The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 52, 1841-1898 / 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

by Unknown

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.

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[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. [↑]

[13] See post, p. 182.—Eds. [↑]

[14] Bibliography of the Philippine Islands (Bureau of Insular Affairs, Washington, 1903), comprising under one cover these two volumes which were also published separately by the Library of Congress: A List of Books (with references to periodicals) on the Philippine Islands in the Library of Congress, compiled by A. P. C. Griffin; and the Biblioteca Filipina of Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera. For information regarding general bibliographies and bibliographical lists of Philippina, see VOL. LIII of this series. [↑]

[15] Reference has already been made in another footnote to the German original; English and Spanish translations of this work, both defective, were also published. It has not been deemed necessary in this brief sketch to append the bibliographical details, except when they may not be found in Bibliography of the Philippine Islands, under the names of the authors herein cited. [↑]

[16] Particularly his Las colonias españolas de Asia. Islas Filipinas (Madrid, 1880). [↑]

[17] It is closely related also with the political questions of this period, with the friar controversy, and with matters of administration as such. [↑]

[18] El Diario de Manila was established in 1848, a name which was changed to El Boletin oficial de Filipinas in 1852, and again to the former name in 1860; papers called El Comercio were founded in 1858 (probably), and in 1869; La Oceanía Española, in 1877 (which succeeded El Porvenir Filipino); La Voz Española was founded in 1888 under the name of La Voz de España, the issue of March 5, 1892, marking the change of name. See Retana’s El periodismo.—Eds. [↑]

[19] See also Griffin’s List for a list of periodical articles (mainly from American magazines, although some foreign titles are also noted.)—Eds. [↑]

[20] Retana reproduced this Reglamento de Asuntos de Imprenta of 1857 in volume i of the Archivo. Retana, who was for a time a newspaper man in Manila, says it was not known by the newspaper editors or by the political censor; in other words, the censor did about as he pleased. [↑]

[21] The Filipino press of propaganda, published abroad, will merit attention further on, when “Reform and Revolution” are discussed. [↑]

[22] Census of the Philippine Islands, 4 vols. (Washington, 1903). In vol. ii, pp. 17–22, are tables comparing Spanish estimates and censuses, with references to such. [↑]

[23] Archipiélagos filipinos en la Oceanía, Censo de población veríficado el 31 de Diciembre de 1887 … (Manila, 1889). [↑]

[24] For population alone, there may also be mentioned the table of various civil and ecclesiastical estimates, based mainly on the returns of the tributes, in Sancianco y Goson’s El progreso de Filipinas (Madrid, 1881), pp. 175–186; and the summaries of five Spanish censuses and tables of the 1896 census in Report of the Philippine Commission, 1901, ii, appendices HH and II. [↑]

[25] If possible, Pardo de Tavera’s bibliographical comments should be checked up by those made by Retana to some of these works in his various bibliographies.—Eds. [↑]

[26] See Library of Congress List, etc., pp. 9–11. [↑]

[27] Cited in Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca as nos. 269 and 2,003. The American consular reports are given in a separate table in the Library of Congress List, pp. 178–180. Only those of Consul Webb, 1888–90, need be mentioned as containing some data of interest. [↑]

[28] Both the papers cited have subsequently been reproduced in several other government bulletins, which will be cited in their places. E. W. Hardin’s Report on the Financial and Industrial Condition of the Philippines (Senate Document no. 169, 55th Congress, 3rd session) was similarly reproduced. All three of these documents, which were useful to American inquirers immediately following the events of 1898, may be disregarded by the student who resorts to the Spanish and other sources herein given. [↑]

[29] A 36-page pamphlet, Commercial Progress in the Philippine Islands (London, 1905), by A. M. Regidor y Jurado and J. W. T. Mason, is quite inaccurate and in part gossipy, but may be noted as containing some nineteenth-century data on foreign traders and bankers not elsewhere in print. [↑]

[30] Spanish Public Land Laws in the Philippine Islands and their History to August 13, 1898 (Washington, Bureau of Insular Affairs, 1901). These laws and conditions of land tenure under Spanish rule are also succinctly summarized by D. R. Williams in Official Handbook of the Philippines (Manila, 1903); in other respects the Handbook, a Washington library compilation prepared for the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, has no independent value and is often inaccurate. [↑]

[31] According to Retana, who cites this Informe emitido … sobre bancos hipotecarios (Madrid, 1889) in the Estadismo, ii, p. 151*. Pardo de Tavera (Biblioteca, p. 76) says that this report led to the official decision that, in view of the general lack of titles, the establishment of land banks would be premature. [↑]

[32] Following are special citations from his El progreso de Filipinas: Land tax, and arguments therefor, pp. 9, 10, 28–34, 48–53, 56, 65–80; tax on real estate in towns, pp. 81–89; deficiency of provisions for obtaining title to unoccupied lands, pp. 48–53, 54–56, 57–66, 222–223; data (mostly from Jordana y Morera) regarding development of forest and agricultural resources and amount of cultivated land, province by province, to 1873–74, pp. 187–204; value assigned to land, province by province, result of official inquiry of 1862, pp. 212–223; Filipino laborer and his share in development of agricultural resources, pp. 223–237; rates of interest on real-estate loans, pp. 253–254; land measures in use, pp. 257–258. [↑]

[33] The intemperate and fantastic writings of “Quioquiap” (Pablo Feced) in El Diario de Manila and La Política de España en Filipinas are in point. [↑]

[34] See also ibid., i, pp. 150–159. [↑]

[35] These tables entirely supersede those presented, earlier in the period of American occupation, in the Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance of the United States for November, 1899, and July, 1901 (which also reproduced the memoranda of Greene, Tornow, and others, already cited). Some of the tables presented in Bulletin No. 14, Section of Foreign Markets, Department of Agriculture (Washington, 1898) give in convenient form Philippine trade statistics by countries, both for imports and exports. [↑]

[36] El progreso de Filipinas, pp. 238–244, foreign commerce, entry of Spanish and foreign vessels, etc., for 1868; p. 244, table of exports for 1871, in quantities (66 per cent of the hemp and over 50 per cent of the sugar going to the United States in that year); pp. 245–249, internal trade and inter-island shipping; pp. 253–255, rates of interest and kinds of money in circulation; pp. 255–258, weights and measures in use (about 1880). [↑]

[37] Questions of customs administration belong with the subject of Spanish administration, further on. [↑]

[38] It is another instance of the old tendency to emphasize political evils and remedies, and neglect economic considerations, in the Philippines. The labor monograph of V. S. Clark, above cited, brings out the fact that higher wages for Filipinos since 1898 are in part only a compensation for the previous penalization of the Filipino laborer through a declining medium of exchange. [↑]

[39] In Report of Philippine Commission, 1904, iii, pp. 487–503; and ibid., 1905, iv, pp. 71–87. [↑]

[40] See M. Sastrón, La insurrección en Filipinas (Madrid, 1897 and 1901), chap. i, for a summary of the reforms of the ’80’s and 1893. [↑]

[41] It is thus that, from their point of view, the Philippine friars and their Spanish clerical-conservative defenders have branded the Filipino campaign, eventually for separation, as entirely produced and fostered by Spanish Liberalism. [↑]

[42] List of Books (with references to periodicals) relating to the theory of colonization, government of dependencies, protectorates, and related topics, by A. P. C. Griffin (Washington, 1900). It is inserted also in O. P. Austin’s Colonial administration, 1800–1900 (from Summary of Commerce and Finance of the United States for March, 1903). [↑]

[43] The Statesman’s Yearbook and such general works of reference will merit consultation; but it should be remarked that, prior to 1898, encyclopedias, annuals, etc., commonly treated the Philippines rather cursorily and not always accurately, while, generally speaking, the Spanish colonies have had very inadequate consideration at the hands of English and American authors and editors. For the special subjects of military and naval organization, see Salinas y Angulo’s Legislación militar (Manila, 1879), and Rodriguez Trujillo’s Memoria sobre la Marina (Manila, 1887), both cited in the Bibliography. [↑]

[44] Published in La España Oriental, Manila, 1893, and La Política de España en Filipinas, 1893–94. See Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca, no. 1496; note also his no. 2702, under Tiscar. [↑]

[45] It is to be emphasized, however, that this abstract shows only the framework of that government, and that just as it stood (on paper) at the beginning of 1898, its author not having traced the development of that organism even for a few years back nor learned that some of the provisions he outlined were not really in practice. [↑]

[46] Grifol y Aliaga (vol. XLVI, p. 109, note 48) is very naïve, seeking to waive away the effect of the Maura law’s plain provisions in the same way as did some friar and other writers. In his decree providing regulations for carrying out the law, Blanco explained that the parish priests were to retain their inspection of the schools as regards the teaching of religion and morals. The municipal tribunals were expressly created as schoolboards—an institution of which Zamora (Las corporaciones religiosas) bitterly complains. In reality, however, this reform remained a dead letter in most villages, except in the provinces most advanced in the propaganda, where the Filipino local officials asserted their power of regulation (Bulakan, Batangas, Manila, etc.). (From a previous communication from Mr. LeRoy.)—Eds. [↑]

[47] Pedro A. Paterno’s Regimen municipal de las islas Filipinas (Madrid, 1893), reproducing Minister Maura’s decree in its original form, with notes, was therefore premature. Except in some of its comments, however, this work is at least not merely ridiculous, as are this author’s writings on an imaginary primitive religion and civilization of the Filipinos. Don Pedro has a lively imagination, too lively for politics and history, but capable of providing good entertainment when he exercises it as a dramatist. One finds him much more pleasing in this rôle than as a Filipino reform propagandist, though in the latter capacity he seems to have been taken very seriously by Doctor Schurman and Mr. Foreman, and by various Spanish officials before them, including, for a time, Governor-Generals Primo de Rivera and Augustín. [↑]

[48] Once more, the Manila press since 1898 merits attention here. The Filipino press has not been always fair in treating of the old régime, but both in the Filipino and the Spanish press of Manila since 1898 some things have been brought to light which were either suppressed for private gossip or not frankly discussed at the time of their conference. [↑]

[49] Notes from his Progreso de Filipinas: Lack of public improvements and defects of public services, especially education, pp. 26–34; defects in administration of justice and its expensiveness, pp. 134–136; lack of development of material resources, pp. 205–211, 253–254; restriction of opportunities for Filipino laborers, and the evils of caciquism, pp. 212–237. A study of caciquism (subjection of the masses) and its deep roots in Philippine social, economic, and political conditions may be found in J. A. LeRoy’s Philippine Life in Town and Country (New York, 1905), chap. vi; also the same in part by the same author in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1905. [↑]

[50] Though unsupported evidence here given, particularly when obviously gossip or when coming from partisan witnesses, is to be accepted with caution. F. H. Sawyer’s reminiscences of the administrations of various governor-generals are subject to the same caution, except where the author plainly speaks from a personal knowledge of the facts; nevertheless, that such opinions on the highest officials of the islands could pass current even as gossip among Spaniards and foreigners in Manila is in itself alone very significant of the tone of public life in the islands. Note Sawyer also on the administration of justice, and Foreman on the “pickings” of officials in the provinces. [↑]

[51] Note especially Military Governor of the Philippine Islands on Civil Affairs (Report War Dept., 1900, i, part 10), pp. 8–13, 79 et seq. See also, for defects and corruption in the customs administration up to 1881, Sancianco y Goson, pp. 36–37, 125–131. [↑]

[52] Part of this money was spent in campaigns against the Moros, and perhaps for other purposes not covered by the budget of ordinary expenses. See La Política de España en Filipinas, v, no. 116, for an account of progress in this work up to 1895. The press of Manila has published during the past few years various articles on the funds collected by subscription in Spain and the Philippines for the relief of the sufferers from the earthquake in Manila in 1863. See particularly El Renacimiento, Manila, September 18, 1906, for a report on the subject by Attorney-General Araneta. It would there appear that nearly $450,000 were collected; by 1870, only some $30,000 had been distributed to the sufferers themselves; whether they received further shares at a later date does not appear, but $80,000 were loaned from this fund to the obras pías in 1880, and about $15,000 were used for cholera relief in 1888–89. Governor-General Ide instructed the attorney-general to demand the return of the $80,000 from the obras pías, and recommended that, when $50,000 of this fund had been recovered, distribution of it among those who suffered losses in 1863 should begin—almost a half-century later, and under another government! [↑]

[53] The new industrial (or income) taxes had, however, been inaugurated before he wrote. See his Progreso de Filipinas, pp. vii, 81–87, 93–94, on this subject; pp. 5–15, for extracts from a project of economic reforms in 1870 (which see, in the Biblioteca, no. 2041); pp. 9, 10, 28–34, 48–53, 56, 65–80, 81–89, arguments for a real-property tax; pp. 6–10, 100–124, 142–143, the tribute; pp. 133–143, miscellaneous taxes; pp. 142–143, local taxes proper. [↑]

[54] Dr. Schurman drew from Spanish official publications the budget of 1894–95 for his exposition of the former Philippine government (Report of Philippine Commission, 1900, i, pp. 79–81), and this has been considerably quoted, with the assumption that it represented the full cost of government, in recent comparisons with the American régime. Sawyer (in an appendix) gives the budget of 1896–97, with just a note showing that charges for collection and for local government made the actual collections for the poll-tax considerably larger than the insular budget showed. Foreman, in his 1899 and 1906 editions, only reproduces from his first edition a fragmentary statement of the 1888 budget, without showing that this was only partial and without developing the later changes and increases in taxes. Retana, in the Estadismo, apéndice H, under Rentas é impuestos del Estado, gives the general totals of the budgets of 1890 and 1893–94 (likewise net totals for the central government alone). See Sancianco y Goson for proposed budget for 1881–82. The insular budget was published annually at Madrid under the title Presupuestos generales de gastos é ingresos de las islas Filipinas. The budget was made up at Madrid for each fiscal year, and put into effect by a royal decree (after its receipt in Manila, some few months after the beginning of the fiscal year which it was to govern). Some changes or additions were allowed to be made by the governor-general in imperative circumstances; otherwise the effort was to regulate Philippine finances just the same as if the islands were a province of the centralized government of the Peninsula itself. The folio volume of Presupuestos published at Madrid, running to several hundred pages, are valuable for giving in minute detail the expected items of expenditures, down to the last petty employee on salary; but they can give, of course, only the estimate of the revenue expected under each item, and actual collections sometimes varied considerably from these figures. Above all, these Presupuestos bear out the general remark that the Spanish budget as published tends to conceal rather than to reveal the actual burden resting on the people. They are not budgets for the insular government alone, hence the budgets for the city of Manila and for the local governments (provinces and towns), published separately in some years at Manila, must be consulted to get total net collections for all branches of government. In addition, one must dig out for himself from the laws governing taxation, etc., and from the archives the data regarding fees for collection, notarial, legal and other fees accruing to private pockets, surcharges for special purposes, etc. [↑]

[55] The subject can not be thoroughly discussed here. For some data and references thereon, see contributions by the writer to the Political Science Quarterly, xxi, pp. 309–311, and xxii, pp. 124–125. Regarding ecclesiastical dues and exactions, the share of the ecclesiastical establishment in local revenues, etc., see, besides citations there given, M. H. del Pilar’s La soberanía monacal en Filipinas (Barcelona, 1888, and Manila, 1898).

The above contributions cited by Mr. LeRoy are his criticism of H. Parker Willis’s Our Philippine Problem (New York, 1905), and his Rejoinder to Mr. Willis’s Reply to that criticism (March, 1907). See also Mr. Willis’s remarks on this matter in his Reply (pp. 116–119), which have been fully met in Mr. LeRoy’s Rejoinder.—Eds. [↑]

[56] In confirmation of the first statement above, and for details regarding this debt, see Senate Document no. 62, 55th Congress, 3rd session, protocols 11, 12, 15, and 16; ibid., p. 412 (Greene’s memorandum); Senate Document no. 148, 56th Congress, 2nd session, for cablegrams between the President and the American peace commissioners from October 27, 1898, on, especially p. 44 (details of this loan); also Sastrón’s La insurrección en Filipinas (Madrid, 1901), pp. 284, 285. [↑]

[57] Special attention may be directed to Clifford Stevens Walton’s The Civil Law in Spain and Spanish-America, including Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines (Washington, 1900). [↑]

[58] Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca, no. 1770. [↑]

[59] Data obtained from Justices Arellano and Torres cover very well the judicial organization of recent years. For earlier years, it is often in error, the Washington editor having tried to improve the manuscript with data drawn from various sources and presented without a real understanding of the legal, judicial, and administrative system of Spain and the Spanish colonies. [↑]

[60] See especially Bulletin no. 22 of the Bureau of Government Laboratories (Manila, 1905), for a catalogue of the new scientific library in Manila. [↑]

[61] It may be said, however, that the real foundations of that science are only now being laid in the Philippines. Most of the Spanish writings in this line are, speaking strictly from the scientific point of view, unreliable or, in some cases, worthless. Blumentritt, who has written most voluminously on this subject, was never in the Philippines, but drew largely from these Spanish sources, and he has confused the subject rather than shed light upon it. The German and French scientists who visited the islands were, in most instances, not primarily ethnologists, and have done but fragmentary work in this field. Needless to say, all these sources must be consulted, especially for the historical side of the subject; but the science of Philippine ethnology proper is still in its infancy. [↑]

[62] Especially in the appendix of VOL. XLI.—Eds. [↑]

[63] Appendix vii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines (Rept. War Dept., 1903, iii, pp. 379–398). [↑]

[64] La Política de España en Filipinas reproduces Retana’s eulogy of Weyler (Retana was made a deputy for Cuba in the Cortes during the Weyler régime in Cuba) and occasional articles on the Blanco campaign in the Lake Lanao region, among which note (vi, p. 18) Blanco’s letter of Oct. 19, 1895, describing the beginning of a railroad and other work around the lake. Ibid., vii, p. 170, has the protocol of April 1, 1907, whereby Germany and Great Britain accept a modification of the Sulu archipelago protocol of 1885, permitting the prohibition by Spain of traffic with Joló in arms or alcoholic liquors. The projects to colonize Mindanao put forward in connection with the Lanao campaign have been mentioned. [↑]

[65] The reports are in the annual Report of the Philippine Commission. Among the special publications, note Jenks’s The Bontoc Igorot (Manila, 1905), chap. ii, for some notes on Spanish relations with the Igorots. [↑]

[66] Its columns could also be used to further personal interests, as already shown in the case of Weyler. Retana has since 1898 executed a “right-about-face,” as has been best shown in his recent biographical study of Rizal. Herein, in various editorial notes in vol. v of the Archivo (1905), and in various letters to the Filipino press of Manila, he has many times virtually apologized for his political writings up to 1898, has declared that he was always a “Liberal” at heart, and has thus written an impugnation of his own writings in behalf of friar-rule. In a letter to I. de los Reyes (reproduced from El Grito del Pueblo of Manila in El Renacimiento, Manila, July 24, 1906), Retana carries this note to the point of practically abject retraction, saying he never has been really a Catholic, never confessed since his marriage, etc., and referring to Rizal (whom he bitterly reviled from 1892 to 1898) as a “saint,” etc. Regarding Retana and Blumentritt, see also a letter by J. A. LeRoy in the Springfield Republican for July 7, 1906.

In this connection see Retana’s opening paragraphs in his Vida y escritos del Dr. José Rizal, in Nuestro Tiempo for 1904–06.—EDS. [↑]

[67] This work furnished almost the sole basis for the discussion of the work of the friars by Stephen Bonsal in the North American Review of Oct., 1902; but Mr. Bonsal, whose article is thus entirely one-sided, did not state the source of his information. More than this, Mr. Bonsal has, in translating, made even stronger some of the extreme claims of Friar Zamora. The latter (pp. 483–498) cites praise for the friars from various governors-general: Gándara (1866), De la Torre (1871), Moriones (1877), Weyler (1891), and Primo de Rivera (1898). It is to be hoped he has not garbled them all as he did the statement of Primo de Rivera, omitting its most significant expressions of opinion and exactly reversing its import. Moreover, Mr. Bonsal, in translating these passages from Zamora, thought it best to leave out, for his American readers, the statement by Weyler. Much the same ground as covered by the claims of Zamora is traversed, with citations, by J. A. LeRoy in the Political Science Quarterly for December, 1903 (also in the same author’s Philippine Life, chaps. v and vii). See also, in re extreme claims for the friars that they brought about all the internal development, settlement of towns, development of agriculture, etc., Sancianco y Goson, El progreso de Filipinas, pp. 212–223, official data as to agriculture and lands by provinces in 1862, at the beginning of the modern era of trade and industry. [↑]

[68] The official correspondence in the negotiations of Governor Taft with the Vatican, above cited, may also be mentioned here as discussing the question of recognition of the native clergy in the Philippines, and, in general, the status which the friars came to have there. Many loose assertions made with regard to the friars’ titles to the Philippines will be corrected by a perusal of the legal report on their titles cited above. [↑]

[69] The political phase of the attack on the friars’ privileges which rapidly developed, especially in view of the events of 1868, are discussed from the friars’ side in the pamphlet Apuntes interesantes (1870), condemned by Pardo de Tavera (no. 91) and ascribed to Barrantes. Retana (Estadismo, ii, p. 135*) praises the work and ascribes it to Friar Casimiro Herrero. A general argument against the friars in those times is that of Manrique Alonso Lallave, Los frailes en Filipinas (Madrid, 1872), parts of which were reproduced in El progreso, Manila, August 8–11, 1901. His figures on friar revenues, etc., are grossly exaggerated. He was an excloistered Dominican, later turned Protestant in Spain, and went to the Philippines as a Protestant missionary in 1890, being poisoned in Manila, according to V. Diaz Perez (Los frailes de Filipinas, Madrid, 1904, p. 10). [↑]

[70] See the Biblioteca, nos. 2,000 and 2,001. Both put forward the claims of the Filipinos on grounds of ecclesiastical rule and practice (the Council of Trent particularly), but it is to be feared that the author’s judgment on matters of authority purely ecclesiastical is sometimes warped by political or personal feeling. The same author’s Mi último grito de alarma (Bigan [Luzon], 1903) is an answer to Constitución apostólica Quae mare sinico (Manila, 1903), which is a defense of the Pope’s Philippine bull of 1903 by Presbyter Manuel E. Roxas, a Filipino priest. Father Pons also had a part in Impugnación de la censura impuesta … al Presbítero Adriano García (Manila, 1900), a notable case which much aroused the Filipino clergy in Chapelle’s time. Here and in Defensa del clero filipino are references to the torturing of native priests by the friars at Bigan in 1896, to make them confess complicity in a supposed plot for revolt in Ilokos. [↑]

[71] Biblioteca, no. 1689. Note also no. 1675. [↑]

[72] For the latter, consult especially La Iglesia Filipina Independiente, organ of the schism, which was published in some sixty numbers between October 11, 1903, and early in 1905; also the recent pamphlet Documentos interesantes de la Iglesia Filipina Independiente (Manila, 1906). The history of the religious question under the Malolos government and guerrilla warfare, and especially of Aglipay’s part in it, has yet to be written from the documents (at least, unless those who participated are more frank in future than in past statements). [↑]

[73] See for citations and statements (in part conflicting), about the deportees of 1872, Montero y Vidal, Historia, iii, p. 591 and footnote; Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca, nos. 1462 and 1463; and notes by Felipe G. Calderón in supplements to El Renacimiento for Aug. 11 and 18, Sept. 1 and 18, 1906. Several Filipino priests were also deported with these civilians, who were, as has been noted in our introduction, for the most part of Spanish, not of Malay, blood, though of Philippine birth. [↑]

[74] Note especially Rizal’s introduction to his novel El Filibusterismo, as showing Filipino opinion on the matter. A story circulated among the people to the effect that the friars brought from Sambales province a native who looked like Father Gomez and who impersonated the latter in order to implicate him in the mutiny at the Cavite arsenal, with similar details, is related in an “Appeal for Intervention” presented by certain Filipinos in Hongkong to the Consul-General of the United States at that place in Jan., 1897. This document, by the way, has never received notice in the United States so far as known to the writer, who has a manuscript copy of it.

Rizal dedicated his novel El filibusterismo to the three priests executed in consequence of the Cavite uprising of 1872. That dedication is as follows: “The Church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime that has been imputed to you; the Government, by surrounding your trials with mystery and shadows, causes the belief that there was some error, committed in fatal moments; and all the Philippines, by worshiping your memory and calling you martyrs, in no sense recognize your culpability. In so far, therefore, as your complicity in the Cavite mutiny is not clearly proved, as you may or may not have been patriots, and as you may or may not have cherished sentiments for justice and for liberty, I have the right to dedicate my work to you as victims of the evil which I undertake to combat. And while we wait expectantly upon Spain some day to restore your good name and cease to be answerable for your death, let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over your unknown tombs, and let it be understood that every one who without clear proofs attacks your memory stains his hands in your blood!” See J. A. LeRoy’s Philippine Life, pp. 149, 150.—Eds. [↑]

[75] No real attempt to sift the evidence in the case is known to the writer. Montero y Vidal, Historia, iii, chap. xxvii (also read the three preceding chapters), gives the version of one side, with principal citations. Cf. Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca under these names, and see his version in Census of the Philippine Islands, i, pp. 575–579. His Reseña histórica de Filipinas suffered some alterations as published in the Spanish edition of the Census, and was separately printed at Manila in 1906, drawing forth a series of articles in the Dominican periodical Libertas (by Friar Tamayo), which also appeared in pamphlet form (Sobre una “Reseña histórica de Filipinas,” Manila, 1906). As regards the 1872 affair, Friar Tamayo has drawn almost entirely from Montero y Vidal. [↑]

[76] As, for example, when José Rizal, yet a mere youth, scandalized the friar and “patriotic” Spaniards in Manila by presenting verses for a school celebration in Manila on “Mi patria” (“My fatherland”). [↑]

[77] Rizal himself returned from Europe to the Orient in 1887, and visited his home, but was persuaded by parents and friends to go abroad again. He is said to have edited various circulars which were sent from Hongkong and distributed in the Philippines. [↑]

[78] Marcelo del Pilar’s pamphlet La soberanía monacal en Filipinas (Barcelona, 1888; reprinted at Manila, 1898) was written with especial reference to these incidents, documents regarding which are given as appendices. Retana analyzed the 1888 petition against the friars, and discussed its signers, in his pamphlet Avisos y profecías (Madrid, 1892), pp. 286–308. See also Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca, nos. 1597–1599 and 2807, the latter being a separate print of the petition to the Queen, which appears in Del Pilar’s pamphlet, appendix ix. The reply of the petitioners to the accusation that they really covered separatist aims under their attacks on friar-rule is worth quoting:

“The aspiration for separation is contrary, Señora, to the interests of the Filipinos. The topographical situation of the country, divided into numerous islands, and the diversity of its regional dialects demand the fortifying aid of a bond of union such as the ensign of Spain accords; without such a bond, it would be daily exposed to a breaking-up process hostile to its repose, and the very conditions of exuberant fertility that its fields, mines, and virgin forests afford would offer a powerful incentive to draw upon it international strife to the injury of its own future.” [↑]

[79] Becerra, as minister for the colonies, met in social reunions with the Filipino circle of Madrid, and presented in the Cortes projects for “assimilation,” religious liberty, and the secularization of education in the colonies and partial municipal reforms for the Philippines which were the forerunners of the “Maura law.” [↑]

[80] Friar Tamayo, in his reply to statements by Pardo de Tavera, points out that Weyler’s action was in consequence of decrees of the courts (Sobre una “Reseña histórica de Filipinas,” pp. 194–195). This Kalamba episode seems to have had a connection with the royal order of December 4, 1890 (under the new Conservative ministry) empowering the religious orders to dispose of their estates without intervention of the Crown, as had been provided by royal orders of 1834 and 1849. The friars had begun to make transfers to private corporations (really only fictitious “holding companies”) before 1898. [↑]

[81] One finds guarded references to his enemies among the Filipinos themselves in some of Rizal’s private letters. The part played during the propaganda by hints of treachery in camp, also of dishonesty in the use of the funds raised by subscription in the Philippines, is alluded to in various of the writings to be cited further on. [↑]

[82] Mariano Ponce (El Renacimiento, Manila, Dec. 29, 1906) tells of an earlier periodical of propaganda, España en Filipinas, started at Barcelona in 1887, Lopez Jaena being one of its board of editors. In this connection may be mentioned Ang Kalayaan (“Liberty”) organ of the Katipunan, which published one number (perhaps two) in Tagálog at the beginning of 1896, ostensibly in Yokohama, but really on a secret press at Manila. Data about it, and a translation of some of its contents into Spanish may be found in Retana’s Archivo, iv, Documentos políticos de actualidad, no. 15. Of Gracíano Lopez Jaena may also be noted the pamphlet Discursos y artículos varios (Barcelona, 1891). He died in Spain in 1895. [↑]

[83] Epifanio de los Santos (one of the propagandists, now an official under the Philippine government) is publishing a biography and bibliography of M. H. del Pilar, reproducing documents and letters in Plaridel (pseudonym of Del Pilar), a weekly started at Bulakan, Luzon, Jan. 1, 1907. Besides La Solidaridad and La soberanía monacal, the writings of Del Pilar most deserving mention are the pamphlets La frailocracía filipina (Barcelona, 1889), and Los frailes en Filipinas (Barcelona, 1889), by “Padpiuh.” [↑]

[84] The two alleged translations published in the United States under altered titles, do not merit even a mention; one is a garbled and partial translation from the Spanish, the other an “adaptation” from a French version of the original, boiled down to give the “story” and thus shorn of the very descriptive passages and delicious bits of satire which make the work notable, not as a novel, but as an exposition. [↑]

[85] The various Spanish reprints (also a French one) of these novels may be found cited in Retana’s recent work, mentioned below. The best to date, but no longer easily attainable, are editions of both novels printed at Manila in 1900 by Chofre & Cia. [↑]

[86] There must also be seen the collections Documentos políticos de actualidad in Retana’s Archivo, iii and iv, especially those in the latter volume connected with Rizal’s trial and execution. Besides the documents there reproduced—the diary of Rizal as a student in Madrid (now in the library of Edward E. Ayer, of Chicago), notes and documents furnished to Retana by various friends and coworkers of Rizal (especially by Epifanio de los Santos)—use has been made in Retana’s latest work of data published in the Filipino press from 1898 to date, particularly in the special numbers which appear annually in connection with the anniversaries of Rizal’s execution (December 30). Among these may be named especially: La Independencia, Sept. 25, 1898, and Jan. 2, 1899 (Rizal’s letters to Blumentritt regarding his relations with Blanco and recall to Manila for trial; also quoted by Foreman); La Patria, Dec. 30, 1899; La Democracia, Homenaje á Rizal, separately printed at Manila, 1899, with seventeen Rizal articles, sixteen reproduced from La Solidaridad; La Democracia, Dec. 29, 30 or 31, 1901–06, especially Dec. 29, 1905 (notes by Santos); El Renacimiento, same dates; ibid., April 28, 1906 (notes by Retana); ibid., May 26, June 2, and Dec. 29, 1906 (notes by Mariano Ponce); ibid., Sept. 22, 1906 (notes by Edouardo Late); La Independencia, Sept. 12, 14, 17, and 18, 1906 (Rizal’s correspondence from his place of exile at Dapitan with Father Pastells, the Jesuit superior, regarding his religious belief, and incidentally his loyalty to Spain).

See also La Juventud (Barcelona), El Doctor Rizal y su obra, published in 1897.—Eds. [↑]

[87] Morga, who gave a more truly scientific and in many respects more favorable view of the Filipinos at the time of the conquest than the later friar-chroniclers, had been neglected by Spanish writers and students, and Rizal’s purpose in bringing out the Sucesos was primarily to correct many recent exaggerations in the literature about the Filipinos. The bitterness with which his work (and even Morga himself) was assailed revealed the political spirit of the times. [↑]

[88] Filipinas dextro de cien años, in La Solidaridad, reprinted in Retana’s Archivo, v. [↑]

[89] Library of Congress List, pp. 99, 100; and Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca, nos. 307, 308, 339 and 341 (also 1087). [↑]

[90] As also their tendency to assume that every Spanish official who favored a more liberal political régime in the Philippines did so because he was a Mason. The books of Sastrón and Castillo y Jimenez (especially pp. 372–376, 382), also the friar pamphlets of García-Barzanallana (Library of Congress List, p. 103) and Navarro (Biblioteca, no. 1,811), are especially in point. See, for accounts from the same point of view, the report of the Spanish officer of the civil guard, Olegario Diaz, no. 77 of Documentos políticos in the Archivo, iii, and other documents in that series in vols. iii, and iv. Masones y ultramontanes, by Juan Utor y Fernandez (Manila, 1899), is a defense of Masonry by a Spaniard who founded lodges in the Philippines. V. Diaz Perez in the pamphlet Los frailes de Filipinas brings out from the same point of view some figures and other data on Masonry in the Philippines. [↑]

[91] In his Memoria al Senado (Madrid, 1897), pp. 158–163. [↑]

[92] See Biblioteca, no. 2,665. [↑]

[93] Cited in their original draft, somewhat skeletonized, in the notes furnished for Retana’s Vida y escritos de José Rizal by E. de los Santos, and by the latter also furnished in a manuscript copy to the writer (of which see the translation post, pp. 217–226). [↑]

[94] Notes, etc., in El Renacimiento, Manila, Aug. 11 and 18, Sept. 1 and 18, Oct. 13, 1906. [↑]

[95] This is especially true of the documents given by José M. del Castillo y Jimenez, El Katipunan ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas (Madrid, 1897), pp. 114–117, 118–123, whence they have been quoted by various other writers. It is to be noted, first, that the source of these documents has never been given; they are not among the extracts from the official records of the courts-martial reproduced in Retana’s Archivo, iii, and iv; and, finally, certain passages in them read suspiciously as if prepared for the purpose of proving the most exaggerated statements about the Katipunan and of magnifying the scope and aims of the whole movement. [↑]

[96] See on this subject an article by J. A. LeRoy, Japan and the Philippine Islands, in Atlantic Monthly, January, 1906. Primo de Rivera, in his Memoria (1898), several times declares that the Cavite insurgents of 1896–97 never had more than 1,500 firearms, including rifles of all sorts, shotguns, and revolvers. [↑]

[97] This was allowed to appear even in the testimony as written down by the Spanish military court (Retana’s Archivo, iii, Documentos políticos, nos. 35, 46, and 55). [↑]

[98] Besides Castillo y Jimenez, the Katipunan will be found discussed in nearly all the sources to be cited on the 1896–97 insurrection. Data on Bonifacio are scanty, but see El Renacimiento, April 23, 1903; ibid., for the notes of Calderón, above cited, and of Aug. 30, 1906, for a letter by Pio Valenzuela; also comments by A. Mabini and notes by J. A. LeRoy in American Historical Review, xi, pp. 843–861. A pamphlet, The Katipunan (Manila, 1902), by Francis St. Clair (?), published in order to put before Americans the friar view of the Filipino revolutionists, contains an English version of the report of Olegario Diaz, cited above; its notes, drawn indiscriminately from Retana, Castillo y Jimenez, and others, are full of errors. [↑]

[99] Friar Zamora (Las corporaciones religiosas en Filipinas, pp. 334–325) says the forces of the Civil Guard sent to the Bisayas were recruited not from the best men in the Filipino infantry regiments, as the Governor-General ordered, but from the worst, because these were the men whom the infantry colonels would let go. “We parish-priests knew this, because the Civil Guard officers themselves so told us; we saw, a few days after the posts were established in the towns, that the majority of the Guards ought to be serving, not in that corps of prestige, but in some disciplinary corps or in the penitentiary. Nevertheless, from our pulpits we recommended and eulogized what caused us disgust and displeasure, because it was so ordered by the Governor-General to the provincial of the monastic orders, and directly to the parish-priests themselves through the medium of the governors of provinces.” [↑]

[100] Joaquin Pellicena y Lopez, a Spanish journalist of Manila, an admirer of the Jesuits (in some degree, perhaps, an exponent of Jesuit views on recent years in the Philippines), in the pamphlet Los frailes y los filipinos (Manila, Jan., 1901), defends the work of the friars as a historical whole, but condemns their unwillingness to progress with the times. As one proof that the rebellion of 1896 was against the friars, not against Spain, he says (pp. 27–28) that Governor-General Polavieja’s demand for 25,000 fresh troops in April, 1897, was, only a pretext to cover his resignation. Polavieja, who came out to succeed Blanco and under whom Rizal was almost immediately executed, had suddenly become convinced, says this journalist, by reading correspondence of Aguinaldo with the Jesuit superior, that the real cause of the trouble was the friars. As virtually emissary and appointee of the friars, the inference is, Polavieja concluded it would be impossible for him to settle the difficulties successfully. The letters of Aguinaldo to Pio Pí are most interesting, at least (See La Politica de España en Filipinas, vii, pp. 326–328). [↑]

[101] Notably the “removal” of Andrés Bonifacio in 1897 (regarding which the Bonifacio note above cites incomplete data), and the Biak-na-bató negotiation, treated below. [↑]

[102] Memoria que al Senado dirige el General Blanco acerca de los últimos sucesos ocurridos en la isla de Luzón (Madrid, 1897). [↑]

[103] Ibid., pp. 64–68, 163–169. The real Blanco expresses himself in these sentences: “For some people, proof of character and energy is given by ordering executions right and left, at the pleasure of the public, which is wont to be excited by passion; but, on the contrary, energy is shown by resisting all kinds of abuses, and this one most of all. To shoot men is very easy; the difficult thing is not to do it.” [↑]

[104] See also Senate Document no. 62 for hearsay testimony by foreigners at Paris regarding the “reign of terror,” tortures, etc.; and the books of Foreman and Sawyer for similar testimony. [↑]

[105] It is to be noted that some of the worst stories of Filipino outrages upon Spanish captives, especially friars, later proved to be rumors, or were exaggerated, though some brutalities were committed. See La Democracia, Manila, July 12, 1906, for an alleged confession by Friar Piernavieja (extorted from him, and dictated to him in bad Spanish); ibid., July 14, 1906, for data regarding the execution of him and two other friars in Cavite, in “reprisal” for the execution of Rizal. Isabelo de los Reyes’s pamphlet La religión del Katipunan (Madrid, 1900), as also other writings in Filipinas ante Europa and El defensor de Filipinas, a periodical edited at Madrid, 1899–1901 by Reyes, may be mentioned here, as to Aguinaldo and the revolutionary movement in general; statements therein are commonly unreliable. [↑]

[106] A few are in the List of the Library of Congress, under Political and Social Economy, and American Occupation, 1898–1903. Some may be found under the authors’ names in Pardo de Tavera’s Biblioteca. [↑]

[107] So also La soberanía nacional, by D. Paradada, a Jesuit (Barcelona, 1897), cited by Pardo de Tavera, as “stupid.” In this connection may be cited the following titles of Spanish writings on the events following May, 1898, which contain some backward glances upon the earlier phases of the Filipino revolution, also some Spanish imprevision; Juan y José Toral.—El sitio de Manila (Manila, 1898). José Roca de Togores y Saravia (secretary of Council of Administration of Philippines).—El bloqueo y sitio de Manila. V. M. Concas y Palau.—Causa instruida por la destrucción de la escuadra de Filipinas y entrega del arsenal de Cavite. Notas taquigráficas (Madrid, 1899). Isern.—Del desastre nacional y sus causas (Madrid, 1899). Luis Morero Jerez.—Los prisioneros españoles en poder de los tagalos (Manila, Dec., 1899). Carlos Ria-Baja (a prisoner of the Filipinos).—El desastre filipino (Barcelona, 1899). Antonio del Rio (a prisoner, Spanish governor of Laguna Province).—Sitio y rendición de Santa Cruz de la Laguna (Manila, 1899). El Capitan Verdades (Juan de Urquía).—Historia negra (Barcelona, 1899). Joaquín D. Duran (a friar prisoner).—Episodios de la revolución filipina (Manila, 1900). Ulpiano Herrero y Sampedro (a prisoner).—Nuestra prisión en poder de los revolucionarios filipinos (Manila, 1900). Graciano Martinez (a friar prisoner).—Memoria del cautiverio (Manila, 1900). C. P. (Carlos Peñaranda).—Ante la opinión y ante la historia (Madrid, 1900); a defense of Admiral Montojo. Bernardino Nozaleda (Archbishop of Manila).—Defensa obligada contra acusaciones gratuitas (Madrid, 1904); especially for communications to Blanco, 1895–96, in re Katipunan, etc. [↑]

[108] First published under the title La insurrección en Filipinas (Madrid, 1897), but the later volume, covering also the events of late 1897 and 1898 and the war with the United States, is more complete. [↑]

[109] Memoria dirigida al Senado por el Capitán General D. Fernando Primo de Rivera y Sobremonte acerca de sa gestión en Filipinas. Agosto de 1898 (Madrid, 1898). Pp. 121–158 cover the Biak-na-bató negotiation. [↑]

[110] E.g., In his Reseña verídica (only signed, not written by him), an English translation of which appears in Congressional Record, xxxv, appendix, pp. 440–445. [↑]

[111] See Congressional Record, xxxv, part 6, pp. 6092–94, for English translations with explanatory notes. See also Senate Document no. 208, 56th Congress, 1st session, part 2, for the documents showing the discussion of the junta of Filipinos at Hongkong in February and May, 1898, relative to the Biak-na-bató money payments and the obligations thereby contracted toward the Spanish government. When the Philippine Insurgent Records now in manuscript in the War Department, edited by Captain J. R. M. Taylor, are published, all the captured documents on this and later matters will be brought together. [↑]

[112] The same as has frequently been cited as the program of reforms promised by Primo de Rivera, or even as being contained in an actual treaty. Such statements have usually been reproduced from Foreman or directly from insurgent proclamations. It is notable that in these (e.g., that of the La Junta Patriótica, Hongkong, April, 1898) it is only declared that Primo de Rivera “promised” these reforms, and that he himself would remain in the Philippines during a three-year “armistice,” as a guarantee that the reforms would be carried out. [↑]

[113] The document cited by Foreman (2nd ed., pp. 546–547; 3rd ed., pp. 397–398), read in the Cortes in 1898, was not the final agreement and the terms of payment are incorrect. It is either spurious, or was superseded by the document, number 5 (of the same date) published in the Congressional Record, ut supra. This appears to have been the only document in Aguinaldo’s possession bearing the signature of Primo de Rivera, and it is merely a program prescribing the movements of the rebel chiefs from December 14 on, terms of payments, surrender of arms, amnesty, etc. [↑]

[114] Memoria, p. 125, cablegram of October 7, 1896. [↑]

[115] A slightly modified copy of this appeal is quoted by Primo de Rivera (Memoria, pp. 140–141), and in Senate Document no. 208, pt. 2, pp. 2, 3. The writer has a copy taken from one of the originals. [↑]

[116] Pardo de Tavera remarks (Rept. Phil. Comm., 1900, ii, p. 396) that someone “forgot he had this sum of money in his pocket.” [↑]

[117] Paterno has apparently given to Foreman a partial version of the transaction for the latter’s 1906 edition. Therein Foreman comes around to imply that there was, after all, no “treaty” about reforms, but he is still very much confused as to the money payments, etc., and almost every sentence contains an inaccuracy. He appears to have seen the Diario de las Sesiones de Cortes, at least for one or two speeches on this subject in 1898, when there were heated debates on Philippine matters in the Cortes, but it is strange he never consulted Primo de Rivera’s detailed account of the affair. [↑]

[118] It was declared, however, in the press of Spain that Aguinaldo projected a residence in Europe and had started for Paris when Consul-General Pratt found him at Singapore in April, 1898. [↑]

[119] The change of Spanish administration in October, 1897, bringing the Liberals again into power, with Moret, who had proposed secularization of education in 1870, as Colonial Minister, was another reason for expecting liberal measures in the Philippines as well as in Cuba. It was this new ministry which urged Primo de Rivera to conclude the Biak-na-bató negotiation speedily. One of the indications that the Biak-na-bató documents in the War Department, above cited, were “doctored” in some particulars is the insertion in Paterno’s letter to Aguinaldo of Aug. 9, 1897, of a reference to Moret being Minister; the change of cabinet in Madrid occurred two months later. [↑]

[120] See the Memoria, pp. 159–176, on Reforms. In a temperate, judicial way his discussion of the friars, from experience as Governor-General from 1881–83 and during the insurrection, is perhaps the severest arraignment they could receive, above all since it came from a man appointed by a Conservative administration. [↑]

[121] See the Memoria, pp. 144–154. The incident is related in various tones by other writers. [↑]

[122] See the pamphlets, reprinting articles from two of these periodicals: Juan Caro y Mora, La situación del país (Manila, 1897), series in La Oceanía Española; and El gran problema de las reformas en Filipinas planteado por El Español, periódico diario de Manila (Manila, 1897). These articles appeared while the Biak-na-bató negotiation was pending, and with full official sanction; but they touched the religious question only very cautiously, and mostly to defend the friars. The articles of Caro y Mora especially merit consideration in connection with the study of Spanish administration in its last stage. [↑]

[123] See especially El Liberal, of Madrid. The writer has a copy of a broadside dated at Madrid Jan. 26, 1898, Exposición elevada á sa Majestad la Reina Regente sobre la insurrección en Filipinas, by Vital Fité, a Spanish journalist, once provincial governor in the Philippines. It represents friar-rule as the chief grievance, but recites also abuses and defects of administration. [↑]

[124] See J. Pellicena y Lopez, Los frailes y los filipinos (Manila, 1901). [↑]

[125] An earlier indication of the friars’ fear of coming reforms is the pamphlet, Filipinas. Estudios de algunos asuntos de actualidad (Madrid, 1897), by Eduardo Navarro, procurator of Augustinians, who advocates “reform” by means of “a step backward.” [↑]

[126] As, e.g., does Pellicena y Lopez, in Los frailes y los filipinos, to prove that separation was not the aim of the propagandists. The citation from Del Pilar’s Soberanía monacal (paragraph v), is almost identical with the paragraph of the 1888 petition to the Queen, quoted already. [↑]

[127] The author of the preliminary report of the Schurman Commission, Nov. 2, 1899, must simply have blindly followed Foreman and must have somewhat misunderstood his Filipino informants, in order to make these remarkable statements (Report, i, pp. 169, 172): “This movement [rebellion of 1896] was in no sense an attempt to win independence, but was merely an attempt to obtain relief from abuses which were rapidly growing intolerable.” “Now [June, 1898] for the first time arose the idea of independence [in Aguinaldo’s camp].” [↑]

[128] A quite sufficient answer, if there were not plenty of others, to Dr. Schurman’s statements quoted above is afforded by this passage in a proclamation of Aguinaldo as Magdalo at Old Cavite (Kawit), Oct. 31, 1896 (Castillo y Jimenez, El Katipunan, pp. 298–302): “The revolutionary committee addresses to all Filipino citizens who love their country a general call to arms for the proclamation of Filipino liberty and independence as La Política de España en Filipinas, viii, pp. 46, 47).

However, in a letter to Fray Tomas Espejo (undated, but written probably in January, 1898), Aguinaldo says: “A great work is this, which demands great sacrifices, followed by the shedding of quantities of blood. But what matters that, for it is very little compared to the sublime and holy end which we hold before ourselves in attempting to take arms against España. For this we have resolved to sacrifice our lives until we shall hear issue from the mouths of our compatriots, the blessed phrase ‘All hail, Filipinas! forever separated from España and conquered through the heroism of their inhabitants.’ ” (La Política de España, viii, p. 44).—Eds. [↑]

[129] See Sastrón’s account of Biak-na-bató in chapters v and vi of his Insurrección en Filipinas for some fragments of documents on this subject. [↑]