I have not visited this Hacienda, and cannot give its extent or value.
Of all the Orders the greatest land-owners are the Dominicans. They have vast estates in Calamba, Cabuyáo, Santa Rosa, Biñan, and San Pedro Tunasán, all on the Lake of Bay, also at Naic and Santa Cruz on the Bay of Manila. I have several times visited their estates at the first two places, and can affirm that they have expended considerable sums in building dams for irrigating the lands, and I supplied them with some very large cast-iron pipes for the purpose of making a syphon across a ravine or narrow valley to convey water for irrigating the opposite plain. They have consequently very largely increased the value of these lands.
The house at Calamba, solidly built of stone, with a strong and high encircling wall, served as a fortified camp and headquarters for the Spanish army in operation against the rebels in 1897.
This estate of Calamba has earned a sad notoriety in the Philippines, for the disputes which constantly arose between the administration and their tenants.
It is hardly too much to say that the possession of estates has been fatal to the Orders. They claim to have always been good and indulgent landlords, but the fact remains that all these estates are in Tagal territory, that only the Tagals revolted, and that the revolt was directed against the Orders because of their tyranny and extortions, and because they were landlords and rack renters.
It was, is now, and ever will be an Agrarian question that will continue to give trouble and be the cause of crime and outrage until settled in a broad-minded and statesman-like manner.
These estates have been a bone of contention for centuries, and were a principal cause of the last revolt of the Tagals. Yet the Peace Commission at Paris appears to have given the three Orders a new title to their disputed possessions by guaranteeing to the Church the enjoyment of its property, which, if the Spaniards had continued to rule the islands, must ultimately have been taken from it in the natural course of events, as has happened in every other Catholic country.
I have no doubt that the pacification of the Philippines by the American forces has been greatly retarded, and is now rendered more difficult, by this clause, which must have been accepted by the American commissioners under a misapprehension of its import, and from imperfect information as to the status quo. This difficult matter can still be arranged, but it will require the outlay of a considerable sum of money, which, however, would eventually be recouped.
Some of the Rising Generation in the Philippines. Scholars of the Manila Athenæum, Belonging to the Congregation of the Virgin.