This is the state of the inland towns. On the coasts, and while a flotilla of gun-boats is maintained at an expense of upwards of half a million of dollars annually, there is no part safe from the attacks of the Malay pirates from Borneo, Sooloo, and Mindanao. These make regular cruises to procure slaves, and have even not unfrequently carried them off, not only from the bay of Manila,[25] but even from within gun-shot of its ramparts! The very soldiers and sailors sent for their protection plunder them. An Indian in whose neighbourhood troops are posted, or who sees the gun-boats approaching, can no longer consider his property safe; and in the very vicinity of Manila, soldiers ramble about with their loaded muskets, and pilfer all they lay hands upon at midday![26]
Does the Indian, in spite of all this, escape, and by patient industry make a little way in the world? he is vexed with offices; he is chosen Alguazil, Lieutenant, and Captain of his town; to these offices no pay is attached, they always occasion expenses and create him enemies; he is pinched or cheated by the Mestizos, a forestalling, avaricious, and tyrannical race. Does he suffer in silence? it is a signal for new oppressions: does he complain? a law suit. The Mestizos are all connected, they are rich, and the Indian is poor.
The imperfect mode of trial, both in civil and criminal cases (by written declarations and the decisions of judges alone), lays them open to a thousand frauds; for if the magistrate be supposed incorruptible, his notaries or writers (escribanos and escribientes) are not so; and from their knavery, declarations are often falsified, or one paper is exchanged for another whilst in the act of or before signing them.
To such a degree does this exist, that few Indians, even of those who can read Spanish tolerably, will sign a declaration made before a magistrate without threats, or without having some one on whom they can depend, to assure them they may safely do so. Nor is this to be wondered at, when it is known that declarations on which the life or fortune of an individual may depend are left, often for days, in the power of writers or notaries, any of whom may be bought for a doubloon; and some of them are even the menial servants of the magistrate! This applies to Luzon. In the other islands, this miserable system is yet worse: they have seldom but one communication a year with the capital, to which all causes of any magnitude are sent for decision or confirmation; and, as the papers are often (purposely) drawn up with some informality, the cause, after suffering all the first ordeal of chicane and knavery, experiences a year’s delay before it is even allowed a chance of being exposed to that which awaits it at Manila. Or should the cause be at length carried to the Audiencia, or Supreme Court, and there, as is sometimes the case, be judged impartially, the delay of the decision renders it useless—the sentence is evaded—or treated with contempt! This may appear almost incredible, but known to any person who has resided in Manila.
While the civil power is thus shamefully corrupt or negligent of its duties, the church has not forgotten that she too has claims on the Indian. She has marked out, exclusive of Sundays, above 40 days in the year on which no labour can be performed throughout the islands. Exclusive of these are the numerous local feasts in honor of the patron saints of towns and churches.[27] The influence of these extends often through a groupe of many islands, always to many leagues round their different sanctuaries; and often lasting three or four days, sometimes a week, according to his or her reputation for sanctity; so that including Sundays, the average cannot be less than 110 or 120 days lost to the community in a year. This alone is a heavy tax on the agricultural classes, by whom it is most severely felt; but its consequences are more so, from the habits of idleness and dissipation which it engenders and perpetuates. These feasts are invariably, after the procession is over, scenes of gambling, drinking, and debauchery of every description.
“And mony jobs that day begun,
Will end in houghmagandie.”[29]
Thus they unsettle and disturb the course of their labours by calling off their attention from their domestic cares; and by continually offering occasions of dissipation destroy what little spirit of economy or foresight may exist amongst so rude and ignorant a people. Nor is this all; they are subject to numerous other vexations and impositions under the title of church-services; such are, in some towns, five or six men attendant daily in rotation to bring the sick to the church to confess, or to carry the “Padre” with the host to their houses, and many others; all of which, though in themselves trifles, are more harassing, from their unsettling tendency, than pecuniary imposts. An encouragement to celibacy and its consequent evils is also to be found in the (to them) heavy expenses attendant on all the domestic offices of religion, as matrimony, baptism, &c., as well as in the increase of the poll-tax on married persons, for the whole of which the husband is responsible. The ecclesiastical expenses of a marriage between the poorer classes are about five dollars: the others, as christenings, buryings, &c., in proportion. These appear trifles; but if to these are added the confessions, bulas, [i.e., of the Crusade] and other exactions, it will be seen that these constitute no trifling part of the oppressive and ill managed system which has so much contributed to debase their real character.
I say nothing here of the natural effect of the Roman Catholic religion on an ignorant people, who imagine, that verbal confession and pecuniary atonements (rarely to the injured person) are a salvo for crimes of all magnitudes: that such is the case, is notorious to every one who has visited Catholic countries.
Let us for a moment retrace this picture. To whom after this is it attributable that the Indian is often a vicious and degraded being, particularly in the neighborhood of Manila?