[9] The Government House, located in the city, which was thrown down in the earthquake of 1863, has not been rebuilt. Its reconstruction was only commenced by the Spaniards in 1895. The Gov.-General therefore resided after 1863 at his suburban palace at Malacañan, on the river-side.
[10] “Aventures dʼun gentilhomme Breton aux Iles Philippines,” par Paul de la Gironnière. Paris, 1875.
[11] Vide “Terremotos de Nueva Vizcaya en 1881,” by Enrique Abella y Casariega Published in Madrid.
The Tagálog Rebellion of 1896–98
First Period
After the Napoleonic wars in Spain, the “Junta Suprema Central del Reino” convened the famous “Córtes de Cádiz” by decree dated September 12, 1809. This junta was succeeded by another—“El Supremo Consejo de la Regencia”—when the Córtes passed the first Suffrage Bill known in Spain on January 29, 1810. These Córtes assembled deputies from all the Colonies—Cuba, Venezuela, Chile, Guatemala, Santa Fé, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, etc.; in fact, all those dependencies which constituted the four Viceroyalties and the eight Captain-Generalships of the day. The Philippine deputy, Ventura de los Reyes, signed the Act of Constitution of 1812. In 1820 the Córtes again admitted this Colonyʼs representatives, amongst whom were Vicente Posadas, Eulalio Ramirez, Anselmo Jorge Fajárdos, Roberto Pimental, Esteban Marqués, José Florentino, Manuel Saez de Vismanos, José Azcárraga, and nine others. They also took part in the parliamentary debates of 1822 and 1823. The Constitution was shortly afterwards suspended, but on the demise of Ferdinand VII. the Philippine deputies, Brigadier Garcia Gamba and the half-breed Juan Francisco Lecáros, sat in Parliament. Again, and for the last time, Philippine members figured in the Córtes of the Isabella II. Regency; then, on the opening of Parliament in 1837, their exclusion, as well as the government of the Ultramarine Provinces by special laws, was voted.
The friars, hitherto regarded by the majority of Filipinos as their protectors and friendly intermediaries between the people and the civil rulers, had set their faces against the above radical innovations, foreseeing in them a death-blow to their own preponderance. Indeed, the “friar question” only came into existence after the year 1812.
In 1868 Queen Isabella II. was deposed, and the succeeding Provisional Government (1868–70), founded on Republican principles, caused an Assembly of Reformists to be established in Manila. The members of this Junta General de Reformas were five Filipinos, namely, Ramon Calderon, Bonifacio Saez de Vismanos, Lorenzo Calvo, Gabriel Gonzalez Esquibel, and Joaquin Pardo de Tavera; eleven civilian Spaniards, namely, Joaquin J. Inchausti, Tomàs Balbas y Castro, Felino Gil, Antonio Ayala, with seven others and five Spanish friars, namely, Father Fonseca, Father Domingo Trecera, Rector of the University, (Dominicans), one Austin, one Recoleto and one Franciscan friar. This junta had the power to vote reforms for the Colony, subject to the ratification of the Home Government. But monastic influence prevailed; the reforms voted were never carried into effect, and long before the Bourbon restoration took place (1874) the Philippine Assembly had ceased to exist. But it was impossible for the mother country, which had spontaneously given the Filipinos a taste of political equality, again to yoke them to the old tutelage without demur. Alternate political progress and retrogression in the Peninsula cast their reflex on this Colony, but the first sparks of liberty had been gratuitously struck which neither reaction in the Peninsula nor persecution in the Colony itself could totally extinguish. No Filipino, at that period, dreamed of absolute independence, but the few who had been taught by their masters to hope for equal laws, agitated for their promulgation and became a thorn in the side of the Monastic Orders. Only as their eyes were spontaneously opened to liberty by the Spaniards themselves did they feel the want of it.
The Cavite Rising of 1872 (vide p. [106]), which the Philippine Government unwisely treated as an important political movement and mercilessly avenged itself by executions and banishment of many of the best Manila families, was neither forgotten nor forgiven. To me, as a foreigner, scores of representative provincial natives did not hesitate to open their hearts in private on the subject. The Government lost considerably by its uncalled-for severity on this occasion. The natives regarded it as a sign of apprehension, and a proof of the intention to rule with an iron rod. The Government played into the hands of the Spanish clergy, and all the friars gained by strengthening their monopoly of the incumbencies they lost in moral prestige. Thinking men really pitied the Government, which became more and more the instrument of the ecclesiastics. Since then, serious ideas of a revolution to be accomplished one day took root in the minds of influential Filipinos throughout the provinces adjacent to Manila. La Solidaridad, a Philippine organ, founded in Madrid by Marcelo Hilario del Pilar, Mariano Ponce, Eduardo Leyte and Antonio Luna for the furtherance of Philippine interests was proscribed, but copies entered the Islands clandestinely. In the villages, secret societies were formed which the priests chose to call “Freemasonry”; and on the ground that all vows which could not be explained at the confessional were anti-christian, the Archbishop gave strict injunctions to the friars to ferret out the so-called Freemasons. Denunciations by hundreds quickly followed, for the priests willingly availed themselves of this licence to get rid of anti-clericals and others who had displeased them. In the town of Malolos (which in 1898 became the seat of the Revolutionary Congress) Father Moïses Santos caused all the members of the Town Council to be banished, and when I last dined with him in his convent, he told me he had cleared out a few more and had his eye on others. From other villages, notably in the provinces around the capital, the priests had their victims escorted up to Manila and consigned to the Gov.-General, who issued the deportation orders without trial or sentence, the recommendation of the all-powerful padre being sufficient warrant. Thus hundreds of families were deprived of fathers and brothers without warning or apparent justification;—but it takes a great deal to rouse the patient native to action. Then in 1895 came the Marahui campaign in Mindanao (vide p. [144]). In order to people the territory around Lake Lanao, conquered from the Moros, it was proposed to invite families to migrate there from the other islands, and notifications to this effect were issued to all the provincial governors. At first it was put to the people in the smooth form of a proposal. None volunteered to go, because they could not see why they should give up what they had to go and waste their lives on a tract of virgin soil with the very likely chance of a daily attack from the Moros. Peremptory orders followed, requiring the governors to send up “emigrants” for the Ylígan district. This caused a great commotion in the provinces, and large numbers of natives abandoned their homes to evade anticipated violence. I have no proof as to who originated this scheme, but there is the significant fact that the orders were issued only to the authorities of those provinces supposed to be affected by the secret societies. Under the then existing system, the governors could not act in a case like this without the co-operation of the parish priests; hence during the years 1895 and 1896 a systematic course of official sacerdotal tyranny was initiated which, being too much even for the patient Filipino, was the immediate cause of the members of the Katipunan secret society hastening their plans for open rebellion, the plot of which was prematurely discovered on Thursday, August 20, 1896. The rebellion in Cuba was calling for all the resources in men and material that Spain could send there. The total number of European troops dispersed over these Islands did not exceed 1,500 well armed and well officered, of which about 700 were in Manila. The native auxiliaries amounted to about 6,000. The impression was gaining ground that the Spaniards would be beaten out of Cuba; but whilst this idea gave the Tagálogs moral courage to attempt the same in these Islands, so far as one could then foresee, Spainʼs reverse in the Antilles and the consequent evacuation would have permitted her to pour troops into Manila, causing the nativesʼ last chance to vanish indefinitely.
Several months before the outbreak, the Katipunan sent a deputation to Japan to present a petition to the Mikado, praying him to annex the Philippines. This petition, said to have been signed by 5,000 Filipinos, was received by the Japanese Government, who forwarded it to the Spanish Government; hence the names of 5,000 disaffected persons were known to the Philippine authorities, who did not find it politic to raise the storm by immediate arrests.