Of the political error committed by the Spanish Authorities in the execution of Rizal, I do not hold myself up as a judge. All governments, like human beings, commit mistakes and at times grave ones. The Spanish authorities, feeling themselves justified in so doing, ordered the execution of the prisoner who was responsible for one of the most bloody revolts since the time of the French revolution: the pattern taken by the Filipino leaders, for the means of the foundation of the Filipino republic. Rizal was executed on the Luneta. To assert that he was offered up as a victim to gratify the wishes of the Religious Orders is but a crude and vicious argument worthy of its inventors and propagators. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be brought forward to prove such an assertion, but on the contrary, those members of the Religious Orders who concerned themselves in the stirring affairs of the revolution were, as a very general rule, opposed to harsh and extreme measures being taken; and among these was the Illustrious Archbishop of Manila, Sr. Nozaleda, a noble, tenderhearted and compassionate prelate, a prelate who has been dubbed by Foreman as “the blood-thirsty Archbishop”. Had the friars held the reins of government as they are stated to have done, history would not have to record the names of so many, many people who were executed: people who were scarcely to be held as guilty, in as much as they were but sheep who thoughtlessly followed their shepherds without even looking to see where the road they trod would lead them.
In politics Rizal had his party composed of a number of insignificant petty-lawyers, petty-doctors and others possessing academic titles and a semi-formed cerebral power. These were backed by a mass of the people of Calamba, Rizal’s birthplace. In their eyes he was a “Messiah”, a “Mahdi”, their prophet and redeemer. As an individual he was bright and intelligent, and had he not been led astray by those who made a “cat’s paw” of him, and who cruelly deserted him in his hour of need, he would doubtless have been one of the foremost Filipinos of to-day in that sphere of life in which God had placed him.
A Spanish proverb says: “In blind man’s land the one eyed man is a king.” Rizal was a king.
Note 9. Marcelo Hilario del Pilar y Gatmaytan was a native of Bulacan. He was, by profession, a lawyer, and had been enabled to complete his studies in that direction through the good offices of the Augustinian Fathers of Manila, who had given him the money necessary to matriculate and to pay the cost of his title of “abogado.”[9]
Pilar left Manila for the peninsula about the end of ’88 for fear of deportation: a punishment at that time staring him in the face. He was one of the earliest workers on the “La Solidaridad”, the official organ of Filipino freemasonry in all its sections. He later on became its director.
Pilar was another of the many malays whose ways were beyond human comprehension. Spaniards who have lived a life-time among the indians and studied them carefully from all points of view agree that the deeper one studies the native character the more incomprehensible it becomes. That is, the study of the average filipino: Pilar was one of the average. He was not gifted with the education enjoyed by Rizal, nor was he such a stupid visionary as Pedro Paterno; he possessed touches of the character of both.
Like so many of those Filipinos who fed at the hands of the Religious Orders, he eventually turned to bite the hand that fed him. As in the case of the others who had done the like, he did so, not because he had cause to, but because he fell, as did they, under the evil influence of those who utilized them to work out their schemes of treachery.
Pilar was sent to Spain as a delegate of the Committee of propaganda. Owing to this position of chief of the delegation in Madrid, and by reason of his intimate friendship with Morayta, he occupied a position from which neither Rizal nor even the whole of the progressive indians combined, could drive him. He held, for some time, high office in the Gr∴ Or∴ Esp∴ as will be seen from the following clipping taken from page 107 of the Annual of that Orient for the year 1894–95.
“GRAN CONS∴ DE LA ORDEN
1894–1895
Muy Ven. Gran Maestre Presidente
Ven. H. Miguel Morayta y Sagrario, Gr∴ 33
...................................
Ven. Gran Orador Adjunto
V. Marcelo H. del Pilar Gr∴ 33” (h∴ Kupang)
It was Pilar who conceived the plan of the Katipunan; and yet after all it was not his conception, for the scheme he formed was at the best, a piece of patch work made up of the plans worked out in the various revolutions which had taken place in some part of the world.