That illustrious statistician believed that the knowledge of Castilian and the unity of the language could not be in any time a favorable base for the insurrection, which was one of the contrary arguments which he was opposing, for, he was asserting in general that “neither the population through its number, nor the native race through its nature and special conditions, are here capable of independence at any time. This country is not a continent, but an archipelago. Its diverse provinces are for the greater part, distinct islands; ... and so long as there is a Spanish military marine in these waters, supposing that any serious insurrection should arise (which seems to me highly improbable) there is nothing easier than to circumscribe it to the locality in which it should be born, and consequently to stifle it in its cradle.” A few lines afterwards he says: “The Indians here, I repeat, can never become independent. They feel that also for the present, although perhaps they do not understand it; and furthermore by instinct they prefer at all times Spaniards to foreigners, on whom they look moreover with unfavorable caution.” What an illusion, and what an enormous disillusion! How great would be the deception of Señor Escosura if he would come to life in his grave! Without troubling us with the argument of the Castilian, or taking into account the circumstances that he lays down in regard to the multiplicity of islands which are extremely unfavorable for their defense, according to his way of thinking, what would he say now if he lifted his head and observed that the knowledge of Castilian has been considerably extended—perhaps four times as much as when he went as royal commissary to Filipinas, in order to write that Memoria; that, if not the lawyers, the men of most letters and knowledge of Castilian, the intelligent, and those of the most cultured native society, in which figures a numerous pleiad composed of advocates, physicians, pharmacists, painters, engravers, normal and elementary teachers, municipal captains, past-captains, cuadrilleros,[9] and hundreds more of those who understand one another and are in the way of identifying themselves with the Castila, as Señor Escosura would say, are the leaders, are those who captain and direct the enormous native multitudes who are related to them in thought and action, and stimulate and spread that bloody rebellion which is spreading through all the islands like an immense spot of oil, in spite of the fact that they are so numerous and are defended by a respectable squadron; of that insurrection, which scarcely born and without arms, presents itself powerful, and armed in the greater part of Luzón and certain other provinces, and latent or masked in all the remaining provinces; of that insurrection which without any preamble of liberties, and of little more than two years of limited exercise of municipal autonomy, is beginning to proclaim and demand independence, and passing to active life is establishing a government and is exercising perfect dominion for more than one-half year in an entire province a few leguas from Manila, at the very foot of a strong fort and under the fire of its arsenal, in spite of the numerous squadron which touches its coasts. What would the author of that Memoria, abounding in liberties and so ample in his criticism, say? He would say much of that which he then censured in his opponents. He would ingenuously and solemnly assert in the face of the bloody panorama of so enormous hetacombs that he had been deceived, and he would even add that it is at least rash to sow the winds, which become, as a logical sequel, fatal whirlwinds to finish us; that the implanting of a certain class of reforms and liberties is a rash work; and would adduce the reason which he gave in the above-cited prologue when treating in regard to the difficulty of implanting with result in those islands “certain literary and scientific professions;” namely, “that given the physical and intellectual qualifications of their race, it would be rash to expect that they would ever compare with Europeans. The Indian learns much more readily than we do; but he forgets with the same readiness, and retrogrades to his primitive condition.” It seems impossible how a man of so clear judgment and so exact concepts in regard to persons could stumble so transcendently as is found throughout in his Memoria. How powerful is the strength of consistency. The political ideal, like the sectarian, annuls the deepest and most righteous convictions.
But let us turn backwards a piece to pick up an end not allowed to fall to chance. We said that, as a proof that the religious orders have neither now nor ever been opposed to the teaching, one would concede without difficulty what we are going to set forth as a supplement of what exists today.
It is known by all, and is demonstrated quite clearly, that the traditional laws for teaching, if admirably penetrated by the spirit, profoundly Catholic, of their epoch, were very deficient, and in no small measure impracticable in Filipinas, because they lack almost all the means indispensable for the happy attainment which legislators and missionaries ardently desired; equally notorious is it, and also demonstrated, that the absolute lack of legal rules and regulations to facilitate their obligation accentuated more strongly the deficiency of those laws. We say legal, because the few regulations that there were, and which were practiced, were those of which mention has already been made in the Práctica del Ministerio of 1712, circulated as was compulsory, by their provincial among the Augustinian parish priests, revised in the provincial chapter of 1716, and amplified and printed in 1731; and the Instrucciones morales y religiosas [i.e., Moral and religious Instructions],[10] printed in 1739 for the use of the Dominican fathers—a lamentable lack which disappeared with the publication of the regulations of December 20, 1863.
This law which was successively perfected by numerous decrees of the superior government of the islands, especially by generals Izquierdo, Gándara, and Weyler, who were filled with the praiseworthy desire for the teaching; this law together with the opening of the Suez Canal, which has produced a notable increase in the European population,[11] and by this and by the facility of numerous communications and most valuable commercial transactions, has been an abundant fount of education and progress, which must be perfected and heightened so that what ought to be an abundant and beneficial irrigation for so valuable possessions may not be converted into a devastating torrent.
But even after this which we might call a giant’s step in the history of the Filipinas, their progress and their relations with Europa, within the islands even, very much still needs to be done. It is a fact that the coasting trade steam vessels have acquired an increase more considerable than could have been imagined twenty years ago, while the sail-coasting trade has not been diminished for this reason, but increased. But just as the maritime communications have acquired great facility, communications by land have deteriorated not a little, and the neighborhood roads of all the islands have been falling into complete neglect since the day when the days of forced labor began to be reduced, and this tax became redeemable [in money].
If the greater number of roads in good condition with their corresponding log bridges over the creeks and the simple plank over the narrow valleys are absolutely indispensable for commercial transactions, for the advisable development of primary instruction, the capital is the constant attendance of the children at the school. In order that this may be attained, it is quite necessary to construct those roads, for in their majority they have no existence, and where they have fallen into neglect they must be made passable alike for the dry season and for the rainy season, prohibiting and rigorously fining the owners of the adjacent fields who cut the roads in order to make fields or runnels of water for the same. This being done, it is equally necessary that the small barrios and isolated groups of dwellings be grouped together, thus forming large barrios; or those already existing be united in such manner that they form districts of seventy to eighty citizens as a minimum.
Not a little labor and repeated orders will it cost to form these groups, since it is known that the native feels as no one else the homesickness for the forest, an effect perhaps of his humid temperament, perhaps the reminiscence of his primitive condition; and when this is done, to establish municipal schools for both sexes in all the barrios which consist of more than one hundred citizens, or uniting two for this purpose, which are distant more than three kilometers from the central schools or from the village, which is the distance demanded by the law for the compulsory attendance of the children. These Schools, with the necessary conditions of ventilation, capacity, and security, ought to be erected by the respective municipalities, in accordance with the simple lithograph plans which must be furnished gratis by the body of civil engineers which shall be conserved, as was formerly done, in the archives of said tribunals, in order that they might be used when the time came. The men and women teachers who shall be normal [graduates] shall have the option of petitioning these posts, and if they should not be supplied with them, the former teacher may petition them under the condition of capacity, which they shall prove by a preceding examination held before the provincial board of primary instruction, in case that they shall not already have stood a prior examination. Both of them shall be suitably paid according to circumstances, and that quota shall be completed with another small particular quota from each well-to-do child.
It is of great convenience for the ends of fitness, and especially of morality, that men or women teachers shall not be appointed either in the villages or in the barrios of the villages, without a previous report of the parish priests of their native towns, to the effect that they do not fall short of the age of twelve years, and naming the villages where they shall have been resident; and that the parish priests have the power of suspending them, according to the tenor of the second authorization of art. 32 of the school regulations and the superior decree of August 30, 1867, informing the provincial supervisor for the definitive sentence, if this last measure of rigor shall have been used; naming or recommending, according to the cases of casual or definitive suspension, the substitute with his respective pay.
An unequivocal proof that the religious corporations not only are not trying to escape the instruction, but that they are promoting it with all their strength, is that they believe and sustain both in Manila and in the provinces, numerous schools and refuges for both sexes. And so that so praiseworthy desires, as the said corporations are found to possess in this matter, may have a happy outcome, and so that the provinces may reckon an abundant seminary of the youth of both sexes, which in due time shall be converted into an intelligent and capable staff of teachers, which shall have as its base morality and unconditional love for España, who shall cause those two sacred loves—love of virtue and love of fatherland—to spring up in the hearts of their pupils, not only should the above-mentioned corporations be empowered but also furnished all the means of establishing normal schools for men and women teachers in the principal provinces of the archipelago, under the direction and care of those corporations, in order by this means to assure the Catholic and social education, which carry with themselves a deep and abiding love for España.
No one, in better conditions than the religious orders, who by means of the parish priests are at the front of the villages, can proceed with more accuracy and knowledge of the cause in the selection of the youth who shall people those schools, for no one, better than the parish priests, has a more perfect knowledge of the moral and intellectual conditions of those youth and of their inclinations and ancestral inheritance from their forbears, the absolutely necessary factors for obtaining the beneficent result which it is desired to obtain, namely, the most complete moral, intellectual, and truly conceived patriotic regeneration, profoundly disturbed by a not small number of causes, which rapidly developing within the envenomed surrounding of masonry, and powerfully pushed forward by that impious sect, have produced grievous days for España and Filipinas, in which the precious blood of their sons has been abundantly shed, causing thereby enormous expenses to the Peninsula, and a half century of retrogression for the islands, together with the infamous blot of the highest ingratitude of its rebellious sons. Now more than ever is this means of regeneration demanded.