The Inhabitants of the Philippines

by Frederic H. Sawyer

In pursuance of the Asimilista policy, in July 1887, the Penal Code was put in force in the Philippines by peremptory order from the Government at Madrid, and much against the opinion of experienced officials. In December of the same year the Civil Code was promulgated.

It cannot be said that these reforms, however well-intended, produced any beneficial effect on the natives. Combined with the great increase in taxation, they intensified the discontent that was always smouldering, more especially in the hearts of the native priests. Their grievances against the religious orders, and more particularly against the Recollets, who had been compensated for the handing over of their benefices in Mindanao to the Jesuits, at the expense of the secular clergy, were the cause of their bitter hatred of the Spanish friars.

In 1883 Field-Marshal Jovellar had thought it necessary to strengthen the small garrison by bringing out two battalions of Marine Infantry. However it was not till March 1st, 1888, that some natives and mestizos, emboldened by the fact that an anti-clerical, D. Jose Centeno, a mining engineer, was Acting Civil Governor of Manila, walked in procession to his official residence and presented a petition addressed to the Governor-General, demanding the immediate expulsion of the friars of the religious orders, and of the Archbishop, whom they declared unworthy to occupy the Primacy of the Islands. They further demanded the secularisation of the benefices and the confiscation of the estates of the Augustinians and the Dominicans.

To this petition there were 810 signatures, but when the signatories were summoned and examined, most of them (as is their custom) declared they did not know what they had signed, and denied that they wished the friars to be expelled.

The petition was said to have been written by Doroteo Cortes, a mestizo lawyer, but I am told he did not sign it.

This manifestation, sixteen years after the mutiny at Cavite, seems to have had some relation to that event, for the petition accused the friars of compassing the death of Father Burgos, by subornation of justice.

The result of this appeal of the natives was that the principal persons who took part in it were banished, or sent to reside at undesirable spots within the Archipelago.

There were some agrarian disturbances at Calamba and Santa Rosa, one of the estates of the Dominicans, in 1890.

I may say that only the Augustinians, the Dominicans, and the Recollets possess landed estates, and that I have had the opportunity of examining several of them. They are all situated in Tagal territory, and as they are the pick of the lands, their possession by the friars has caused great heart-burnings amongst the Tagals—there has been a smouldering agrarian discontent for years.