The successive revolts of various towns in the province of Ilocos in the years 1810, 1812, and 1816 had no other source. The cause of this last uprising was decided by me, in my official character as fiscal of the royal Audiencia of Manila. In my reply I explained the origin of those repeated insurrections, analyzed the degree of perverseness which progressively in each of them had been revealed in the purpose of the conspirators, and deduced the necessity of dividing the province of Ilocos into two, to the end that its large towns should each have a ruler closer at hand who might keep them in check. The Audiencia made a report, with my opinion as fiscal thereon to the king our sovereign; and, his Majesty having deigned to command that immediately the said province should be divided into two, it has been maintained on that footing, up to the present time, in the greatest order and tranquillity.
[Even more surprising is the neglect of the governors to enforce the law that no houses shall be erected close to the castles and fortresses.] Within cannon-shot of the walls of Manila, and even no farther away than the breadth of the river, one hundred thousand souls—Indians, mestizos, and Chinese—have been allowed to establish themselves; a people of foreign origin, in great part, without passports, classification, settled occupation, or any other requisite of a well-ordered social condition, and whose formidable number is threatening Manila with an inevitable blow. The sudden movements of that great mob of people, ignorant and swayed by blind passion, reached the point of approaching close to the defenses of the city, in the year of 1820, even before this was known to the government and the military council (which for this object had been called together, and of which I was a member)—notwithstanding that the object of their revenge was in the outer suburbs, and that their aim was not, at least for the time, directed against the city. [These facts ought to make the authorities of the colony realize that no other considerations ought to interfere with their prime obligation, which is to preserve peace and order in the towns and maintain the military posts in security. Bernaldez recommends that new regulations be formed regarding the settlements of the islands; that no town be allowed to contain over five thousand souls and one thousand houses (except the capitals of the provinces, which might have ten thousand souls and two thousand houses); that the large towns be divided into villages on the above basis, which should be kept separate from one another; and that in the suburbs of Manila there should be more rigorous police control of the people. The Indians there should be classified by occupations, to each being appointed a chief or leader who should be responsible for the conduct of those in his class; the use of all dangerous weapons should be forbidden; passports should be required for all persons coming from the provinces; and vigilant watch should be kept over the occupations and mode of life of every family.]
Of the titles to landed property belonging to the Indians and the villages
The lack of clear and exact laws for properly authenticating the documents regarding the ownership of the lands of the Indians, and the uncertain and unlimited possession which the villages have of lands under the pretext, of their being communal, have been and always will be in Filipinas the origin of a multitude of ruinous lawsuits and contentions—sometimes those of Indians and villages among themselves, sometimes between these and the Spanish and mestizo proprietors. The Indians, as a rule, have no title of ownership in the lands which they possess, and if any one has such it is a private document, signed by other Indians—who with the greatest readiness deny, change, and forge their signatures—or it will be simply a writing signed by the alcalde-mayor, a copy of which, if it remains in the court, will disappear or be mutilated, with equal readiness, by the Indian clerks of the alcalde, in whose charge the archives are—if indeed these are not entirely destroyed in the frequent fires which occur in the villages. The most common method which the Indians of the villages have for proving their territorial property is by tradition, and the depositions of witnesses; and with that powerful weapon they undertake and maintain the most contentious lawsuits, aided by the fiscals of the Audiencia—who often forget that their office of defenders of the Indians is bona fide, and for the sake and protection of the natives in the tribunals to which the laws commend them. But any person who may have exercised the duties of magistrate for any time in Filipinas will know that in the decisions of judges there is nothing more discredited than the evidence presented by Indian and mestizo witnesses, who are not restrained from perjury by either an intimate acquaintance with the obligations of religion or by sentiments of conscience, honor, and reputation. It is very common to see, in court cases, that witnesses of that sort will swear, and then contradict their own testimony, according as the witnesses [are affected by] either their own interests or the influence of the litigant who presents them.
These causes, besides rendering the lawsuits of this kind eternal, have very frequently produced scandalous disobedience of the villagers to the enactments of the Audiencia of the islands, and uprisings of armed men in order to prevent effectually even the judicial possession of the crown lands which had been sold, with all the formalities of the laws, by the government there; and, finally, they withhold the Spanish families and persons of wealth from purchasing rural establishments in order to undertake on a large scale the cultivation of the products of the country, which is perhaps the only means of promoting the agriculture of the islands.
It is therefore expedient, in order to cut short these noisy controversies, which have so mischievous consequences for the internal peace of the communities in the islands, that his Majesty be pleased to command that the government there shall oblige all the villages and private land-owners in them to have authenticated before the respective alcaldes-mayor of the provinces the documents for their ownership, both private and communal. Strict obligation should be imposed on them to surround their lands with trees—achiote,[4] mulberry, cotton, cinnamon, cacao—under penalty of losing their title to the land. The documents should be registered in the tribunals of the respective alcaldes, who at the end of every year should send to the capital the original books of record, in order that these may be kept there securely in the archives, for which provision shall be made by the government, not admitting in the courts or declaring lawful any other titles of ownership to lands than those which are supported by those necessary conditions.
Of the ecclesiastical orders which are conferred on Indians and mestizos
The irregular procedure of the reverend archbishops and bishops of the islands in conferring ecclesiastical orders on the Indians and mestizos there, will be in that colony, as it has already been in America, one of the causes which most incite revolutions. The Indians receive through the priesthood a standing which they cannot worthily sustain, because they never lay aside the affections, passions, and usages of Indians. Educated by the religious, they afterward come to be their decided enemies; they divide with the religious the opinions of the villagers, who finally, even though they know the deficient morals of the native priests, always respect the sacred functions which these exercise. The least political evil which the latter occasion is [through] their neglect of their obligations as parish priests, the irregularity of their mode of life, and their carelessness in everything pertaining to divine worship. The inhabitants of the villages administered by Indian curas are very different from those of the religious from Europa, whose people are distinguished by their simplicity, docility, and religious training. He who knows the active and leading part played by this class of persons in accomplishing the independence of America will not be surprised that in the establishment of the constitution in Filipinas Indian curas have almost all been the directors of the elections in their villages, the electors, and the deputies in Cortes and for the province—in all these functions distinguishing themselves by their officiousness, and their pretensions against the legitimate government of the islands.
This class of persons, dominating the consciences of the ignorant and unfortunate, can easily drag them into error. As simple farmers and artisans, they would have been useful to their families and to the government; but mistakenly raised to the dignity of priests, other interests now move them, and they form a commonwealth apart in the safe retreat of the provinces. A consideration of justice wrongly understood by the prelates of the islands, and a vehement desire in the Indian or mestizo heads of families to ennoble these by placing their sons in the priesthood, have caused there an excessive ordination of Indians—which I cannot avoid characterizing as such, since, besides the many clerics who are actually administering villages, there is a considerable surplus of others who are scattered through the provinces. These evils were foreseen in the laws of the Indias (ley iv, tit. vii, lib. i), which cautions and exhorts the reverend prelates of the Indias not to ordain so many clerics as they were doing; but this has not sufficed, and it is necessary that the government, recognizing the unfortunate experience that it has already had with this abuse, should take the most efficacious measures for the purpose of limiting the authority of the prelates in Filipinas, in conferring ecclesiastical orders on Indians and mestizos, strictly to the number of clerics which the religious orders of those islands agree upon and propose as necessary to have for their coadjutors, and for Indian villages not now occupied, or which in the future the religious shall fail to occupy—ordering the governor of Filipinas to secure, by mild and discreet means, that the vacant curacies of clerics be conferred on European religious.