Evidently the possibility of obtaining an answer to this question depends on the possibility of determining, within allowable limits of precision, the qualities and defects of the Filipino peoples. Now, this is a difficult thing to do, but it is not an impossible thing; at any rate, a first approximation may be derived from the authorities quoted in the “Census of the Philippine Islands,” 1903, pp 492 et seq. In time, these authorities range from Legaspi, 1565, to our own day, and include governors, prelates, travellers, engineers, priests, etc., among whom are found Spaniards, Englishmen, Americans, and Filipinos, As might be expected, all sorts of qualities and defects are reported. Classifying these, and rejecting from consideration all, whether quality or defect, not supported by at least five authorities, it may be concluded, so far as this induction goes, that the Filipino is, on the one hand, hospitable, courageous, fond of music, show, and display; and, on the other, indolent, superstitious, dishonest, and addicted to gambling. One quality, imitativeness, is possibly neutral. It would appear that his virtues do not especially look toward thrift—i.e., economic independence—and that his defects positively look the other way. If the witnesses testifying be challenged on the score of incompetency, let us turn to the reports of the supervisors of the census, contained in the volume already cited; for these cover the entire Archipelago, and set forth actual conditions at one and the same epoch, 1903, the date of the census. Moreover, these supervisors, as welt as the special agents and enumerators, were nearly all natives. When, therefore, these supervisors report the mass of the Christianized Filipinos as simple and superstitious, we may be sure that we have the truth; but we are also inevitably led to the conclusion of economic unfitness. As this matter of economic independence is one of the first importance in determining the future of the Islands, we must look for all the light possible on the question. A flood is thrown on it by an article entitled “Nulla est Redemptio,” published in the (native) La Democracia, of Manila, October 10, 1910, and believed to be the production of perhaps the ablest Filipino alive to-day. Premising that agriculture is the chief source of Philippine wealth, and that this source failing, all others must fail, the author points out that, although taxes are lighter in the Archipelago than in any other country, production is much less, and that this is the chief cause of the prevailing economic distress. He points out further that the Assembly is wholly native, as are all municipal and nearly all provincial officers, and that therefore they, and the constituencies that elected them, must assume responsibility. Now, what has been achieved? The provinces have spent money on buildings and parks, but, with one brilliant exception, none on roads. Nothing has been done for agriculture. Of the municipalities, the least said the better; they are a wreck in the full extension of the word. And, as the hope of a people must rest in its youth, what does he find to be the case? Thousands of candidates in pharmacy, law, medicine; as regards the Civil Service, enough candidates to fill all the posts in the Islands for generations to come. But of farmers, young men willing to return to the fields, their own fields, and by the sweat of their brow to work out the salvation of the country? None: the development of this principal element of national existence is left to the ignorant and indolent peasantry. He draws no less gloomy a picture in respect of capital and property. Nine-tenths of Manila, and all important provincial real estate, is mortgaged. Capital is furnished at exorbitant rates of interest, and usury prevails. In the country, no security is accepted save real property, and then only when the lender is satisfied that his debtor will be unable to pay, and that the security will pass.
Bad as the outlook is, no remedy suggests itself. For, returning to the theme that agriculture is recognized as vital, much energy is spent in discussion, discourses, lectures, in writing articles, in discovering reasons why agriculture does not flourish, but nothing else and nothing more.[4]
The picture may be overdrawn; but it is a Filipino picture, drawn by a Filipino hand. Let us now permit, the native press to speak again on the subject engaging our attention. Thus Vanguardia[5] a bitter anti-American sheet, arraigns its wealthy fellow-countrymen for lack of initiative and fondness of routine. It accuses them of a willingness to invest in city property, to deposit money in banks, “to make loans at usurious rates, in which they take advantage of the urgent and pressing necessities of their countrymen,” but of unwillingness “to engage in agriculture, marine or industrial enterprise”; and says they are “generally lacking in the spirit of progression.” According to another native newspaper, the vice of gambling has infected all classes of society, men and women alike, rich and poor, young and old. Mere it is almost impossible to overdraw the picture, so widespread is the vice. Let us now couple these statements, drawn from native sources, with the fact that the Christianized tribes, all told, number some 7,000,000; that of these but one-tenth speak Spanish; and that of this tenth only a very few are educated in any accepted sense of the word. Repeating here a form of summation already employed in this discussion, let us bear in mind that, if we decide to make a grant of independence, we shall be deciding to grant it to a population, composed, first, of a very few educated persons; next, of a small fraction able, through the possession of Spanish, to communicate, with one another; and, lastly, of a remainder—the vast, the immense majority—not only unable so to communicate, but characterized by qualities that, however commendable in themselves, do not constitute a foundation on which popular self-government may safely rest. Further, we mean to grant it to a population which contains no middle class, to one in which the poor are peculiarly at the mercy of the rich, and in which nearly all the elements that make for economic independence are conspicuously lacking.
VI.
What would happen if we were to grant immediate independence to the Islands? Without having the gift of prophecy, one runs no risk in declaring that civil war would be almost unavoidable. At least this is the belief of some well-informed Filipinos, a belief that appears to have some ground when we take into account, the great probability of a Tagálog oligarchy. But, without going so far as to predict armed strife, it would seem that any government, not held together by some strong external power, would soon begin to break up. Its various elements, not only differentiated from one another by speech, but physically separated, in many cases, by the seas, would tend to fall apart. The Visayas, for example, would refuse sooner or later to acknowledge the Tagalog supremacy of Luzon. If we proceed farther south still, what practicable bond can be found to exist between Mindanao, peopled by Mohammedans and savages, and Luzon or Panay or Negros? The consequences of such a disruption as is here predicted must occur to everyone. The gravest of these, gravest in that it would defeat our purpose in granting independence, would be foreign intervention. Japan would most certainly insist on being heard. Now, the Filipinos, as a whole, prefer our sovereignty to that of the Japanese. England, too, would have a right to interfere for the protection of her commercial interests in the Archipelago. It exercised this sort of right, in 1882, by seizing Egypt in behalf of civilization in general. In the meantime, the Moros of Mindanao and Jolo would have resumed their piratical excursions to the northward, burning, killing, and carrying off slaves. If this be questioned, then let us recollect that as recently as 1897 they carried off slaves from the Visayas, a sporadic case, probably, but giving evidence that the disease of piracy is to-day merely latent. Given an opportunity, it will break out again. Under independence, the large, beautiful, and fertile island of Mindanao would be left to its own devices, would be lost to civilization. Upon this point we need have no doubt whatever. The issue of Filipino control of Mindanao was very clearly raised, when Mr. Dickinson, the late Secretary of War, visited Mindanao in August of 1910. Upon this occasion Mr. Dickinson, in response to a Filipino plea for immediate independence, with consequent control of the Moros, made a speech in which he declared the unwillingness of the Government to entrust to the 66,000 Filipinos living in Mindanao the government of the 350,000 Moros of this province. At the close of this speech, four datus (chiefs), present with 2,000 of their people, and controlling the destinies of 40,000 souls, swore allegiance to the United States; and, requesting that, if the Americans ever withdrew from Mindanao, the Moros should be placed in control, firmly announced, at the same time, their intention to fight if the Americans should ever take their departure. One of the datus, Mandi by name, was outspoken in praise of the present Government, and both he and the other chiefs declared that they were contented with things as they are. Such testimony as is afforded by the foregoing incident is not lightly to be brushed aside to make way for an abstraction. If disregarded, then the efforts that we have made to better the condition of Mindanao, to introduce some idea of law and order, some notion of the value of peace and of industry, will come to a sudden end; for the Christianized Filipinos can never hope to cope with the active, warlike pirates of Moroland. So far as this part of the Archipelago is concerned, a grant of independence means the re-establishment of slavery, the recrudescence of piracy,[6] the reincarnation of barbarism. How great a pity this would be may be inferred from the fact that Mindanao forms nearly one-third of the Archipelago in area, and exceeds Java in arable land. Now, Java supports a population of over 25,000,000.
If we turn our attention to the other non-Christian elements of the Islands, the case is no better. The Christianized Filipino fears and dreads the pagan mountaineers, the head-hunters who occupy so large a part of Luzon, the largest and most important island of the Archipelago. He grudges every centavo spent under our direction for the betterment of these truly admirable wild men The governor, the Christian governor, of a province bordering on the wild men’s territory, had, indeed, no other idea of the way to treat his pagan neighbors, about 50,000 in number, than to kill them all. His argument was that they were worse than useless, why spend any money on them, when, by exterminating them, all questions affecting them would be forever answered? But, under our administration, some excellent work has been done, and is growing, to turn these as yet unspoiled peoples to account in the destinies of the Archipelago. Independence would mean the end of this work, the restoration of the old order of rapine, murder, and all injustice as between Christians and pagans, and of internecine strife and warfare as between the communities of the pagans themselves. That this result would follow is not even questioned by those who have acquired their knowledge at first hand. Are we willing to shoulder the responsibility of such a result?
We have at our very doors an example of the danger of independence to a people unfilled for the burdens and responsibilities of self-government. We have already since 1900 been compelled once to intervene in the affairs of Cuba: the possibility of a fresh intervention continually stares our statesmen in the face. But Cuba, let it be observed, in contrast with the Philippines, has but one language, one religion; it has no wild tribes, no Mohammedans; its provinces are not separated from one another by seas of difficult navigation, are bound together by suitable communications. The curse of Cuba is personal politics: have we any assurance that this same curse in a worse form would not come to blast the Philippines?
VII.
Some of the conclusions reached or hinted at in the course of this argument must have formed themselves in the minds of at least a few Filipinos of independent character. Otherwise how shall we account for the fact that some declare their disbelief in the possibility of independence? How else shall we explain what is far more significant, the silence under this head of the really first-rate men of the Archipelago? Is it not worthy of note that Rizal himself, the posthumous apostle of the Philippines, never advocated or contemplated independence? In yet other cases, the belief held finds expression in the assertion that the Islands must be declared independent, but only under the protection of the United States. What that would ultimately mean is so plain to those who know the country as to require no consideration here. It may even be asserted on the best of authority, so far as any authority is possible in such a case, that not even those who shout the loudest for independence arc sincere in their clamor the Assembly itself would be seriously disturbed if its resolution to this end should suddenly be honored by the United States.
We make bold to quote here, in full, a short editorial that appeared in the Weekly Times of Manila, December 30, 1910: