Fundamental causes of the insurrection, and who are to blame for it. The government is able only too well to recognize the causes that have produced the insurrection, and we shall not be the ones who try to give it lessons in that regard. The government is aware that until several years ago, every separatist idea, every rebel tendency in the country, which was enjoying the most enviable peace and felt respect to authority with the same unreflecting, although patent and holy, force, with which domestic authority in all parts is obeyed and respected, was exotic and an anachronism. Then was submission to España and subordination to all authority an element truly social, rendered incarnate by the religious in the mass of the Filipino population, which neither dreamed, yea, your Excellency, neither dreamed of ideas of political redemption, nor imagined that, in order to keep themselves loyal to the mother-country, one single bayonet was necessary in the country. The public force of the cuadrilleros and of the guardia civil[24] (the latter of very recent creation) was necessarily created to check and restrain thieves and tulisanes;[25] while every one thought that the wretched army then in the archipelago had no other object than to combat Mindanaos and Joloans, and to be ready for any conflict with the neighboring powers. España was able to be sure of its dominion here, and to live so carelessly, with respect to political movements as in the most retired village of the Peninsula. All authority was obeyed, was respected, by conscience, by education, by tradition, by social habit, passively and by custom, if one wishes, but with so great strength and firmness, with so indisputable and universal submission, that more indeed than individual virtue it was the virtue of the mass of the whole population, it was the spontaneous homage to God, which, represented in the powers of the fatherland, all felt and practiced, not conceiving even the possibility of rebellions and insurrections. Thus had they been taught by the religious, who always unite the names of God and His Church with the names of their king and of España. Consequently, by bonds of conscience, did all the archipelago love and obey him, and no one thought then of political liberties, nor in lifting yokes that existed for no one.
Are there then no abuses? No, your Excellency it could have very well happened that there were abuses on a greater scale than in the epoch immediately preceding the present events. But since these people were educated in the doctrine that it is never legal to disobey authority, under pretext of abuses, even if some are true; since these people had not yet been imbued with the new modern teachings, condemned a hundred times by the Church; since no one had spoken here of popular rights, many of them as false as senseless; since the propaganda against priests and religious had not yet reached Filipinas: it resulted that, considering those abuses, as one of so many plagues of humanity (from which regulated societies are not free, according to the principles of the newest erroneous law, but rather they are, on the contrary, suffered with greater intensity and with greater loss to the fundamental interests of the social order) these inhabitants tolerated them patiently, and had recourse for their remedy to the just methods taught in such cases by Catholic ethics, with the greatest advantage to individuals and to nations.
Consequently, as many as have contributed, in one way or another, to introduce those revolutionary doctrines, and those germs of social and political disturbance into the archipelago, whether peninsulars or islanders, of whatever class or rank, are the true authors, conscious or unconscious, of the great weakening of the traditional obedience to the mother-country, of which the whole archipelago was in peaceful possession until thirty years ago, that was disturbed by no one or by no influence. The introducers of those doctrines and tendencies are beyond all doubt the culprits of the insurrection, for they are the ones who have done their utmost to prepare for it and with success to unroll it, even supposing that they have not directly and deliberately procured it.
Who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind; who introduces principles must accept the consequences; who generates hate must not wonder that war results; who teaches the pathway of evil cannot declare himself free from responsibility for the disorders originated by his teaching.
Partial causes: masonry. Will it be necessary to explain this simple consideration? We do not think so. But should we desire to unfold it, it would be easy for us to add that the anti-religious propaganda; the ideas of erroneous liberty and forbidden independence, incited and aroused in certain Filipinos by European politicians and writers; the antipathy and opposition, clearly shown by certain Spaniards, even by those ruling and by government employees, against the religious corporations; the establishment of masonry and of other secret societies, the former’s legitimate offspring; the most favorable reception that the revolutionary Filipinos found for their plans in many centers and papers of Madrid and other places; the lack of religion in many peninsulars; the ease with which the ancient laws of Filipinas have been changed; the mobility of public functionaries which, giving opportunity for many irregularities, has contributed greatly to the continual lessening of the credit of the Spanish name; and in part, the backwardness, which has been observed sometimes in the sons of the country with regard to public appointments: [all these] are partial aspects, various phases and confluent factors (of which we do not attempt to enumerate all) of the fundamental and synthetical cause that we have expressed.
No one is unaware that the chief of all those partial phases and factors of the social disorganization of the archipelago has been masonry. The Asociación Hispano-Filipina of Madrid was masonic. Those who encouraged the Filipinos in their campaign against the clergy and against the peninsulars here resident, were masons in almost their totality. Those who authorized the installation of lodges in the archipelago were masons. Those who founded the Katipunan,[26] a society so mortally masonic, that even in its terrible suggestive pact of blood it has done naught but imitate the masonic carbonarios, were masons.
Practical consequences of that. The traditional submission to the fatherland, diffused and deeply settled in the archipelago by the religious corporations, having disappeared in part and having been greatly weakened in part; the voice of the parish priest, thanks to the above-mentioned propaganda, having been disregarded by many natives, especially in Manila and conterminous provinces, who were taught in that way to give themselves airs as intelligent and independent men; the prestige of the Spanish name having been greatly tempered, and the ancient respect with which every peninsular was formerly regarded in the islands having been almost annihilated in many towns: is it strange that race instincts should have asserted themselves strongly, and, considering that they have a distinct language, and distinct lands and climate, that they should have discussed and have attempted to raise a wall of separation between Spaniards and Malays? Is it not logical that, after having been made to believe that the religious is not the father and shepherd of their souls and their friend and enthusiastic defender, but a vile exploiter, and that the peninsular here is no more than a trader constituted with greater or less authority and rank, that they should madly and illegally have imagined that they could easily separate from España and aspire to self-government?
Gloomy situation of the archipelago and omens of its future. We shall not insist, your Excellency, on this order of consideration, for it rends our soul, it cleaves our heart in twain, to consider how easily so many rivers of blood, so great and extravagant expenses, and so extraordinary conflicts, might have been spared, which in a not long lapse of time, may, perhaps, result in the disappearance of the immortal flag of Castilla; how easily the military situation, originated by the insurrection, a situation that was threatening to make of Filipinas another Cuba, might have been avoided; and with how little trouble the archipelago might have been continuing at present in the same tranquillity and peacefully progressive situation as it had years ago: if having the power, as was a fact, but that was not attempted or thought of, the door had been shut on the disturbers; if masonry had never been allowed in the country; and if every tendency contrary to the moral prestige, the most powerful social bond, immensely superior to all armies and all political institutions which united these countries with their beloved and respected mother-country, had been effectively restrained in their beginnings.
Has the present most gloomy situation any remedy?
It is somewhat difficult, and even dangerous, to answer the question, for if the Katipunan was six months ago relegated to the hills of Laguna and Bulacan among the rebel leaders who were fugitive there, or was dragging out a shameful existence in certain villages that were in communication with the insurgents, today the plague has spread. For the ones pardoned at Biac-na-bató, breaking the promise given to the gallant and energetic marquis de Estella,[27] obedient to the watchword received, have spread through the central provinces; and by using threats and terrible punishments, which have no precedents in the pages of history, nor even of the novel, have succeeded in attracting to their ranks a great number of Indians, even in villages which gave eloquent proof of loyalty to the holy cause of the Spanish fatherland before the submission of Biac-na-bató. They have also succeeded in establishing themselves in Cápiz and in other points of the Visayas: and indeed the movement of Zambales, of Pangasinan, of Ilocos, of Cebú, and of the Katipunans, are at present open in Manila.