Legal and judicial.—In the introduction to the List of the Library of Congress, under the heading Law, and on the pages of the List cited in that note will be found the formal bibliography of the subject.[57] Some references upon the actual conditions of the administration of justice in the Philippines have already been given. For this purpose, note also a comparison of the old criminal procedure with that introduced in 1899 in Military Governor on Civil Affairs (Rept. War Dept., 1900, i, part 10), pp. 17–20. The compilation of Rafael Morales y Prieto[58] is also to be specially mentioned for the criminal law and procedure, 1880 to 1894, and also for an appendix containing circulars as to judicial fees of various sorts. For brief summaries in English of the old judicial organizations see Exhibit J of the Report of the Taft Philippine Commission, 1900, a résumé by Chief Justice Arellano, especially for a statement as to the conflict of laws and codes, old and new, and as to the relative degree of authority of these codes; and Census of the Philippine Islands (Washington, 1905), chapter on the Judiciary.[59] Justice Willard’s brief Notes on the Spanish Civil Code (Manila, 1903) also merits consultation.
Science and material resources.—So far as the scientific work of the period has a direct bearing upon our present purposes, it relates rather to the section on Economic Development. But the materials are sufficiently listed in the Bibliography, and the subject is introduced here only to say that this is one of the lines along which, in recent years, Spanish administration was beginning to make progress. This was true, however, chiefly of forestry and mineralogy, and was due almost entirely to the Spanish officials Abella y Casariego, Centeno y García, and Sebastian Vidal y Soler, and to the stimulus of the work of foreign investigators, especially Germans. The work of the Jesuits in meteorology should also be specially mentioned. It will be noted that little headway was made in the matter most vital for the Philippines, viz., agriculture; nor can we say that even a beginning was made in industrial chemistry or other researches calculated to foster either incipient or undeveloped industries, while the public health service was lamentably defective and scientific research relating thereto amounted practically to nothing. Reference may be made to the already large list of publications of the present Philippine government’s Bureau of Science, Board of Health, Agriculture, Forestry, and Mining bureaus as showing the state of scientific investigation before 1898, also for bibliographical data.[60]
Moros and pagan peoples.—Ethnology as a science does not claim a place here.[61] We are concerned with the Spanish advance toward the establishment of effective control over large areas either partly occupied or kept in a wild state of nature by backward or warring tribes; though considerable headway was made in the last half of the nineteenth century, Spanish sovereignty over these areas was after all only nominal in 1898. Moreover, especially as regards the Moros, the materials and bibliography have been presented in other volumes of this series.[62] Attention is called to a useful compilation of Spanish campaigns against the Moros by Lieut. W. E. W. McKinley,[63] especially for its reviews of Malcampo’s campaign of 1876, Terrero’s of 1886–87, Weyler’s of 1888–91, and Blanco’s of 1894–96.[64] The American military reports from 1899 to date and reports on the Moro Province since 1903 contain scattered data on Spanish relations with the Moros and also the hill tribes of Mindanao. Similarly, the reports and publications of the Philippine Ethnological Survey from 1902 to date contain references to Spanish contact in recent years with the pagan peoples of Luzón, Mindoro, and Palawan.[65]
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTION
Religious Question.—It need scarcely be repeated that the “friar controversy” enters not only into this, but every phase of our discussion, and in one form or another, is touched upon in almost all our sources of information about the Philippines. For one thing, however, we are not here concerned with a historical judgment upon the work of the friars in the Philippines, though it is proper to note that there has of late been evident a reaction in their favor from the tendency common in the United States immediately after 1898 to judge them wholly by recent events, and their work is now more fairly viewed in its three-century perspective. We are, moreover, excused from entering upon a comprehensive survey of literature about the friars and their work in general by the fact that the subject has been constantly to the fore throughout this series. What is needed here is only the citation, supplementary to the Bibliography and to the great accumulation of bibliographical references in other volumes of this series, of certain titles easily overlooked (some because of recent publication) and of such special passages in all these works as elucidate particular matters of importance.
As with all the political literature of the Philippines, 1860–1898, the reader is to be warned against the exaggerations of both sides. Always and everywhere, religious privileges and prejudices have aroused discussion both violent and intolerant; and in this case we find, on one side, a defense of religious and ecclesiastical privileges of a medieval character and in a tone and temper inherited from those times. Nor, even setting the purely ecclesiastical and religious questions aside, need we expect to find in this literature any review or discussion written in a calm and scientific spirit. Spanish political literature is almost entirely polemic, and Spanish polemics is sui generis. So, as with the friars and their defenders, we find here the principles of modern political science, which appeal properly to cool reason and the tolerance of liberalism, put forward by Spaniards and Filipinos in a language and with a spirit that hark back to times which we have come to think of as far remote from ours.
The bitterness of tone, the intolerance and contempt of the Filipino, and the flaunting of “race superiority,” which came to characterize the writings of the friars and their defenders in this period—and which played no small part in leading the Filipinos to the brink of separation—are shown to the full in the numbers of La Política de España en Filipinas, 1891–98. The purpose of this organ was to combat in Spain the program of those who would further liberalize the régime of society and government in the Philippines. W. E. Retana, at first an associate editor with José Feced, was after 1895 its sole editor. Just what were the relations of the Madrid establishments of the Philippine religious orders with the business department of this periodical is not known; but it is admitted that “the friars helped by subscriptions” at least, and it has generally been supposed that their connection with it was really closer, in short that it was practically an organ of theirs.[66] In it will be found the pro-friar and anti-liberal account and view of events and matters current during the years of its publication, and also various studies of earlier years written from the same point of view. The case for the friars, especially for the period from 1863 on, may also be found quite typically set forth in a single volume of five hundred pages by a Philippine Augustinian, Padre Eladio Zamora (Las corporaciones religiosas en Filipinas, Valladolid, 1901).[67] Testimony given before Hon. William H. Taft in 1900 regarding the friars and their part in the old régime, by the Spanish archbishop and heads of the orders themselves as well as by Filipinos on the other side will be found in Senate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.
Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitled Lands held for ecclesiastical or religious uses in the Philippines, also gives information on the friars’ rural estates. One will find no comprehensive treatment of this subject before 1898, though it is usually touched upon, often with great inaccuracy, in the anti-friar pamphlets. For further data upon the subject in American official reports, see: Report of War Department, 1900, i, part 4, pp. 502–508 (General Otis); Report of Taft Philippine Commission, 1900, pp. 23–33; ibid., 1903, i, Exhibits F, G, H, and I; ibid., 1904, i, Exhibit I (Report on Examination of Titles to Friars’ Estates); and Report of Secretary of War, 1902, appendix O (Rome negotiations of 1902).[68]
The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over the subjection of friar-curates to ordinary jurisdiction had filled many pages of Philippine history in every century. But, when revived under somewhat new forms from about 1863 on, as remarked in the introduction to these notes, they speedily assumed a new and rather distinct phase. The introduction has noted the connection of the Jesuits’ return with the encroachment upon the Filipino secular priests and with the counter demand for the belated subjection of the friar-parishes to the ordinary ecclesiastical legislation and jurisdiction of the Church; under the encouragement of the 1868 revolution in Spain, these demands grew apace from 1868 to 1872, and became interlaced with strictly political demands, until finally we may regard the cause of the Filipino clergy as a part of the campaign for Filipino nationalism. The reaction of 1872 and immediately subsequent years checked it, and it has found full expression only since Spanish sovereignty was overthrown; but it is best considered in its broadest scope, as a part of the Filipino movement toward nationality, though it may have been but dimly or not at all felt as such by some of its most active protagonists.