This is not the time to forecast the probable outcome of such a struggle if, most deplorably, it should come. It would depend upon faith, zeal, the qualities of weapons, and a million conditions that men cannot foresee. But one thing is certain. Suppose all the advantages to be upon the side of the Government. Suppose the Government to win an ostensible victory. It would be a victory as disastrous as a defeat, and this simple fact the Government should be wise enough to see.
If those that seek to guide the destinies of the Philippines could be so obstinate as to insist upon holding the country in darkness instead of relieving it with adequate reforms, the people would brave the chances of revolt and prefer revolt’s hazards, whatever they might be, to the certainty of the misery and wrong in which they would be dwelling. What would they lose in such a fight? To normal men the choice between long-drawn-out oppression and a glorious death is no choice at all. Such men will always leap at the chance of such a death and by their fervor and desperate courage go far in any such conflict to make up for a disparity in numbers.
He points out the fact that so far in Philippine history the revolts have been sporadic and largely local. [[177]]Earnestly he warns the Government that this cannot continue. Very different would be the uprising of the whole people against a state of unendurable misery, and toward such an uprising the policy of the Government is driving. It is to be remembered, he says, that factors in the problem exist now that never existed before. First, the native spirit has awakened and common misfortune is drawing together all the children of the Islands. Second, the growth of intelligence at home and abroad is fatal to the existing order. All those Filipinos that the cruelty and stupidity of the Government have driven abroad have learned there the rhythm of the march of mankind and are transmitting it home. It is a class that rapidly increases. If it is the brain of the country now, it will in a few years be the country’s nervous system, and of impact upon those nerves let the Government beware.
One of two things, he concludes, is certain. Spain will grant sweeping reforms in the islands, establishing there the liberties and advantages that all civilized people view as birthrights. Or the islands will declare their independence, after staining themselves and Spain with blood. To check the advance of the Filipinos to this crisis Spain has in effect but three weapons. First, the brutalizing effect upon the masses of a caste system; the high caste, as always, alined with the Government. Second, the supremacy of a theocratic class in the Philippine structure, acting to overawe the natives, as in the Dutch colonies the aristocratic class frightens them. Or, third, the impoverishment of the country, the encouragement of tribal discord, and the gradual destruction of the inhabitants. [[178]]
Already these expedients have been tried enough to prove them worthless for Spain’s ultimate use.
One little fact that he points out might well be remembered by all imperialists. Where the aborigines of a seized country, as in Australia, succumb and disappear before the alien civilization, that makes one situation for the invader. Where the inhabitants, as in the Philippines, adapt themselves to the invader’s civilization, show they can maintain themselves under it, increase in numbers and in restlessness, bettering the instruction they receive, the situation for the alien sovereignty is different and not wholesome.
Still his hope clung to peaceful agitation as the means of improvement.
Retana says that Rizal was one that abhorred violent revolution in his mind and desired it in his heart.
This might easily be. At the time Rizal was studying abroad, many cities such as London, Paris, Hong-Kong, Macao, as well as Madrid, contained small colonies of Filipinos, being chiefly the exiles of 1872 and Cavite. Among them it was customary to circulate pamphlets breathing out destruction to Spanish rule in the Philippines, and so on. These the authors were usually wise enough not to sign, the chief purpose of their labors being, apparently, not so much to launch expeditions for the overthrow of the citadel of oppression as to cheer the hearts of exile with verbal fireworks. One of these came out in March, 1889, in Hong-Kong, but widely circulated wherever there were Filipinos. It is a race that, like the others, has good men and bad, men that go erect and those that crawl. One [[179]]of the latter species, a creature of Weyler of the Red Hands, was then living in Hong-Kong and felt called upon to answer the inflammatory appeals of his countrymen. Perhaps he was not much of a Filipino; perhaps he was, in the bulk, Spaniard. At least he said in his document that Spain’s rule in the Philippines was the grandest specimen of colonial wisdom ever known and replete with good things for the people. As to the friars, he said that no possible objection existed to them, for they were kind, gentle, fond of the people, and wholly given to good works. So he warned his countrymen to pay no attention to ribald persons that wrote otherwise, for they but walked the straight road to destruction.
Copies of this unique production made their way to Europe and in the end to Paris, where Rizal was then living. In October of that year, 1889, appeared in Paris a rejoinder to sycophancy that set on edge the teeth of every Filipino in Europe. It was unsigned, but to the colonies the authorship seemed unmistakable. Only one Filipino could write like that; only one Filipino could wither with such disdainful sarcasm the apologist for the wrongers of his country.
The manifesto closes with this paragraph: