The dilatoriness of the courts has become proverbial. It is, in fact, years before a case can be brought to a close. Meantime, the litigant has been fleeced out of an amount perhaps a hundred times the value of the article under litigation. The islands are full of native pettifoggers from the law schools of Manila, who have learned too well the meaning of the Spanish mañana. A suit can never be considered as disposed of; for another judge, scenting the faint possibility of a fee, may again have it retried. Thus I have seen the lives of acquitted persons again brought into jeopardy by the meddlesome officiousness and the grasping greed of a new judge. He that goes to court in the Philippines must not do so without reckoning the cost.
A Business Street in Old Manila.
Commenting on this, a recent English traveler says: “Availing one self of the dilatoriness of the Spanish law, it is possible for a man to occupy a house, pay no rent, and refuse to quit on legal grounds during a couple of years or more.” A person who has not a cent to lose can persecute another by means of a trumped up accusation, until he is ruined by an “informacion de pobreza”—a declaration of poverty—which enables the persecutor to keep the case going as long as he chooses, without needing money for fees.
A New Yorker’s Experience.
The following experience of an American friend of mine, whom I knew very well in Manila, will bring out in a graphic way the course of justice in the Philippines. Nor is his experience uncommon. It is, in fact, the usual one of the stranger or the native who goes to the fountain of Justice for the redress of a grievance.
I quote part of his letter written to a common friend:
In 1871 I joined Mr. William Morton Clark of Philadelphia, who had a large timber business on the island of Luzon, and started cutting some timber contracted for by the Chinese government.
I soon discovered that I was interfering with the business of a certain priest, who was also in the same line of business.