It is hard for us, who live in an age when the rights of man are upheld, to remember that there was once a time when no one in power thought very much about these rights. Statesmen had not then learned that a mother country owes a duty to her colonies. They thought only of the help that a colony should give toward supporting the home government. England for many years held this idea about America. She put great hardships upon her colonies there. She taxed them very unjustly, and put unfair limits to their trade. The Americans, however, knew that no government had a right to oppress even its own colonies. When the king of England went too far in his unjust rule, the people rebelled. They threw off the yoke of England just as, some years later, Mexico threw off the yoke of Spain, and became independent.
The Philippine Islands suffered beyond what was the usual fate of colonies, even at that time. They were far out of the regular routes of ocean travel. The people there knew nothing at all of the ideas of human liberty that were even then setting the world thinking. Then, too, they were ruled by a people who were behind the rest of the world in accepting these ideas. Spain, blinded by her own pride and folly, has been slowest of all European nations to listen to the gospel of human rights. She ruled her colonies cruelly long after other nations came to see that they owed a duty to their dependencies, and as a result Spain lost her colonies at just the time when she most needed their help.
The Philippines, moreover, were not ruled from Spain direct. They were, as has been said, a dependency of Mexico, and Mexico was in turn a dependency of Spain. It happened, therefore, that even when the islands had officials who might have been glad to help the people, these officials were themselves in a hard place. They had two masters over them. Spain looked to Mexico for the royal dues from the islands, and Mexico, in turn, looked to the governor-general, who must see to it that his colony was profitable to the Crown.
So, we see, there was a great burden laid upon the archipelago, and this burden the people had to carry. For three hundred and eighty years the Filipinos were subjects of Spain. They submitted to her rule because there was never a time when, without outside help, they could throw off that rule. But they never were, in their hearts, willing subjects. During all the time the Spanish were in the islands there was never a very long period when the people were not somewhere in revolt.
On Luzon, on Bohol (bō hōľ), on Samar, Leyte (lā´ē tā), Mindanao, and in the Sulu Islands, there was one uprising after another during the seventeenth century. In Cebu it was needful, always, for Spain to keep a strong armed force, and it was often necessary to send the troops from Cebu to put down trouble in the other islands. The love of liberty dies hard from the human heart; and while there was at no time a general revolt of the people, the frequent revolts of different tribes kept the Spanish busy.
Yet at no time did the Filipinos go to war to gain national independence. They were not united enough for that. It is a part of the pity of it all that this should have been so. It is sad to think of all the suffering and want the people bore, and of all the lives that were lost in their small battles. It is sadder still to remember that the aim of these battles was not to win independence from Spain, but to secure only such decent treatment as is the right of every human being.
FUERZA DEL PILAR, MINDANAO.
It will be remembered that the friar whom Governor-General Desmarinas sent to make a treaty with Japan stayed in that country. He set up missions there, and both he and other friars who came over from Manila preached to the people. In time the emperor learned of this. He asked about the new teachers, and was told that this was Spain’s way of getting a hold on another country. Spanish friars would go into a country to teach the people religion, and later Spain would send her soldiers to protect the friars and their converts. After that, his advisers told the emperor, it was only a matter of time when Spain would come to rule the country.
The emperor was alarmed to hear all this. He ordered the friars back to Manila, and forbade any one to teach Christianity in his country. The missionary friars defied him, however, and later some were put to death with their Japanese converts. But other friars came from Manila, and in 1633 the emperor became angry, and did a dreadful thing.