Native Admiration for America.
Their fears of a corrupt government—The islands might be an earthly paradise—Wanted, the man—Rajah Brooke—Sir Andrew Clarke—Hugh Clifford—John Nicholson—Charles Gordon—Evelyn Baring—Mistakes of the Peace Commission—Government should be a protectorate—Fighting men should be made governors—What might have been—The Malay race—Senator Hoar’s speech—Four years’ slaughter of the Tagals.
Not a few of the natives in arms were, and still are, sincere admirers of the true greatness of the United States. The noble deeds and words of America’s great men attain the summit of human grandeur in their fervid imaginations.
The statesmen and the historians of the great Republic receive their tribute of praise from Filipino lips.
The names of Washington, Lincoln, Prescott, Motley, are known and honoured by them. Were the natives treated according to the immortal principles of right and justice laid down or praised by such as these, they would welcome the tutelage, and, in fact, all Asia might envy them.
But they will never consent to become the prey of the politician, the boss, the monopolist, and the carpet-bagger, and from these they must be assured of protection before they will submit.
What confidence can they have in a form of government under which the tariffs on their great staples will be made in the interests of their American competitors.
Under such a system, and with a pension list steadily growing by millions of dollars year by year, their comfortable competence would, in a few years, be reduced to the hideous poverty of over-taxed British India.
Having passed so many years amongst this people, I may be expected to give some opinion as to whether the Philippines can be governed by America.
The islands were badly governed by Spain, yet Spaniards and natives lived together in great harmony, and I do not know where I could find a colony in which the Europeans mixed as much socially with the natives. Not in Java, where a native of position must dismount to salute the humblest Dutchman. Not in British India, where the Englishwoman has now made the gulf between British and native into a bottomless pit.