In the year 1800, Spain, while still a proud nation, was no longer a powerful one. In earlier centuries she had led the world in commerce, in the arts, and in science. She had known wise and far-sighted rulers, and her scholars had been among the greatest in the world. Europe, when any new enterprise was talked of, waited for Spain to take the lead in action regarding it.
But, little by little, Spain fell behind other countries in the march of progress. Other nations improved their navies and their merchant ships, while Spain still clung to the old galleons of hundreds of years ago. She made no progress in her merchant service, nor much in her naval strength. Other nations were seeking trade and new chances for prosperity; Spain still kept her markets closed to the outside world. In the year 1800 she even passed a law forbidding foreigners to live in the Philippine Islands. Such a law could not be fully enforced at that stage of the world’s progress, but Spain did succeed in keeping the port of Manila closed to outside commerce.
A MODERN WAR SHIP.
Her colonies might not even trade freely with one another. Mexico might not send to the Philippines for goods, lest the Mexicans should buy less from Spain. Merchants in the Peninsula looked with great jealousy upon the growing trade between the Philippines and America. Foreign merchants could not do business in Manila, and every effort was made to limit the nature of the trade in that port. Cuba, Porto Rico, and other Spanish colonies suffered, as well, from the harsh restrictions which the mother country put upon their trade.
The government of the Philippine Islands had grown to be of the very worst sort. Many of the high officials were mere adventurers from Spain. They had no higher idea of right than their own wills; they neither loved nor understood the people, and they could not command the good will or the respect of the Filipinos. Many of the latter were superior in character and in education to the men who ruled the country, and the people were held in check by fear rather than by loyalty.
The government system of tobacco-growing early became a great source of trouble. Constant watching, heavy fines, imprisonment, even whipping, came to be necessary in order to hold the people to work on the tobacco crop, and much evil and injustice were done against the people by the officials who enforced these measures.
As was to be expected, the people often rebelled. Serious riots happened among the tobacco growers in northern Luzon in 1807, and again in 1814. In these there was great loss of life among both Spanish and Filipinos. Moreover, to add to the evil of forcing the people to grow tobacco, the government was very slow in paying the planters. Year after year these men were compelled either to raise tobacco or to give up their land, while they could get scarcely any return for their work. When at last the government made payment, it paid in treasury notes. These the people were forced by necessity to sell for almost nothing, to speculators who went about buying them up.
The islands suffered much from all these bad conditions, and the people became impatient and rebellious over the injustice heaped upon them. The American Revolution had had a marked effect upon all Europe. It had awakened ideas of liberty in the common people everywhere, and had set the whole world thinking about the rights of man. The freedom of this one country helped to insure the liberties of all other lands. Even in the far-off Philippines the echo was heard of the demand for that justice and decent treatment which is every man’s right.
In England, in France, and in Germany, men were asking for a voice in their own government, and their demand was winning a hearing. Besides this, the people of Mexico had now begun the struggle which ended at last in their throwing off Spain’s yoke.