The Judge laughed: “I wonder if you intend to circulate reports about me.”
“That depends. If you do justice by us, we will see to the advertising, all right.”
“What do you mean by justice?”
“Well, the Holy See is doing you inestimable service in withdrawing the Spanish friars from the Philippines, because it is thus removing the very source of the quarrel and enabling you to gain a world reputation by accomplishing within a few years that which the Spanish government failed to accomplish in three centuries. That is a good start toward the presidency.”
“It seems you have tricked me into payment for that service, which I freely acknowledge, because you have used the order that those in possession of church property shall be maintained in possession of that property to your advantage, by seizing on all the property before the American troops arrived on the scene.”
“A mere act of justice. That property belonged to the holy church before the schism took it away, and we have merely done to the schism what it first did to us. This is, therefore, a mere act of reparation; but we are not ungrateful to you that you have made it possible.”
The judge was secretly troubled at the part he had played. It was not in accord with his conception of right. But he readily saw that it was good politics, played for him by a power he did not understand. He ventured to say:
“I wish to do exact justice by you, and no more.”
“We shall ask no more. In a sense the church in general has had reparation; but what about the friars?”
“I do not understand.”