“If the general condition of the civilization of the Tagalos, Pampangos, Bicols, Bisayans, Ilocanos, Cagayanes, and Sambales is compared to the European constitutional countries of Servia, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Greece, the Spanish-Filipino civilization of the said Indian districts is greater and of larger extent than of those countries.”
And the foremost American scholar on the Philippines, gives the following résumé of the results of the Spanish administration:
“The Spaniards did influence the Filipinos profoundly, and on the whole for the better. There were ways, indeed, in which their record as a colonizing power in the Philippines stands today unique in all the world for its benevolent achievement and its substantial accomplishment of net progress. We do not need to gloss over the defects of Spain; we do not need to condone the backward and halting policy which at last turned the Filipinos against Spanish rule, nor to regret the final outcome of events, in order to do Spain justice. But we must do full justice to her actual achievements, if not as ruler, at any rate as teacher and missionary, in order to put the Filipinos of today in their proper category.” (Le Roy: “Philippine Life in Town and Country,” 1905, pp. 6, 7.)
The Background on Which America Had Built It was on all that cultural background—the native and the Spaniard—that America had built. Without belittling what she, alone, has done for the Filipinos since 1898 it hardly can be disputed that the rapid progress towards modern democracy in the Islands has been due mainly to the materials she found there. This fact has made her task a great deal easier, and is the reason why even the early military governors thought best to preserve the old municipal institutions with very slight changes.
III. The First Philippine Republic
The earlier revolutions against Spain were actuated by well-defined causes. They have been summarized as follows:
Causes of Earlier Revolutions (1) Denial of freedom of speech and press; (2) desire for Filipino representation; (3) proceedings by which a man was condemned without being heard; (4) violation of domicile and correspondence on mere secret denunciations; (5) agitation for the secularization of parishes; (6) political and civil equality for Filipinos and Spaniards; (7) desire for promulgation of the Spanish Constitution in the Philippines; and (7) the martyrdom of Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora, and later of Rizal.
The Revolution of 1896 The revolution of 1896, however, had an additional cause which was dominant in the minds of the leaders. It was “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” In the words of General Aguinaldo in a manifesto, “We aspire to the glory of obtaining the Liberty, Independence, and Honor of the Country.”
The Pact of Biac-na-Bato This revolution was halted in 1897 by the Pact of Biac-na-Bato, which was signed between the Revolutionists and the Spanish authorities. There were three outstanding stipulations in the pact: