often important, therefore, to discover not only what was the law or regulation provided for the Philippines in Madrid, but how it was put into force in the islands, or if it actually took effect at all. For this purpose, the Official Guide of the Philippines (Guía de forasteros to 1865, Guía oficial from 1879 to 1898) supplements in some respects the official gazette and the collection of Rodriguez Berriz.[43]

Of surveys and summaries of Spanish administration in the Philippines listed in the Bibliography may be mentioned Cabezas de Herrera’s Apuntes (1883) and Fabié’s Ensayo histórico (Madrid, 1896), also José de la Rosa’s La administración pública en Filipinas.[44] In the compilation by Jesuit fathers published at Washington in 1900 under the title El archipiélago filipino, there is to be found in vol. i, a survey of the governmental organization and the various activities of the government both under civil and ecclesiastical control. This is reproduced in English in vol. iv of Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900. In vol. i of this report of the Schurman Commission (part iv, chapter i, also pp. 122–123) is an abstract of the Spanish system of government which, so far as the framework of that government is concerned, serves the purpose for one who can not readily consult the Spanish official sources from which it was drawn.[45] The major portion of this abstract is occupied by a translation and summary of the law reforming the Philippine local governments in 1893, commonly called the “Maura Law” after the Colonial Minister who promulgated it.[46] As put in force by Governor-General Blanco, however, it was somewhat altered and revised, and many of its more promising provisions for local autonomy had in most towns remained in reality dead letters up to the time when revolt broke out in the Tagálog provinces in 1896; elections under the new law were suspended, and martial law established. For this law in its original text and as promulgated by Blanco, with regulations and model forms for the municipalities, see Felix M. Roxas’s Comentarios al reglamento provisional de las juntas provinciales (Manila, 1894).[47]

The administration in actual operation.—What most interests us is the actual working of this machine in Manila, the provinces and towns, and the works above cited will mostly provide for us only its skeleton on paper. To make it an effective machine, we must resort to personal testimony, occasional revelations thrown upon it by such of our writers as looked beyond mere routine, and perhaps most of all to the periodical literature of the times.[48] Few of the resident writers of the old régime thought it was quite patriotic, or would serve their personal interests, to discuss matters as frankly, for example, as did Sancianco y Goson.[49] Testimony before the Schurman Commission (vol. ii of its report) in 1899 brings out, here and there, revelations as to how the former government was actually administered.[50] Philippine government reports under American rule bring to light here and there revelations about the former administration, especially in fiscal and judicial matters. The customs collections benefited the treasury far less than they should have done; perhaps fully as much as was turned in was “absorbed” in one way and another.[51] Special surtaxes on the customs and port dues were collected at Manila for the improvement of its harbor from 1880 to 1898, amounting during the last five years alone to 3,500,000 pesos. Yet the work, when at last inaugurated, dragged along in desultory fashion and the value of the breakwater constructed and the equipment in hand in 1898 amounted to no more than $1,000,000 gold.[52]

Taxation.—No one of the works on administration just cited treats this subject in a comprehensive or satisfactory manner. The only special study of the subject that is known to the writer is Carl C. Plehn’s Taxation in the Philippines (Political Science Quarterly, xvi, pp. 680–711, and xvii, pp. 125–148), and the author of this excellent survey had to drag his data forth from the official records and compilations. This survey gives all the most necessary information as to kinds of taxes, their incidence, and amounts; but for the most part there lie outside of its scope the questions one wishes to have answered as to methods of collection and the working of the fiscal administration in general, the actual receipts and expenditures for government purposes, and particularly the special local revenues so far as separate from general revenues. Sancianco y Goson again helps to fill the gap, as regards the system of taxation prevailing before the abolition of the tobacco monopoly and the reform of the tribute and the corvee in 1884.[53] Anyone who has had experience with Spanish fiscal tables need not be told that they do not always show what they appear to show. It is thus that the writers who have reproduced in English since 1898 Philippine budgets for various years[54] have unwittingly misled their readers as to the real cost of government under Spain. The figures shown in these budgets were the totals of net collections (and expenditures), for ordinary purposes, for the central government of the islands alone. They did not include the purely local licenses and other taxes, the surcharges on general taxes for local government (to be expended under supervision of the central authorities), the percentages that went to collectors, the other fees forming part or all of the compensation of some judicial and other officials, special surcharges for port works and other purposes not covered in the ordinary budget, etc. Naturally, no estimate was included of the value of the forced-labor levy. The products of “squeeze” and “pickings,” in some cases so fully established as to be notorious, were of course not included; nevertheless, they represented part of the cost of government to the people. Finally, an ecclesiastical establishment, really a part of the government itself, drew support from the people in many ways beyond what would have been provided had not the power of government been behind it, under a system of voluntary contributions, for instance, apart from the communities which paid rent to the friars as landlords.[55]

The Spanish-Philippine debt of 40,000,000 pesos, incurred in 1897 in consequence of the insurrection, has not had sufficient notice as being originally the cause at Paris of the payment of $20,000,000 by the United States to Spain in connection with the clause of the treaty providing for the cession of the Philippines. Had the islands remained under Spanish sovereignty, they would have carried this their first public debt, expended wholly for war purposes, part of it being loaned for the payment of military operations in Cuba.[56]

Legal and judicial.—In the introduction to the List of the Library of Congress, under the heading Law, and on the pages of the List cited in that note will be found the formal bibliography of the subject.[57] Some references upon the actual conditions of the administration of justice in the Philippines have already been given. For this purpose, note also a comparison of the old criminal procedure with that introduced in 1899 in Military Governor on Civil Affairs (Rept. War Dept., 1900, i, part 10), pp. 17–20. The compilation of Rafael Morales y Prieto[58] is also to be specially mentioned for the criminal law and procedure, 1880 to 1894, and also for an appendix containing circulars as to judicial fees of various sorts. For brief summaries in English of the old judicial organizations see Exhibit J of the Report of the Taft Philippine Commission, 1900, a résumé by Chief Justice Arellano, especially for a statement as to the conflict of laws and codes, old and new, and as to the relative degree of authority of these codes; and Census of the Philippine Islands (Washington, 1905), chapter on the Judiciary.[59] Justice Willard’s brief Notes on the Spanish Civil Code (Manila, 1903) also merits consultation.

Science and material resources.—So far as the scientific work of the period has a direct bearing upon our present purposes, it relates rather to the section on Economic Development. But the materials are sufficiently listed in the Bibliography, and the subject is introduced here only to say that this is one of the lines along which, in recent years, Spanish administration was beginning to make progress. This was true, however, chiefly of forestry and mineralogy, and was due almost entirely to the Spanish officials Abella y Casariego, Centeno y García, and Sebastian Vidal y Soler, and to the stimulus of the work of foreign investigators, especially Germans. The work of the Jesuits in meteorology should also be specially mentioned. It will be noted that little headway was made in the matter most vital for the Philippines, viz., agriculture; nor can we say that even a beginning was made in industrial chemistry or other researches calculated to foster either incipient or undeveloped industries, while the public health service was lamentably defective and scientific research relating thereto amounted practically to nothing. Reference may be made to the already large list of publications of the present Philippine government’s Bureau of Science, Board of Health, Agriculture, Forestry, and Mining bureaus as showing the state of scientific investigation before 1898, also for bibliographical data.[60]

Moros and pagan peoples.—Ethnology as a science does not claim a place here.[61] We are concerned with the Spanish advance toward the establishment of effective control over large areas either partly occupied or kept in a wild state of nature by backward or warring tribes; though considerable headway was made in the last half of the nineteenth century, Spanish sovereignty over these areas was after all only nominal in 1898. Moreover, especially as regards the Moros, the materials and bibliography have been presented in other volumes of this series.[62] Attention is called to a useful compilation of Spanish campaigns against the Moros by Lieut. W. E. W. McKinley,[63] especially for its reviews of Malcampo’s campaign of 1876, Terrero’s of 1886–87, Weyler’s of 1888–91, and Blanco’s of 1894–96.[64] The American military reports from 1899 to date and reports on the Moro Province since 1903 contain scattered data on Spanish relations with the Moros and also the hill tribes of Mindanao. Similarly, the reports and publications of the Philippine Ethnological Survey from 1902 to date contain references to Spanish contact in recent years with the pagan peoples of Luzón, Mindoro, and Palawan.[65]

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTION

Religious Question.—It need scarcely be repeated that the “friar controversy” enters not only into this, but every phase of our discussion, and in one form or another, is touched upon in almost all our sources of information about the Philippines. For one thing, however, we are not here concerned with a historical judgment upon the work of the friars in the Philippines, though it is proper to note that there has of late been evident a reaction in their favor from the tendency common in the United States immediately after 1898 to judge them wholly by recent events, and their work is now more fairly viewed in its three-century perspective. We are, moreover, excused from entering upon a comprehensive survey of literature about the friars and their work in general by the fact that the subject has been constantly to the fore throughout this series. What is needed here is only the citation, supplementary to the Bibliography and to the great accumulation of bibliographical references in other volumes of this series, of certain titles easily overlooked (some because of recent publication) and of such special passages in all these works as elucidate particular matters of importance.

As with all the political literature of the Philippines, 1860–1898, the reader is to be warned against the exaggerations of both sides. Always and everywhere, religious privileges and prejudices have aroused discussion both violent and intolerant; and in this case we find, on one side, a defense of religious and ecclesiastical privileges of a medieval character and in a tone and temper inherited from those times. Nor, even setting the purely ecclesiastical and religious questions aside, need we expect to find in this literature any review or discussion written in a calm and scientific spirit. Spanish political literature is almost entirely polemic, and Spanish polemics is sui generis. So, as with the friars and their defenders, we find here the principles of modern political science, which appeal properly to cool reason and the tolerance of liberalism, put forward by Spaniards and Filipinos in a language and with a spirit that hark back to times which we have come to think of as far remote from ours.

The bitterness of tone, the intolerance and contempt of the Filipino, and the flaunting of “race superiority,” which came to characterize the writings of the friars and their defenders in this period—and which played no small part in leading the Filipinos to the brink of separation—are shown to the full in the numbers of La Política de España en Filipinas, 1891–98. The purpose of this organ was to combat in Spain the program of those who would further liberalize the régime of society and government in the Philippines. W. E. Retana, at first an associate editor with José Feced, was after 1895 its sole editor. Just what were the relations of the Madrid establishments of the Philippine religious orders with the business department of this periodical is not known; but it is admitted that “the friars helped by subscriptions” at least, and it has generally been supposed that their connection with it was really closer, in short that it was practically an organ of theirs.[66] In it will be found the pro-friar and anti-liberal account and view of events and matters current during the years of its publication, and also various studies of earlier years written from the same point of view. The case for the friars, especially for the period from 1863 on, may also be found quite typically set forth in a single volume of five hundred pages by a Philippine Augustinian, Padre Eladio Zamora (Las corporaciones religiosas en Filipinas, Valladolid, 1901).[67] Testimony given before Hon. William H. Taft in 1900 regarding the friars and their part in the old régime, by the Spanish archbishop and heads of the orders themselves as well as by Filipinos on the other side will be found in Senate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.

Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitled Lands held for ecclesiastical or religious uses in the Philippines, also gives information on the friars’ rural estates. One will find no comprehensive treatment of this subject before 1898, though it is usually touched upon, often with great inaccuracy, in the anti-friar pamphlets. For further data upon the subject in American official reports, see: Report of War Department, 1900, i, part 4, pp. 502–508 (General Otis); Report of Taft Philippine Commission, 1900, pp. 23–33; ibid., 1903, i, Exhibits F, G, H, and I; ibid., 1904, i, Exhibit I (Report on Examination of Titles to Friars’ Estates); and Report of Secretary of War, 1902, appendix O (Rome negotiations of 1902).[68]

The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over the subjection of friar-curates to ordinary jurisdiction had filled many pages of Philippine history in every century. But, when revived under somewhat new forms from about 1863 on, as remarked in the introduction to these notes, they speedily assumed a new and rather distinct phase. The introduction has noted the connection of the Jesuits’ return with the encroachment upon the Filipino secular priests and with the counter demand for the belated subjection of the friar-parishes to the ordinary ecclesiastical legislation and jurisdiction of the Church; under the encouragement of the 1868 revolution in Spain, these demands grew apace from 1868 to 1872, and became interlaced with strictly political demands, until finally we may regard the cause of the Filipino clergy as a part of the campaign for Filipino nationalism. The reaction of 1872 and immediately subsequent years checked it, and it has found full expression only since Spanish sovereignty was overthrown; but it is best considered in its broadest scope, as a part of the Filipino movement toward nationality, though it may have been but dimly or not at all felt as such by some of its most active protagonists.

For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in the List of the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca under the same name and numbers 681, 873, 1,348 and 1,962.[69] We must come down to the period of American rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate, who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands, has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook to review the entire subject in his Defensa del clero filipino and its supplement El clero secular filipino, both published at Manila in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino clergy by the Vatican.[70] Their claims are set forth in Memorial elevado á Sa Santidad El Papa León XIII por el Pueblo Filipino (Manila, 1900).[71] For the full exposition of the question, one must study it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903.[72]

Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.[73] But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial (which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.[74] The usually sober and colorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in the Revue des deux mondes for 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.[75]

Reforms and Demands for more. “Assimilation.”—The reactionists had regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavite mutiny as a “horrible example,” and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative matters. Till after 1880, the “Filipino cause” was in hiding. But meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education, and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers, in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos, Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down.[76] Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea, already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern; and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part) who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868–72, had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain—and all the reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief—at any rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates of Spanish-Philippine union. They carried the matter, indeed, to the extreme, in the campaign for “assimilation,” which has already been characterized as unpractical.

Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations, we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists before higher authority; the friars’ tenants around Kalamba, where José Rizal’s parents lived, challenged the administrator of that Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887;[77] and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and the friars, even the archbishop, had been almost openly intransigent about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times.[78]

In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero’s term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the successor of Terrero as Governor-General. The friars’ representations at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra[79] was still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal’s family.[80]

The Propagandists.—A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement.[81] It is significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties were, one may say, genuine “sons of the people” though associated with them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal, came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter started the first Filipino periodical of consequence, La Solidaridad, and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31, 1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face with La Política de España en Filipinas from 1891, and, as the latter is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the controversy, so La Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship, is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists.[82]

Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified privately with the cause. Del Pilar’s writings show nothing of the poet or dreamer, as do Rizal’s; he had, in some degree, an “economic mind,” though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events, it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan, to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently, lost faith in the ideals of “assimilation,” of Spanish-Filipino unity, which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos, especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too prone to temporize for safety’s sake, that the time had come to make the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan, and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to resort to Cuba’s example and not to political petitions only.[83]

Even in Noli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. In El filibusterismo (Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.

It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation of Noli me tangere,[84] and none at all of El filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two.[85] It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing his mental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana’s biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly, Nuestro Tiempo, 1904–06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere.[86] Rizal’s edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga’s Sucesos de las islas Filipinas has already been cited in connection with that work in VOLS. XV and XVI of this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotations are Rizal’s chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value.[87] There also deserve mention here Rizal’s discussion in 1889 of the future of his people,[88] and some of Blumentritt’s writings about Rizal and in his defense.[89]

Masonry, Liga Filipina, etc.—In almost all the Spanish writings about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find it ascribed primarily to “Franc-Masonería,” the terrible bugaboo in naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So, as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and foreigners, into which some of the half-castes and more well-to-do Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines, and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time when La Solidaridad was moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos, also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated deductions from such facts as came to light.[90] Interesting reading is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2, 1896, addressed to Governor-General Blanco.[91] It approves his deportation of the principales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations (forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom “there may be indications enough to believe that they are affiliated,” etc. (opening up thus a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives; so also he is to invite coöperation of “the parish-priests who belong to the religious orders.” As to punishments, it is preferable to deport the “suspected,” fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam, rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad and conduct a propaganda.

The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association called Solidaridad Filipina,[92] which came to nothing practical, and the Liga Filipina, organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July, 1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it that the Liga Filipina was really separatist in character, and the prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal’s conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League as prepared by Rizal[93] entirely support his assertion that the design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos, to “raise the arts and sciences,” and develop Filipino commercial and economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society, in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a “brotherhood,” and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese and others upon the trade of the country—in which respects it would likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions and Rizal’s deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges of its “brothers” to stand by each other for the “remedy of abuses” as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the idea of bringing his people together for such political action as might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.

The Katipunan.—We come now to the parting of the ways. Just as Marcelo del Pilar had concluded that the time was at hand for more vigorous measures, so on the other hand some of the Filipinos of education and social position (cautious also, in some cases, because of their property) had become discouraged and faint-hearted. The deportation of Rizal had its effect in 1892, and the local government reforms of 1893–94 were followed by a reactionary government in Spain which might nullify even such concessions, in the face of the constant demand for a check upon the half-liberal régime of Blanco. Some of the middle-class leaders of Manila, who had been drawn into the Masonic movement, had decided that the time had come to organize the masses, at least in the Tagálog provinces. Andrés Bonifacio, an employe of a foreign business house in Manila, was the leading spirit; gathering his ideas of modern reform from reading Spanish treatises on the French Revolution, he had imbibed also a notion that the methods of the mob in Paris were those best adapted to secure amelioration for the Filipinos. His ideas were those of a socialist, and of a socialist of the French Revolution type, and he thought them applicable to an undeveloped tropical country, where the pressure of industrial competition is almost unknown, and where with the slightest reasonable exertion starvation may be dismissed from thought. There was in this new propaganda an element of resentment toward the wealthy, upper-class Filipinos, the landed proprietors in general, as well as toward the friar landlords and the whole fabric of government and society resting on them. Summing up all the evidence he has been able to obtain on the Katipunan, the writer agrees with Felipe G. Calderón, a Filipino, in his opinion[94] that its socialistic character negatives the assertion of the Spanish writers that the upper-class Filipinos were its real supporters and directors, working in the background; and that, while this propaganda from below looked to independence and the substitution of Spanish rule by Filipino rule, yet it was without any political program, properly speaking, and there was merely a crude idea in the minds of the masses that they were somehow going to shake off their masters, get rid of the whites, and divide up the big estates not only of the friars but of Filipino landholders as well. Calderón does not discuss the alleged plan of the Katipunan to assassinate the whites, especially the friars. It is certain that such bloodthirsty ideas were in the minds of some of the leaders; but the more direct documentary evidence that has been produced on this point is perhaps open to the suspicion that it was manufactured in connection with the courts-martial which operated with such fury after the outbreak of revolt in 1896.[95] After all the furore that had been made, the actual revelations as to the importance of the organization, character of its leaders, number of its followers, and extent of its operations, would have made the whole affair somewhat ridiculous, had it not been represented that behind this humble organization of perhaps forty thousand initiates in the Tagálog towns there was a great program for setting up an independent government and that the upper-class Filipinos were simply using this organization as a stalking-horse. The truth appears to be that, while these over-important Katipunan leaders thought in terms grandiloquent, and led their humble followers in the towns around Manila most affected by the propaganda to indulge in futile and ridiculous dreams of a coming millennium (while some of themselves were quarreling over the obols contributed), the movement was mostly talk even up to the time when an Augustinian curate in Manila made himself the hero of the rabid Spanish element in Manila by “exposing” an organization about which the governmental authorities had had partial information for some weeks, or even months. Bonifacio started this separate organization in 1894, but Calderón seems to be correct in saying that work in the towns outside of Manila was only begun in the spring of 1896. The humble followers were assured that the Japanese government would help them oust Spain, and that rifles to arm the whole population would come from there. But Japan never in the least violated her obligations to Spain, and, if the leaders even bought any rifles in Japan, they must have been few indeed.[96] When Bonifacio sent an emissary to Dapitan in the spring of 1896, to propose to Rizal a plan of armed revolt and that he should escape on a steam vessel sent for the purpose, and join in this campaign, Rizal rejected the proposition as folly, and displayed his great impatience with it.[97] On every ground, it seems probable that, had not Friar Gil and the Spanish press of Manila been so insistent on giving great publicity to some Katipunan engraving-stones, receipts for dues, etc., kept in hiding by the affiliated employes of a Spanish newspaper, the revolt might never have come about at all. Certainly, no date was set for it (though various future dates had been vaguely discussed), till the sudden arrests of August 19 and 20, 1896, sent Bonifacio and his companions fleeing to Bulakan Province where, practically without arms, they appealed to their fellow-workers in Bulakan, Manila, and Cavite provinces to rise in revolt on August 30. The friars and the rabid element of Spanish patriots were so anxious to force the hand of Blanco, and to discredit him, that, it may be, they forced upon a military commander whose troops were mostly in Mindanao a revolt that, a few months further on, might either have dissipated itself or have been avoided by an adequate show of force.[98]

Because the friars are so much to the fore in all the discussions of these events, we must not overlook the part played by governmental abuses, as already described. The Civil Guard, given a more extensive organization and scope of action during these closing years of Spanish rule, by its abuses (committed, for the most part, by Filipinos upon their own fellows) played probably the foremost part in drawing odium upon the government.[99] Next to police abuses, and sometimes allied with them, were the misuses of the powers of local government (with which alone the great majority of the people came into direct contact), especially in regard to the levy of forced labor; and here again, the humble Filipino’s complaint was chiefly against his own fellow-countrymen of power and position. But, summing up all the administrative abuses and all the evils of the government system, we are still left a long way from agreement with the friars’ assertions that the masses loved them and that governmental abuses were the sole cause of rebellion.[100]

Insurrection of 1896–97.—No history from the Filipino side has yet come to light, and there are certain points that can be cleared up only by the frank testimony of the Filipino participants.[101] We are dependent chiefly on Spanish sources, written in the passion of the times by men not careful about sifting the facts. All things considered, the two best sources, both for what they say and for what may be inferred from them, are the so-called Memorias of two Governor-Generals, prepared in order to defend their administrations before the Spanish Senate and the public; that of Blanco covering the preparatory stage and early months of the rebellion, that of Primo de Rivera its closing stages. Between these two Governor-Generals, the work of Monteverde y Sedano covers the military operations under Polavieja.

Blanco’s Memoria[102] affords, unconsciously, the most severe indictment that could be passed on Spain’s fitness to hold the Philippines (or her other colonies) in 1898. This man was really of liberal temperament; he had formed a just conception of the real insignificance of the Katipunan movement; and he strove, when the crisis was prematurely forced on him, to restrain the vindictiveness of the rabid Spanish element, and really believed in the efficacy of a “policy of attraction.” But instead of setting forth on broader grounds the reasons for his course of action and discussing with sincerity and frankness a policy for the Philippines, he felt compelled after his return to Spain to bow before the howls of press and public. He defends himself before his clerical-conservative critics not by showing the folly of their illiberal policy for the colony, but endeavors to prove that they were wrong in accusing him of lack of severity as well as of energy. Thus we learn (p. 20) that, even under a Blanco, before the outbreak came, one thousand and forty-two persons had been deported “as Masons, disaffected and suspicious or harmful to their towns.” During the night of August 19–20, 1896, following the sensation created by Friar Gil, there were forty-three arrests in Manila, and three hundred more within the next week. During September, thirty seven men taken in arms were shot, after summary trials (p. 25.) The number of Filipinos, mostly men of some position, who had not taken up arms, but were arrested for alleged complicity in the Katipunan, and involved in the trials before a special court for conspiracy and sedition, very soon mounted to five hundred, including those sent in from the provinces. Some remained incomunicados for more than forty days. The men executed from September 4 to December 12, 1896, when Blanco surrendered command to Polavieja, numbered seventy-four in all.[103]

Evidence as to the “reign of terror” that was inaugurated in Manila may be drawn from the Spanish treatises to be cited, wherein the episode is recited with gusto. The Spanish press of Manila for 1896–98; also that of Spain, especially Philippine letters of 1896–98 in La Política de España en Filipinas, El Heraldo, El Imparcial and El Correo of Madrid, furnished the original source of information for these writers, and should be used to supplement this history of the insurrection. Transcriptions of testimony taken by the special court for sedition and conspiracy appear in Retana’s Archivo, iii and iv, and evidences that the more yielding witnesses had their phraseology, and sometimes their statements of fact, dictated to them will be noted by the careful reader, especially if he be familiar with Spanish methods of judicial procedure. References to the common use of torture to make witnesses (in some cases eager enough to insure their own safety by “delation”) sign such testimony, will be found in the Filipino press since 1898, occasionally also in Spanish periodicals of Manila since 1898.[104] These same sources also supplement the citations on Rizal already given, for the story of his trial and execution, and the increase of severity and terrorism after Polavieja took charge. They are also, in the main, our sole, fragmentary sources on the state of Cavite during insurgent control of the province, the insurgent organization, etc.[105]

The Spanish treatises and pamphlets on the insurrection are:[106] José M. del Castillo y Jimenez, El Katipunan, ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas (Madrid, 1897). Partial accounts of events of 1896–97; already characterized as rabid and cheaply patriotic.

Ricardo Monet y Carretero, Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897 (Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.

E. Reverter y Delmas.—Filipinos por España. Narración episódica de la rebelión en el archipiélago Filipino (Barcelona, 1897); 2 vols. The title of a later edition is La insurrección de Filipinas. Known to the writer only by title.[107]

Enrique Abella y Casariego, Filipinas (Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.

Federico de Monteverde y Sedano, Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897 (Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.

Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897 (Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint from Revue militaire de l’étranger.

L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar (Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.

Manuel Sastrón—La insurrección en Filipinas y guerra hispano-americana (Madrid, 1901).[108] Written by a Spanish official in Manila during this time, and composed of accounts and documents drawn mainly from the press of Manila. It is, however, the most useful arsenal of data.

Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898 (appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, in Report of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.

M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues. (Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.

The Pact of Biak-na-bató.—Purposely, the word “treaty,” so often applied to this transaction, is here avoided; for, apart from technical objections to a word that applies to agreements between sovereign powers, this was no treaty in any sense of the word. There was some mystery surrounding the negotiations by which the insurgent chiefs surrendered a few hundred nondescript firearms and retired to Hongkong; untrue or half-true charges were bandied back and forth, for political effect, in the Cortes and the press of Spain; and, of the chief actors in the affair, only Primo de Rivera has given his account—perhaps not with entire frankness.[109] Aguinaldo has confined his statements on the subject to the most brief assertions of a general nature[110] to the effect that reforms by the Spanish government were promised. Primo de Rivera categorically denies this; while Pedro A. Paterno, the go-between, has made no statement at all during the nine years that have passed since the conflicting statements have been before the public, involving directly the question of his own veracity and good faith. Primo de Rivera is an ex parte witness, to be sure; but his statements upon the more vital points involved are corroborated by the very insurgent documents on this subject captured by the American army in 1899 and now in the War Department at Washington.[111] Primo de Rivera says that, when Paterno presented a paper early in the negotiations containing a full program of reforms,[112] he rejected the document absolutely, saying he could not discuss such matters with the insurgent chiefs, that the Spanish government would accord such reforms as it thought wise, and he could only interpose his good offices to make recommendations in that respect. The copy of this document now in the War Department at Washington shows the clauses about reform to have been crossed out. Primo de Rivera says that, from that time forth, the negotiation was purely on the basis of a payment to the rebel chiefs to surrender their arms, order the insurgents in the other provinces to do the same, and emigrate to foreign parts. The only documents bearing signatures on both sides, either of those published at Washington or elsewhere, refer exclusively to these particular points of money, surrender of arms, and program of emigration, though Paterno inserted in a preliminary of the final contract on these subjects a clause as to reposing confidence in the Spanish government to “satisfy the desire of the Filipino people.”[113] Primo de Rivera recommended the transaction to his government for one reason, expressly because it would “discredit [desprestigiando] the chiefs selling out and emigrating.”[114]

The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, under authority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”[115] The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown[116]); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “think it prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”[117]

Enough has been developed to show the demoralizing character of the transaction. In justice to Aguinaldo and his closest associates, it is to be said that they had kept the money practically intact, for use in a possible future insurrection, until they spent some of it for arms after Commodore Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay.[118] Nor are we able to say categorically that Aguinaldo and the other leaders in Biak-na-bató were not led to believe that specific reforms had been promised verbally by Primo de Rivera in the name of his government; Aguinaldo and Paterno could clear up that matter, but neither speaks. Just what informal discussion of this subject there was between Paterno and Primo de Rivera, we do not know; but the latter’s own version will warrant the conclusion that he at least permitted Paterno to lay before the insurgents the fact that he was making recommendations on this line, and to hold out the expectation of results, once he was not confronted with armed rebellion.[119] He declares that a scheme of Philippine reform, covering also the friar question, had been drawn up and agreed upon, when Premier Cánovas was assassinated and the Conservatives soon after fell from power; but he does not tell us what were the reforms as to the friars. Primo de Rivera continued to give his ideas as to the need for reform in provision of parishes, church fees, local government, education, civil service, etc., after the Liberals came into power. Yet, though stating the case against the friars in strong terms, virtually confirming every charge made against them, he appears to have advised only a curtailment of their power and a more rigid discipline, not their elimination as parish-priests, which was the aim of most of the insurgents.[120] When a Spanish editor in Manila began writing in February, 1898, of political reforms in the direction of “autonomy,” without submitting his articles to previous censure, Primo de Rivera suspended publication of the periodical.[121] That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in expectation, in late 1897 and early 1898, of the announcement of some comprehensive scheme of Philippine reform, is apparent from the press of the time.[122] The Liberal press of Madrid and Barcelona was also actively agitating reform for the Philippines, and Spanish Liberals and Filipinos addressed petitions on the subject to the government at Madrid.[123] The general belief at Manila was also that some sort of promise of reforms had passed at Biak-na-bató, even that it included the gradual withdrawal of the friars.[124] That the religious orders themselves knew that they were the storm-center is sufficiently shown by the Memorial of April 21, 1898, reproduced post, pp. 227–286.[125]

The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it under a plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?

The fact is, one can sustain any view he prefers to take of this subject, by detached citations from documents of one sort or another. The real answer is to be found only by a careful survey of all the evidence as to Filipino activities and aspirations. We note that, when Rizal discusses the possibility of future independence for his people, he sets it as a century hence. We need not take him literally, nor, on the other hand, need we say his title was merely hypocritical, and he was insidiously inciting his people to think of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warned him to restrain his and their youthful impatience on the subject. In discussing Del Pilar and Rizal, it has already been pointed out how the former changed places with the younger man and became the more impatient of the two; and the connection of this growing impatience with the more violent nature of the Katipunan has been shown. So it is not enough to cite detached passages from Rizal or Del Pilar, for example, to prove either that they were just filibusters under cover of protestations or, on the contrary, that they never dreamed of independence.[126] The propagandists felt differently at different times, under the pressure sometimes of self-interest, influenced sometimes by momentary incidents or passions. It is plain that, with some of them at least, a new tone had been adopted toward Spain when, at the beginning of 1896, the manifesto of the Katipunan organ to the Filipinos bitterly exclaimed:

“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in succession La Solidaridad voluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.

“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continual lamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”

Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest in El Filibusterismo (1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitous acts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”

Doubtless Rizal felt that his people had made progress toward social independence in the five years that followed, till the Katipunan outbreak came; but he condemned that beforehand as a foolish venture, and reprobated it as harmful to Filipino interests before his death. Though in a sense this was a movement for independence, we have seen that only vague ideas of a political organization were in the minds of the leaders, while the deluded masses who followed them with, for the most part, bolos only, had virtually no idea of such an organization, except that Filipinos should succeed Spaniards.[127] The prematurely commenced revolt, as it gained at the outset, some defensive advantages over the bad military organization of Spain, developed ideas and aspirations quite beyond the early crude dreams of its leaders; they were really surprised at their own (temporary) success, and emboldened thereby.[128] Even after the loss of Cavite, when the revolutionists were hemmed in and hiding in the Bulakan Mountains, they put forward, in an “Assembly” at Biak-na-bató, a more comprehensive and ambitious political program (a Filipino Republic, in short) than had ever before been drawn up by Filipinos.[129] We know also that no small part was played by the “reign of terror” in turning even the moderate Filipinos against Spanish rule as an entirety. We should be far from the truth if we should say that this Tagálog rebellion, and the demonstrations of sympathy with it in other provinces, brought the Filipino people together in a unanimous sentiment for independence. That it did greatly stimulate this feeling is certain. He would be a bold man who would now assert that independence was not the common aspiration, when outside pressure suddenly pricked the bubble of Spanish authority in 1898 and released the people for the free expression of their sentiments. But he is equally bold who asserts that the Filipino people had been suddenly and miraculously transformed into a real nation by these events, or that the Aguinaldo government had the support of or really represented the whole country, above all of the most sober-thinking Filipinos.

[1] Some credit should also be given to the Royal Philippine Company (Real Compañía de Filipinas), which, though unsuccessful financially, stimulated considerably the development of Philippine agriculture between 1790 and 1820, after which year it did little until its dissolution. [↑]

[2] Comyn’s Estado says that in 1810 the number of Spaniards, born in the Peninsula or elsewhere, and of Spanish mestizos, of both sexes and all ages, classes, and occupations, did not exceed 3,500 to 4,000. Diaz Arenas (Memorías históricas y estadísticas de Filipinas; Manila, 1850) quotes official figures showing 293 Spaniards settled in the provinces, outside of Manila and Tondo, in 1848; and he records 7,544 as the number of Spanish mestizos in the islands, including Tondo, as Manila province was then called. Cavada (Historia geográfica, geológica y estadística de Filipinas; Manila, 1876), taking his figures apparently from the governmental statistics as to houses and their occupants for 1870, gives for that year 3,823 Spaniards (all but 516 of them males) from the Peninsula, and 9,710 “Filipino-Spaniards,” the latter classification apparently including Spanish mestizos with such pure-blooded Spaniards as had been born in the Philippines. Among his Peninsular Spaniards would be included over 1,000 members of religious orders, an approximately equal number of soldiers, and the civil officials of Spanish blood (except a relatively small number born in the islands themselves, mostly in the minor categories of officials). J. F. del Pan (La poblacion de Filipinas; Manila, 1883), and F. Cañamaque (Las íslas Filipinas; Madrid, 1880) both report the parochial statistics of 1876 as showing the total of Spaniards, apart from members of the religious orders, the civil service, and the army and navy, to be 13,265; Cañamaque speaks of this latter class as “Spaniards without official character (Peninsulars and Filipinos),” and Del Pan calls them “persons not subject to the capitation-tax on account of being of the Spanish race.” At least some of the Spanish mestizos in the islands would appear to have been included in this total. A statistical résumé for 1898 (La Política de España en Filipinas, 1898, pp. 87–92) gives the number of Spaniards in the Philippines at the end of Spanish rule as 34,000 (of whom 5,800 are credited as officers and employees of governments, 3,800 as the normal number of Spaniards in army and navy, and 1,700 as of the clerical estate). These figures, like various other estimates in pamphlets of recent years, are considerably exaggerated; they are reconcilable only on the supposition that they include not only Spaniards of Philippine birth, but also Spanish mestizos. In 1903, only 3,888 Peninsular Spaniards were found in the archipelago. The census of 1896 would have shown separately Spaniards and Spanish mestizos; but it was not completed for all provinces, and has never been published. The foregoing estimates and figures do, however, show the great relative increase of Spaniards and Spanish influence in the Philippines in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Apropos of Mr. LeRoy’s note the following is of interest as regards the population of the eighteenth century. “The number of Spaniards who are in the part of Manila not occupied by the friars is very inconsiderable; in 1767, they did not exceed eight hundred persons. It can be said that the friars are masters of the city, for all the houses, except perhaps five or six, belong to them. This makes a fine revenue for them, since the houses are very dear—from two hundred to four hundred piasters (one thousand to two thousand livres). They are still dearer in the suburb of Santa Cruz, where they are worth at least five hundred piasters, for it is there that all the foreign merchants from India or China lodge. Manila is still peopled by the Tagálogs, who are the natives at once of this city and of its bishopric; the Tagálogs serve the Spaniards as domestics, or live by some petty trade or occupation.” (Le Gentil, Voyage, ii, p. 104.)—Eds. [↑]

[3] “The Spanish-Filipino Bank, the oldest bank in the islands, was founded (1852) by an order of the Spanish government uniting the obras pías funds of the four orders of friars in the Philippines.” (Census of Philippine Islands, iv, p. 541).—Eds. [↑]

[4] In the tariff revision of 1891, Spanish goods in Spanish ships were made free of customs duties in Philippine ports; prior to that time they had, as a rule, paid one-half the duties assessed on foreign goods. [↑]

[5] In 1898, for instance, when the war with the United States began, the governor-general of the Philippines who had recently negotiated a peace with the insurgent chiefs, had just turned over his place to a new man, a stranger in the islands, and sailed for home. The new Liberal administration, which came into power in Spain in October, 1897, had also sent to the Philippines a new set of provincial governors, to take the place of men who had served, in many cases, less than two years. Some of these new governors had not gone to their posts when Commodore Dewey’s squadron arrived, and they were consequently blockaded in Manila. [↑]

[6] This was accomplished on December 31, 1882—(but see post, p. 141).—Eds. [↑]

[7] F. Jagor, Reisen in den Philippinen (Berlin, 1873), p. 287.

Also of interest in this connection are Jagor’s remarks in the following two citations from the same book (pp. 288 and 289, respectively). “Government monopolies mercilessly administered, grievous disregard of the creoles and the rich mestizos, and the example of the United States, these were the principal causes of the loss of the American possessions [of Spain]; and the same causes are menacing the Philippines also. Of the monopolies sufficient account has been given in the text. Mestizos and creoles are not, it is true, shut out, as formerly in America, from all offices; but they feel that they are deeply injured and despoiled by the crowds of office seekers whom the frequent changes of ministers at Madrid bring to Manila. Also the influence of the American elements is at least discernible on the horizon, and will come more to the front as the relations of the two countries grow closer. At present these are still of little importance; in the meantime commerce follows its old routes, which lead to England and the Atlantic ports of the Union. Nevertheless, he who attempts to form a judgment as to the future destiny of the Philippines cannot fix his gaze only on their relations to Spain; he must also consider the mighty changes which within a few decades are being effected on that side of our planet. For the first time in the world’s history, the gigantic nations on both sides of a gigantic ocean are beginning to come into direct intercourse: Russia, which alone is greater than two divisions of the world together; China, which within her narrow bounds contains a third of the human race; America, with cultivable soil enough to support almost three times the entire population of the earth. Russia’s future rôle in the Pacific Ocean at present baffles all calculations. The intercourse of the two other powers will probably have all the more important consequences when the adjustment between the immeasurable necessity for human labor-power on the one hand, and a correspondingly great surplus of that power on the other, shall fall on it as a problem.” “But in proportion as the commerce of the western coast of America extends the influence of the American elements over the South Sea, the ensnaring spell which the great republic exercises over the Spanish colonies will not fail to assert itself in the Philippines also. The Americans appear to be called upon to bring the germ planted by the Spaniards to its full development. As conquerors of the New World, representatives of the body of free citizens in contradistinction to the nobility, they follow with the axe and plow of the pioneer where the Spaniards had opened the way with cross and sword. A considerable part of Spanish America already belongs to the United States, and has, since that occurred, attained an importance which could not have been anticipated either during Spanish rule or during the anarchy which ensued after and from it. In the long run, the Spanish system cannot prevail over the American. While the former exhausts the colonies through direct appropriation of them to the privileged classes, and the metropolis through the drain of its best forces (with, besides, a feeble population), America draws to itself the most energetic elements from all lands; and these on her soil, free from all trammels, and restlessly pushing forward, are continually extending further her power and influence. The Philippines will so much the less escape the influence of the two great neighboring empires, since neither the islands nor their metropolis are in a condition of stable equilibrium. It seems desirable for the natives that the opinions here expressed shall not too soon be realized as facts, for their training thus far has not sufficiently prepared them for success in the contest with those restless, active, most inconsiderate peoples; they have dreamed away their youth.” Some writers have carried the evolution one step farther, as for instance, the following: See Count Edward Wilczek’s interesting study on “The historical importance of the Pacific Ocean,” in H. F. Helmolt’s History of the World (N. Y., 1902), i, pp. 566–599; he predicts a future contest which “will have to decide whether, by the permanent occupation of the northern Pacific, the white race shall accomplish its world-embracing destiny, or whether, with the goal already in sight, and for the first time in its history, it will have to make way for a stronger”—that is, for the yellow race, in the form of Japan and China.—Eds. [↑]

[8] See the most important of these decrees in our educational appendix, VOL. XLVI.—Eds. [↑]

[9] In 1899 and 1900, the American government continued the subsidies to the Jesuits to sustain the normal school and Manila Ateneo. With the establishment, however, of an educational system under the Taft Commission, the subsidy to the Ateneo was withdrawn and a Manila public high school established. The normal school was established in the old buildings of the exposition of 1887, and was the first special school organized under Dr. Atkinson. The vacation normal school is due to Dr. Barrows, who established it in the spring vacation of 1901, in order that the teachers from the provinces might be gathered together for brief instruction in new methods, exchange of ideas, and general inspiration. The regular normal school has been a very notable feature since 1901, and in some ways the most striking thing in the new school system. Its woman’s dormitory has been a center of Filipino gatherings and a constant theme of praise by the Filipino press. (From a previous communication to the Editors by J. A. LeRoy.) See VOL. XLVI, p. 95, note.—Eds. [↑]

[10] This exchange of Mindanao missions by the Recollects for parishes in and around Manila and in Mindoro was closely connected with the pro-seculars’ campaign made in Manila and Madrid at that time—Father Burgos of the Cathedral standing out preëminently on behalf of his fellows the native priests, a direct step in the way toward his execution in connection with the Cavite mutiny of 1872. (James A. LeRoy, in a personal letter dated January 6, 1906.) See XXVIII, pp. 342, 343.—Eds. [↑]

[11] See post, pp. 170, 171, note 119. With the three priests was also executed one Francisco Saldúa. Máximo Inocencio, Enrique Paraíso, and Crisanto de los Reyes were sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. Others were also condemned to death, some of whose sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. The following persons were deported to Marianas: Antonio María Regidor, 8 years; Máximo Paterno; Agustín Mendoza, parish priest of the district of Santa Cruz de Manila; Joaquín Pardo de Tavera, a regidor of Manila and university professor, 6 years. Some of the latter and others lost their qualification as advocates of the Audiencia.—Eds. [↑]

[12] In a pamphlet by Manrique A. Lallave (Madrid, 1872), an ex-Dominican missionary from Filipinas, he declares that “the friars at that time possessed property to the value of eleven millions of pesos fuertes.” (Vindel, Catálogo biblioteca filipina, no. 1846.)—Eds. [↑]