A Visit to the Philippine Islands

by John Bowring

Attempts were made a few years ago to encourage the planting of tobacco in the province of Iloilo, by a company which made advances to the Indians; but the enterprise, discouraged by the government, failed, and I found, when I visited the locality, the warehouses abandoned and the company dissolved. There have been many expeditions for the destruction and confiscation of illicit tobacco; and on more than one occasion insurrections, tumults, serious loss of life and very doubtful results have followed these interferences. The statistical returns show that the consumption of the State tobacco varies considerably in the different provinces, being influenced by the greater or less difficulty of obtaining the contraband article.

There have been divers projects for augmenting the population of the Philippines—from China, from Switzerland, from Borneo and even from British India. The friars have never looked with complacency on any of these schemes. They all present elements which would not easily he subjected to ecclesiastical influence. The Chinese would not be willing cultivators of the soil if any other pursuit should promise greater profits, and it is quite certain that the indolent Indian will nowhere be able to compete with the industrious, persevering and economical Chinese. Many suggestions have been made for the introduction of Chinese women, with a view of attaching Chinese families to the soil; but hitherto nothing has sufficed to conquer the abhorrence with which a Chinese female contemplates the abandonment of her country, nor the general resistance to such abandonment on the part of the Chinese clans. Chinese female children have been frequently kidnapped for conveyance to the Philippines, and some horrible circumstances have come to the knowledge of British authorities in China, followed by the exposure and punishment of British subjects concerned in these cruel and barbarous deeds. An establishment of a sisterhood in China, called that of the Sainte Enfance, has been looked to as a means of christianizing female children, and conveying them to the Philippines; they have collected or purchased many orphans, but small success has attended these well-meant, but not well-directed labours. In 1855, it was stated in an official document (De Mas, p. 26) that in 1858, an annual entry of 2,500 children might be expected. The calculation has been a total mistake; the establishments in China are in a state of embarrassment and difficulty, and I am not aware that a single Chinese female has been supplied for the suggested purpose. Any number of orphans or abandoned children might be bought in the great cities of China, especially from the orphan asylums; but an increased demand would only encourage their abandonment by their mothers. These foundling hospitals are of very doubtful utility, and produce, probably, more misery than they cure.

The greatest impediment to the progress of the Philippines, and the development of their immense resources, is attributable to the miserable traditional policy of the mother country, whose jealousies tie the hands of the governors they appoint to rule; so that the knowledge and experience which are acquired in the locality are wholly subjected to the ignorance and shortsightedness of the distant, but supreme authority. Would the Spaniard but recognize the wisdom of one of their many instructive proverbs—Mas sabe el loco en su casa que cuerdo en la agena (the fool knows more about his own home than the wise man of the home of another)—more confidence might be reposed in those who are thoroughly cognizant of local circumstances and local wants. As it is, everything has to be referred to Madrid. A long delay is inevitable—an erroneous decision probable; circumstances are constantly changing, and what would have been judicious to-day may be wholly unadvisable to-morrow. Then there is the greatest unwillingness to surrender even the shadow of authority, or any of those sources of patronage which a government so enervate and corrupt as that of Spain clings to as its props and protection. Again, the uncertainty of tenure of office, which attaches to all the superior offices held under the Spanish Government, is alike calculated to demoralize and discourage. Before a governor has surveyed his territory and marked out to himself a course of action, he may be superseded under one of those multitudinous changes which grow out of the caprices of the court or the clamour of the people. It was a melancholy employment of mine to look round the collection of the various portraits of the captains-general which adorned my apartment, bearing the dates of their appointment and their supersession. Some of them only occupied their office for a few months, and were as carelessly and recklessly dismissed as a worthless weed is flung away. And there seemed no expectation of any change in this respect, for there were many blank frames made to receive the vera effigies of future excellencies. Our colonial system is wiser, as we appoint governors for six years, and, except under special circumstances, they are not dispossessed of their government. Whether there may be any moral deterioration connected with the possession of power, sufficient to counterbalance all the benefits which are furnished by long experience and local knowledge, may be a question for philosophy and statesmanship.

But other causes of backwardness are traceable to those very elements of wealth and prosperity, to which these islands must look for their future progress. A soil so feracious, a sun so bright, rains so bountiful, require so little co-operation from the aid of man that he becomes careless, indolent, unconcerned for the morrow. He has but to stretch out his hand, and food drops into it. The fibre of the aloe, which the female weaves with the simplest of looms, gives her garments; the uprights and the floors and the substantial parts of his dwelling are made of the bamboo, which he finds in superfluous abundance; while the nipa palm provides roofs and sides to his hut. Wants he has few and he cares little for luxuries. His enjoyments are in religious processions, in music and dancing, in his gallo above all. He may take possession without rent of any quantity of land which he is willing to cultivate. There is a tendency, no doubt, to improvement. Cultivation extends and good examples are not without effect.

In times of tranquillity Spain has nothing to fear for her Philippine colonies. So long as they are unmolested by foreign invaders and the government is carried on with mildness and prudence, there is little to be apprehended from any internal agitation; but I doubt the efficiency of any means of defence at the disposal of the authorities, should a day of trouble come. The Indian regular forces might for some time be depended on; but whether this could be anticipated of the militia or any of the urban auxiliaries is uncertain. The number of Spaniards is small—in most of the islands quite insignificant; indolence and indifference characterize the indigenous races; and if, on the one hand, they took no part in favour of intrusive strangers, on the other, they could not be looked to for any patriotic or energetic exertions on behalf of their Spanish rulers. They have, indeed, no traditions of former independence—no descendants of famous ancient chiefs or princes, to whom they look with affection, hope or reverence. There are no fragments left of hierarchies overthrown. No Montezumas, no Colocolos, are named in their songs, or perpetuated in their memories. There are no ruins of great cities or temples; in a word, no records of the remote past. There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction among the Indians, but it is more strongly felt against the native gobernadorcillos—the heads of barangay—the privileged members of the local principalia—when exercising their “petty tyrannies,” than against the higher authorities, who are beyond the hearing of their complaints. “The governor-general is in Manila (far away); the king is in Spain (farther still); and God is in heaven (farthest of all).” It is a natural complaint that the tribute or capitation tax presses equally on all classes of Indians, rich or poor. The heads of barangay, who are charged with its collection, not unfrequently dissipate the money in gambling. One abuse has, however, been reformed—the tribute in many provinces was formerly collected in produce, and great were the consequent exactions practised upon the natives, from which the treasury obtained no profit, but the petty functionaries much. I believe the tax is now almost universally levied in money. All Spaniards, all foreigners (excepting Chinese), and their descendants are exempted from tribute. One of the most intelligent of the merchants of Manila (Don Juan Bautista Marcaida) has had the kindness to furnish me with sundry memoranda on the subject of the capabilities of the Philippine Islands, and the means of developing them. To his observations, the result of careful observation, much experience and extensive reading, I attach great value. They are imbued with some of the national prejudices of a Spanish Catholic, in whose mind the constitution of the Romish Church is associated with every form of authority, and who is unwilling to see in that very constitution, and its necessary agencies, invincible impediments to the fullest progress of intellect—to the widest extension of agricultural, manufacturing and commercial prosperity—in a word, to that great agitation of the popular mind, to which Protestant nations owe their religious reforms, and their undoubted superiority in the vast field of speculation and adventure.

He says:—“The social organization of the Philippines is the most paternal and civilizing of any known in the world; having for its basis the doctrines of the Gospel, and the kind and fatherly spirit of the Laws of the Indies.” It may be admitted, in reference to the legislation of the colonies of many nations, that the Spanish code is comparatively humane and that the influence of the Romish clergy has been frequently and successfully excited for the protection and benefit of conquered natives, and of imported slaves; but M. Marcaida goes on to acknowledge and point out “the torpid and unimproving character of the existing system,” and to demand important changes for the advancement of the public weal.

“The government moves slowly, from its complicated organization, and from the want of adequate powers to give effect to those reforms which are suggested by local knowledge, but which are overruled by the unteachable ignorance, or selfish interests, or political intrigues of the mother country.”

As regards the clergy, he thinks the administration generally good, but that the progress of time and altered circumstances necessitate many important changes in the distribution of the ecclesiastical authority, a new arrangement of the pueblos, a better education of the church functionaries, a great augmentation of the number of parochial priests (many of whom have now cures varying from 3,000 to 60,000 souls). He would have the parish clergyman both the religious and secular instructor of his community, and for this purpose requires that he should be becomingly and highly educated—a consummation for which the government would have some difficulty in providing the machinery, and for which assuredly the Church would not lend its co-operation.

“For the administration of justice, the Philippines have one supreme and forty-two subordinate tribunals. The number is wholly insufficient for the necessities of 5,000,000 of inhabitants scattered over 1,200 islands, and occupying so vast a territorial space.” There can be no doubt that justice is often inaccessible, that it is costly, that it is delayed, defeated, and associated with many vexations. Spain has never been celebrated for the integrity of its judges, or the purity of its courts. A pleyto in the Peninsula is held to be as great a curse as a suit in Chancery in England, with the added evil of want of confidence in the administrators of the law. Their character would hardly be improved at a distance of 10,000 miles from the Peninsula; and if Spain has some difficulty in supplying herself at home with incorruptible functionaries, that difficulty would be augmented in her remotest possessions. There seemed to me much admirable machinery in the traditional and still existing usages and institutions of the natives. Much might, no doubt, be done to lessen the dilatory, costly and troublesome character of lawsuits, by introducing more of natural and less of technical proceedings; by facilitating the production and examination of evidence; by the suppression of the masses of papel sellado (documents upon stamped paper); by diminishing the cost and simplifying the process of appeal; and, above all, by the introduction of a code applicable to the ordinary circumstances of social life.

He thinks the attempts to conglomerate the population in towns and cities injurious to the agricultural interests of the country; but assuredly this agglomeration is friendly to civilization, good government and the production of wealth, and more likely than the dispersion of the inhabitants to provide for the introduction of those larger farms to which the Philippines must look for any very considerable augmentation of the produce of the land.