POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTIONReligious 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 theBibliographyand 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 characterand 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 issui 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 ofLa 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.66In it will befound 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).67Testimonygiven 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 inSenate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitledLands 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); andReport of Secretary of War, 1902, appendix O (Rome negotiations of 1902).68The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over thesubjection 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.For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in theListof the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo de Tavera’sBibliotecaunder the same name and numbers 681, 873, 1,348 and 1,962.69We mustcome down to the period of American rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate, who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands, has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook to review the entire subject in hisDefensa del clero filipinoand its supplementEl clero secular filipino, both published at Manila in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino clergy by the Vatican.70Their claims are set forth inMemorial elevado á Sa Santidad El PapaLeón XIII por el Pueblo Filipino(Manila, 1900).71For the full exposition of the question, one must study it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903.72Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.73But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial(which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.74The usually sober andcolorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in theRevue des deux mondesfor 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.75Reforms and Demands for more. “Assimilation.”—The reactionists had regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavitemutiny as a “horrible example,” and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative matters. Till after 1880, the “Filipino cause” was in hiding. But meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education, and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers, in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos, Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down.76Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea, already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern; and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part) who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868–72, had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain—and all the reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief—at any rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates of Spanish-Philippine union. Theycarried the matter, indeed, to the extreme, in the campaign for “assimilation,” which has already been characterized as unpractical.Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations, we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists before higher authority; the friars’ tenants around Kalamba, where José Rizal’s parents lived, challenged the administrator of that Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887;77and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and the friars, even the archbishop, had been almostopenly intransigent about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times.78In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero’s term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the successorof Terrero as Governor-General. The friars’ representations at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra79was still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal’s family.80The Propagandists.—A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement.81Itis significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties were, one may say, genuine “sons of the people” though associated with them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal, came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter started the first Filipino periodical of consequence,La Solidaridad, and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31, 1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face withLa Política de España en Filipinasfrom 1891, and, as the latter is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the controversy, soLa Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship, is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists.82Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified privately with the cause. Del Pilar’s writings show nothing of the poet or dreamer, as do Rizal’s; he had, in some degree, an “economic mind,” though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events,it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan, to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently, lost faith in the ideals of “assimilation,” of Spanish-Filipino unity, which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos, especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too prone to temporize for safety’s sake, that the time had come to make the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan, and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to resort to Cuba’s example and not to political petitions only.83Even inNoli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. InEl filibusterismo(Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation ofNoli me tangere,84and none at all ofEl filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two.85It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing hismental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana’s biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly,Nuestro Tiempo, 1904–06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere.86Rizal’s edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga’sSucesos de las islas Filipinashas already been cited in connection with that work inVOLS.XVandXVIof this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotationsare Rizal’s chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value.87There also deserve mention here Rizal’s discussion in 1889 of the future of his people,88and some of Blumentritt’s writings about Rizal and in his defense.89Masonry,Liga Filipina,etc.—In almost all the Spanish writings about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find it ascribed primarily to “Franc-Masonería,” the terrible bugaboo in naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So, as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and foreigners, into which some of the half-castesand more well-to-do Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines, and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time whenLa Solidaridadwas moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos, also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated deductions from such facts as came to light.90Interesting reading is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2,1896, addressed to Governor-General Blanco.91It approves his deportation of theprincipales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations (forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom “there may be indications enough to believe that they are affiliated,” etc. (opening up thus a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives; so also he is to invite coöperation of “the parish-priests who belong to the religious orders.” As to punishments, it is preferable to deport the “suspected,” fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam, rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad and conduct a propaganda.The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association calledSolidaridad Filipina,92which came to nothing practical, and theLiga Filipina, organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July, 1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it that theLiga Filipinawas really separatist in character, and the prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal’s conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League as prepared by Rizal93entirely support hisassertion that the design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos, to “raise the arts and sciences,” and develop Filipino commercial and economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society, in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a “brotherhood,” and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese and others upon the trade of the country—in which respects it would likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions and Rizal’s deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges of its “brothers” to stand by each other for the “remedy of abuses” as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the idea of bringing his people together for such political action as might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.The Katipunan.—We come now to the parting of the ways. Just as Marcelo del Pilar had concluded that the time was at hand for more vigorous measures, so on the other hand some of the Filipinos of education and social position (cautious also, in some cases, because of their property) had become discouraged and faint-hearted. The deportation of Rizal had its effect in 1892, and the local government reforms of 1893–94 were followed by a reactionary government in Spain which might nullify even suchconcessions, in the face of the constant demand for a check upon the half-liberal régime of Blanco. Some of the middle-class leaders of Manila, who had been drawn into the Masonic movement, had decided that the time had come to organize the masses, at least in the Tagálog provinces. Andrés Bonifacio, an employe of a foreign business house in Manila, was the leading spirit; gathering his ideas of modern reform from reading Spanish treatises on the French Revolution, he had imbibed also a notion that the methods of the mob in Paris were those best adapted to secure amelioration for the Filipinos. His ideas were those of a socialist, and of a socialist of the French Revolution type, and he thought them applicable to an undeveloped tropical country, where the pressure of industrial competition is almost unknown, and where with the slightest reasonable exertion starvation may be dismissed from thought. There was in this new propaganda an element of resentment toward the wealthy, upper-class Filipinos, the landed proprietors in general, as well as toward the friar landlords and the whole fabric of government and society resting on them. Summing up all the evidence he has been able to obtain on the Katipunan, the writer agrees with Felipe G. Calderón, a Filipino, in his opinion94that its socialistic character negatives the assertion of the Spanish writers that the upper-class Filipinos were its real supporters and directors, working in the background; and that, while this propaganda from below looked to independence and the substitution of Spanish rule by Filipino rule, yet it was without any political program, properlyspeaking, and there was merely a crude idea in the minds of the masses that they were somehow going to shake off their masters, get rid of the whites, and divide up the big estates not only of the friars but of Filipino landholders as well. Calderón does not discuss the alleged plan of the Katipunan to assassinate the whites, especially the friars. It is certain that such bloodthirsty ideas were in the minds of some of the leaders; but the more direct documentary evidence that has been produced on this point is perhaps open to the suspicion that it was manufactured in connection with the courts-martial which operated with such fury after the outbreak of revolt in 1896.95After all the furore that had been made, the actual revelations as to the importance of the organization, character of its leaders, number of its followers, and extent of its operations, would have made the whole affair somewhat ridiculous, had it not been represented that behind this humble organization of perhaps forty thousand initiates in the Tagálog towns there was a great program for setting up an independent government and that the upper-class Filipinos were simply using this organization as a stalking-horse. The truth appears to be that, while these over-important Katipunan leaders thought in terms grandiloquent, and led their humblefollowers in the towns around Manila most affected by the propaganda to indulge in futile and ridiculous dreams of a coming millennium (while some of themselves were quarreling over the obols contributed), the movement was mostly talk even up to the time when an Augustinian curate in Manila made himself the hero of the rabid Spanish element in Manila by “exposing” an organization about which the governmental authorities had had partial information for some weeks, or even months. Bonifacio started this separate organization in 1894, but Calderón seems to be correct in saying that work in the towns outside of Manila was only begun in the spring of 1896. The humble followers were assured that the Japanese government would help them oust Spain, and that rifles to arm the whole population would come from there. But Japan never in the least violated her obligations to Spain, and, if the leaders evenboughtany rifles in Japan, they must have been few indeed.96When Bonifacio sent an emissary to Dapitan in the spring of 1896, to propose to Rizal a plan of armed revolt and that he should escape on a steam vessel sent for the purpose, and join in this campaign, Rizal rejected the proposition as folly, and displayed his great impatience with it.97On every ground, it seems probable that, had not Friar Gil and the Spanish press of Manila been so insistent on giving great publicity to some Katipunan engraving-stones, receiptsfor dues, etc., kept in hiding by the affiliated employes of a Spanish newspaper, the revolt might never have come about at all. Certainly, no date was set for it (though various future dates had been vaguely discussed), till the sudden arrests of August 19 and 20, 1896, sent Bonifacio and his companions fleeing to Bulakan Province where, practically without arms, they appealed to their fellow-workers in Bulakan, Manila, and Cavite provinces to rise in revolt on August 30. The friars and the rabid element of Spanish patriots were so anxious to force the hand of Blanco, and to discredit him, that, it may be, they forced upon a military commander whose troops were mostly in Mindanao a revolt that, a few months further on, might either have dissipated itself or have been avoided by an adequate show of force.98Because the friars are so much to the fore in all the discussions of these events, we must not overlook the part played by governmental abuses, as already described. The Civil Guard, given a more extensive organization and scope of action during these closing years of Spanish rule, by its abuses (committed, for the most part, by Filipinos upon their own fellows) played probably the foremost part in drawing odium upon the government.99Next to police abuses, andsometimes allied with them, were the misuses of the powers of local government (with which alone the great majority of the people came into direct contact), especially in regard to the levy of forced labor; and here again, the humble Filipino’s complaint was chiefly against his own fellow-countrymen of power and position. But, summing up all the administrative abuses and all the evils of the government system, we are still left a long way from agreement with the friars’ assertions that the masses loved them and that governmental abuses were the sole cause of rebellion.100Insurrection of 1896–97.—No history from theFilipino side has yet come to light, and there are certain points that can be cleared up only by the frank testimony of the Filipino participants.101We are dependent chiefly on Spanish sources, written in the passion of the times by men not careful about sifting the facts. All things considered, the two best sources, both for what they say and for what may be inferred from them, are the so-calledMemoriasof two Governor-Generals, prepared in order to defend their administrations before the Spanish Senate and the public; that of Blanco covering the preparatory stage and early months of the rebellion, that of Primo de Rivera its closing stages. Between these two Governor-Generals, the work of Monteverde y Sedano covers the military operations under Polavieja.Blanco’sMemoria102affords, unconsciously, the most severe indictment that could be passed on Spain’s fitness to hold the Philippines (or her other colonies) in 1898. This man was really of liberal temperament; he had formed a just conception of the real insignificance of the Katipunan movement; and he strove, when the crisis was prematurely forced on him, to restrain the vindictiveness of the rabid Spanish element, and really believed in the efficacy of a “policy of attraction.” But instead of setting forth on broader grounds the reasons for his course of action and discussing with sincerity and franknessa policy for the Philippines, he felt compelled after his return to Spain to bow before the howls of press and public. He defends himself before his clerical-conservative critics not by showing the folly of their illiberal policy for the colony, but endeavors to prove that they were wrong in accusing him of lack of severity as well as of energy. Thus we learn (p. 20) that, even under a Blanco, before the outbreak came, one thousand and forty-two persons had been deported “as Masons, disaffected and suspicious or harmful to their towns.” During the night of August 19–20, 1896, following the sensation created by Friar Gil, there were forty-three arrests in Manila, and three hundred more within the next week. During September, thirty seven men taken in arms were shot, after summary trials (p. 25.) The number of Filipinos, mostly men of some position, who had not taken up arms, but were arrested for alleged complicity in the Katipunan, and involved in the trials before a special court for conspiracy and sedition, very soon mounted to five hundred, including those sent in from the provinces. Some remainedincomunicadosfor more than forty days. The men executed from September 4 to December 12, 1896, when Blanco surrendered command to Polavieja, numbered seventy-four in all.103Evidence as to the “reign of terror” that was inaugurated in Manila may be drawn from the Spanish treatises to be cited, wherein the episode is recitedwith gusto. The Spanish press of Manila for 1896–98; also that of Spain, especially Philippine letters of 1896–98 inLa Política de España en Filipinas,El Heraldo,El ImparcialandEl Correoof Madrid, furnished the original source of information for these writers, and should be used to supplement this history of the insurrection. Transcriptions of testimony taken by the special court for sedition and conspiracy appear in Retana’sArchivo, iii and iv, and evidences that the more yielding witnesses had their phraseology, and sometimes their statements of fact, dictated to them will be noted by the careful reader, especially if he be familiar with Spanish methods of judicial procedure. References to the common use of torture to make witnesses (in some cases eager enough to insure their own safety by “delation”) sign such testimony, will be found in the Filipino press since 1898, occasionally also in Spanish periodicals of Manila since 1898.104These same sources also supplement the citations on Rizal already given, for the story of his trial and execution, and the increase of severity and terrorism after Polavieja took charge. They are also, in the main, our sole, fragmentary sources on the state of Cavite during insurgent control of the province, the insurgent organization, etc.105The Spanish treatises and pamphlets on the insurrection are:106José M. del Castillo y Jimenez,El Katipunan, ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas(Madrid, 1897). Partial accounts of events of 1896–97; already characterized as rabid and cheaply patriotic.Ricardo Monet y Carretero,Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897(Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.E. Reverter y Delmas.—Filipinos por España. Narración episódica de la rebelión en el archipiélago Filipino(Barcelona, 1897); 2 vols. The title of a later edition isLa insurrección de Filipinas. Known to the writer only by title.107Enrique Abella y Casariego,Filipinas(Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.Federico de Monteverde y Sedano,Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897(Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897(Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint fromRevue militaire de l’étranger.L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar(Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.Manuel Sastrón—La insurrección en Filipinas y guerra hispano-americana(Madrid, 1901).108Writtenby a Spanish official in Manila during this time, and composed of accounts and documents drawn mainly from the press of Manila. It is, however, the most useful arsenal of data.Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898(appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, inReport of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues.(Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.The Pact of Biak-na-bató.—Purposely, the word “treaty,” so often applied to this transaction, is here avoided; for, apart from technical objections to a word that applies to agreements between sovereign powers, this was no treaty in any sense of the word. There was some mystery surrounding the negotiations by which the insurgent chiefs surrendered a few hundred nondescript firearms and retired to Hongkong; untrue or half-true charges were bandied back and forth, for political effect, in the Cortes and the press of Spain; and, of the chief actors in the affair, only Primo de Rivera has given his account—perhaps not with entire frankness.109Aguinaldohas confined his statements on the subject to the most brief assertions of a general nature110to the effect that reforms by the Spanish government were promised. Primo de Rivera categorically denies this; while Pedro A. Paterno, the go-between, has made no statement at all during the nine years that have passed since the conflicting statements have been before the public, involving directly the question of his own veracity and good faith. Primo de Rivera is anex partewitness, to be sure; but his statements upon the more vital points involved are corroborated by the very insurgent documents on this subject captured by the American army in 1899 and now in the War Department at Washington.111Primo de Rivera says that, when Paterno presented a paper early in the negotiations containing a full program of reforms,112he rejected the document absolutely,saying he could not discuss such matters with the insurgent chiefs, that the Spanish government would accord such reforms as it thought wise, and he could only interpose his good offices to make recommendations in that respect. The copy of this document now in the War Department at Washington shows the clauses about reform to have been crossed out. Primo de Rivera says that, from that time forth, the negotiation was purely on the basis of a payment to the rebel chiefs to surrender their arms, order the insurgents in the other provinces to do the same, and emigrate to foreign parts. The only documents bearing signatures on both sides, either of those published at Washington or elsewhere, refer exclusively to these particular points of money, surrender of arms, and program of emigration, though Paterno inserted in a preliminary of the final contract on these subjects a clause as to reposing confidence in the Spanish government to “satisfy the desire of the Filipino people.”113Primo de Rivera recommended the transaction to his government for one reason, expressly because it would “discredit [desprestigiando] the chiefs selling out and emigrating.”114The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, underauthority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”115The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown116); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “thinkit prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”117Enough has been developed to show the demoralizing character of the transaction. In justice to Aguinaldo and his closest associates, it is to be said that they had kept the money practically intact, for use in a possible future insurrection, until they spent some of it for arms after Commodore Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay.118Nor are we able to say categorically that Aguinaldo and the other leaders in Biak-na-bató were not led to believe that specific reforms had been promised verbally by Primo de Rivera in the name of his government; Aguinaldo and Paterno could clear up that matter, but neither speaks. Just what informal discussion of this subject there was between Paterno and Primo de Rivera, we do not know; but the latter’s own version will warrant the conclusion that he at least permitted Paterno to lay before the insurgents the fact that he was making recommendations on this line, and to hold out the expectation of results, once he was not confronted with armed rebellion.119He declares thata scheme of Philippine reform, covering also the friar question, had been drawn up and agreed upon, when Premier Cánovas was assassinated and the Conservatives soon after fell from power; but he does not tell us what were the reforms as to the friars. Primo de Rivera continued to give his ideas as to the need for reform in provision of parishes, church fees, local government, education, civil service, etc., after the Liberals came into power. Yet, though stating the case against the friars in strong terms, virtually confirming every charge made against them, he appears to have advised only a curtailment of their power and a more rigid discipline, not their elimination as parish-priests, which was the aim of most of the insurgents.120When a Spanish editor in Manila began writing in February, 1898, of political reforms in the direction of “autonomy,” without submitting his articles to previous censure, Primo de Rivera suspended publication of the periodical.121That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in expectation, in late 1897 and early 1898, of the announcement of some comprehensive scheme ofPhilippine reform, is apparent from the press of the time.122The Liberal press of Madrid and Barcelona was also actively agitating reform for the Philippines, and Spanish Liberals and Filipinos addressed petitions on the subject to the government at Madrid.123The general belief at Manila was also that some sort of promise of reforms had passed at Biak-na-bató, even that it included the gradual withdrawal of the friars.124That the religious orders themselves knew that they were the storm-center is sufficiently shown by the Memorial of April 21, 1898, reproducedpost, pp. 227–286.125The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it undera plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?The fact is, one can sustain any view he prefers to take of this subject, by detached citations from documents of one sort or another. The real answer is to be found only by a careful survey of all the evidence as to Filipino activities and aspirations. We note that, when Rizal discusses the possibility of future independence for his people, he sets it as a century hence. We need not take him literally, nor, on the other hand, need we say his title was merely hypocritical, and he was insidiously inciting his people to think of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warnedhim to restrain his and their youthful impatience on the subject. In discussing Del Pilar and Rizal, it has already been pointed out how the former changed places with the younger man and became the more impatient of the two; and the connection of this growing impatience with the more violent nature of the Katipunan has been shown. So it is not enough to cite detached passages from Rizal or Del Pilar, for example, to prove either that they were just filibusters under cover of protestations or, on the contrary, that they never dreamed of independence.126The propagandists felt differently at different times, under the pressure sometimes of self-interest, influenced sometimes by momentary incidents or passions. It is plain that, with some of them at least, a new tone had been adopted toward Spain when, at the beginning of 1896, the manifesto of the Katipunan organ to the Filipinos bitterly exclaimed:“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in successionLa Solidaridadvoluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continuallamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest inEl Filibusterismo(1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitousacts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”Doubtless Rizal felt that his people had made progress toward social independence in the five years that followed, till the Katipunan outbreak came; but he condemned that beforehand as a foolish venture, and reprobated it as harmful to Filipino interests before his death. Though in a sense this was a movement for independence, we have seen that only vague ideas of a political organization were in the minds of the leaders, while the deluded masses who followed them with, for the most part,bolosonly, had virtually no idea of such an organization, except that Filipinos should succeed Spaniards.127The prematurely commenced revolt, as it gained at the outset, some defensive advantages over the bad military organization of Spain, developed ideas and aspirations quite beyond the early crude dreams of its leaders; they were really surprised at their own (temporary) success, and emboldened thereby.128Even after the loss of Cavite, when the revolutionists were hemmed in and hiding in the Bulakan Mountains, they put forward, in an “Assembly” at Biak-na-bató, a more comprehensive and ambitious political program (a Filipino Republic, in short) than had ever before been drawn up by Filipinos.129We know also that no small part was played by the “reign of terror” in turning even the moderate Filipinos against Spanish rule as an entirety. We should be far from the truth if we should say that this Tagálog rebellion, and the demonstrations of sympathy withit in other provinces, brought the Filipino people together in a unanimous sentiment for independence. That it did greatly stimulate this feeling is certain. He would be a bold man who would now assert that independence was not the common aspiration, when outside pressure suddenly pricked the bubble of Spanish authority in 1898 and released the people for the free expression of their sentiments. But he is equally bold who asserts that the Filipino people had been suddenly and miraculously transformed into a realnationby these events, or that the Aguinaldo government had the support of or really represented the whole country, above all of the most sober-thinking Filipinos.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTIONReligious 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 theBibliographyand 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 characterand 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 issui 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 ofLa 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.66In it will befound 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).67Testimonygiven 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 inSenate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitledLands 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); andReport of Secretary of War, 1902, appendix O (Rome negotiations of 1902).68The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over thesubjection 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.For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in theListof the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo de Tavera’sBibliotecaunder the same name and numbers 681, 873, 1,348 and 1,962.69We mustcome down to the period of American rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate, who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands, has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook to review the entire subject in hisDefensa del clero filipinoand its supplementEl clero secular filipino, both published at Manila in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino clergy by the Vatican.70Their claims are set forth inMemorial elevado á Sa Santidad El PapaLeón XIII por el Pueblo Filipino(Manila, 1900).71For the full exposition of the question, one must study it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903.72Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.73But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial(which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.74The usually sober andcolorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in theRevue des deux mondesfor 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.75Reforms and Demands for more. “Assimilation.”—The reactionists had regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavitemutiny as a “horrible example,” and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative matters. Till after 1880, the “Filipino cause” was in hiding. But meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education, and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers, in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos, Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down.76Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea, already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern; and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part) who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868–72, had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain—and all the reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief—at any rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates of Spanish-Philippine union. Theycarried the matter, indeed, to the extreme, in the campaign for “assimilation,” which has already been characterized as unpractical.Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations, we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists before higher authority; the friars’ tenants around Kalamba, where José Rizal’s parents lived, challenged the administrator of that Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887;77and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and the friars, even the archbishop, had been almostopenly intransigent about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times.78In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero’s term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the successorof Terrero as Governor-General. The friars’ representations at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra79was still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal’s family.80The Propagandists.—A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement.81Itis significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties were, one may say, genuine “sons of the people” though associated with them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal, came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter started the first Filipino periodical of consequence,La Solidaridad, and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31, 1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face withLa Política de España en Filipinasfrom 1891, and, as the latter is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the controversy, soLa Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship, is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists.82Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified privately with the cause. Del Pilar’s writings show nothing of the poet or dreamer, as do Rizal’s; he had, in some degree, an “economic mind,” though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events,it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan, to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently, lost faith in the ideals of “assimilation,” of Spanish-Filipino unity, which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos, especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too prone to temporize for safety’s sake, that the time had come to make the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan, and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to resort to Cuba’s example and not to political petitions only.83Even inNoli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. InEl filibusterismo(Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation ofNoli me tangere,84and none at all ofEl filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two.85It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing hismental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana’s biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly,Nuestro Tiempo, 1904–06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere.86Rizal’s edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga’sSucesos de las islas Filipinashas already been cited in connection with that work inVOLS.XVandXVIof this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotationsare Rizal’s chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value.87There also deserve mention here Rizal’s discussion in 1889 of the future of his people,88and some of Blumentritt’s writings about Rizal and in his defense.89Masonry,Liga Filipina,etc.—In almost all the Spanish writings about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find it ascribed primarily to “Franc-Masonería,” the terrible bugaboo in naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So, as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and foreigners, into which some of the half-castesand more well-to-do Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines, and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time whenLa Solidaridadwas moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos, also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated deductions from such facts as came to light.90Interesting reading is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2,1896, addressed to Governor-General Blanco.91It approves his deportation of theprincipales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations (forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom “there may be indications enough to believe that they are affiliated,” etc. (opening up thus a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives; so also he is to invite coöperation of “the parish-priests who belong to the religious orders.” As to punishments, it is preferable to deport the “suspected,” fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam, rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad and conduct a propaganda.The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association calledSolidaridad Filipina,92which came to nothing practical, and theLiga Filipina, organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July, 1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it that theLiga Filipinawas really separatist in character, and the prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal’s conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League as prepared by Rizal93entirely support hisassertion that the design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos, to “raise the arts and sciences,” and develop Filipino commercial and economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society, in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a “brotherhood,” and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese and others upon the trade of the country—in which respects it would likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions and Rizal’s deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges of its “brothers” to stand by each other for the “remedy of abuses” as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the idea of bringing his people together for such political action as might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.The Katipunan.—We come now to the parting of the ways. Just as Marcelo del Pilar had concluded that the time was at hand for more vigorous measures, so on the other hand some of the Filipinos of education and social position (cautious also, in some cases, because of their property) had become discouraged and faint-hearted. The deportation of Rizal had its effect in 1892, and the local government reforms of 1893–94 were followed by a reactionary government in Spain which might nullify even suchconcessions, in the face of the constant demand for a check upon the half-liberal régime of Blanco. Some of the middle-class leaders of Manila, who had been drawn into the Masonic movement, had decided that the time had come to organize the masses, at least in the Tagálog provinces. Andrés Bonifacio, an employe of a foreign business house in Manila, was the leading spirit; gathering his ideas of modern reform from reading Spanish treatises on the French Revolution, he had imbibed also a notion that the methods of the mob in Paris were those best adapted to secure amelioration for the Filipinos. His ideas were those of a socialist, and of a socialist of the French Revolution type, and he thought them applicable to an undeveloped tropical country, where the pressure of industrial competition is almost unknown, and where with the slightest reasonable exertion starvation may be dismissed from thought. There was in this new propaganda an element of resentment toward the wealthy, upper-class Filipinos, the landed proprietors in general, as well as toward the friar landlords and the whole fabric of government and society resting on them. Summing up all the evidence he has been able to obtain on the Katipunan, the writer agrees with Felipe G. Calderón, a Filipino, in his opinion94that its socialistic character negatives the assertion of the Spanish writers that the upper-class Filipinos were its real supporters and directors, working in the background; and that, while this propaganda from below looked to independence and the substitution of Spanish rule by Filipino rule, yet it was without any political program, properlyspeaking, and there was merely a crude idea in the minds of the masses that they were somehow going to shake off their masters, get rid of the whites, and divide up the big estates not only of the friars but of Filipino landholders as well. Calderón does not discuss the alleged plan of the Katipunan to assassinate the whites, especially the friars. It is certain that such bloodthirsty ideas were in the minds of some of the leaders; but the more direct documentary evidence that has been produced on this point is perhaps open to the suspicion that it was manufactured in connection with the courts-martial which operated with such fury after the outbreak of revolt in 1896.95After all the furore that had been made, the actual revelations as to the importance of the organization, character of its leaders, number of its followers, and extent of its operations, would have made the whole affair somewhat ridiculous, had it not been represented that behind this humble organization of perhaps forty thousand initiates in the Tagálog towns there was a great program for setting up an independent government and that the upper-class Filipinos were simply using this organization as a stalking-horse. The truth appears to be that, while these over-important Katipunan leaders thought in terms grandiloquent, and led their humblefollowers in the towns around Manila most affected by the propaganda to indulge in futile and ridiculous dreams of a coming millennium (while some of themselves were quarreling over the obols contributed), the movement was mostly talk even up to the time when an Augustinian curate in Manila made himself the hero of the rabid Spanish element in Manila by “exposing” an organization about which the governmental authorities had had partial information for some weeks, or even months. Bonifacio started this separate organization in 1894, but Calderón seems to be correct in saying that work in the towns outside of Manila was only begun in the spring of 1896. The humble followers were assured that the Japanese government would help them oust Spain, and that rifles to arm the whole population would come from there. But Japan never in the least violated her obligations to Spain, and, if the leaders evenboughtany rifles in Japan, they must have been few indeed.96When Bonifacio sent an emissary to Dapitan in the spring of 1896, to propose to Rizal a plan of armed revolt and that he should escape on a steam vessel sent for the purpose, and join in this campaign, Rizal rejected the proposition as folly, and displayed his great impatience with it.97On every ground, it seems probable that, had not Friar Gil and the Spanish press of Manila been so insistent on giving great publicity to some Katipunan engraving-stones, receiptsfor dues, etc., kept in hiding by the affiliated employes of a Spanish newspaper, the revolt might never have come about at all. Certainly, no date was set for it (though various future dates had been vaguely discussed), till the sudden arrests of August 19 and 20, 1896, sent Bonifacio and his companions fleeing to Bulakan Province where, practically without arms, they appealed to their fellow-workers in Bulakan, Manila, and Cavite provinces to rise in revolt on August 30. The friars and the rabid element of Spanish patriots were so anxious to force the hand of Blanco, and to discredit him, that, it may be, they forced upon a military commander whose troops were mostly in Mindanao a revolt that, a few months further on, might either have dissipated itself or have been avoided by an adequate show of force.98Because the friars are so much to the fore in all the discussions of these events, we must not overlook the part played by governmental abuses, as already described. The Civil Guard, given a more extensive organization and scope of action during these closing years of Spanish rule, by its abuses (committed, for the most part, by Filipinos upon their own fellows) played probably the foremost part in drawing odium upon the government.99Next to police abuses, andsometimes allied with them, were the misuses of the powers of local government (with which alone the great majority of the people came into direct contact), especially in regard to the levy of forced labor; and here again, the humble Filipino’s complaint was chiefly against his own fellow-countrymen of power and position. But, summing up all the administrative abuses and all the evils of the government system, we are still left a long way from agreement with the friars’ assertions that the masses loved them and that governmental abuses were the sole cause of rebellion.100Insurrection of 1896–97.—No history from theFilipino side has yet come to light, and there are certain points that can be cleared up only by the frank testimony of the Filipino participants.101We are dependent chiefly on Spanish sources, written in the passion of the times by men not careful about sifting the facts. All things considered, the two best sources, both for what they say and for what may be inferred from them, are the so-calledMemoriasof two Governor-Generals, prepared in order to defend their administrations before the Spanish Senate and the public; that of Blanco covering the preparatory stage and early months of the rebellion, that of Primo de Rivera its closing stages. Between these two Governor-Generals, the work of Monteverde y Sedano covers the military operations under Polavieja.Blanco’sMemoria102affords, unconsciously, the most severe indictment that could be passed on Spain’s fitness to hold the Philippines (or her other colonies) in 1898. This man was really of liberal temperament; he had formed a just conception of the real insignificance of the Katipunan movement; and he strove, when the crisis was prematurely forced on him, to restrain the vindictiveness of the rabid Spanish element, and really believed in the efficacy of a “policy of attraction.” But instead of setting forth on broader grounds the reasons for his course of action and discussing with sincerity and franknessa policy for the Philippines, he felt compelled after his return to Spain to bow before the howls of press and public. He defends himself before his clerical-conservative critics not by showing the folly of their illiberal policy for the colony, but endeavors to prove that they were wrong in accusing him of lack of severity as well as of energy. Thus we learn (p. 20) that, even under a Blanco, before the outbreak came, one thousand and forty-two persons had been deported “as Masons, disaffected and suspicious or harmful to their towns.” During the night of August 19–20, 1896, following the sensation created by Friar Gil, there were forty-three arrests in Manila, and three hundred more within the next week. During September, thirty seven men taken in arms were shot, after summary trials (p. 25.) The number of Filipinos, mostly men of some position, who had not taken up arms, but were arrested for alleged complicity in the Katipunan, and involved in the trials before a special court for conspiracy and sedition, very soon mounted to five hundred, including those sent in from the provinces. Some remainedincomunicadosfor more than forty days. The men executed from September 4 to December 12, 1896, when Blanco surrendered command to Polavieja, numbered seventy-four in all.103Evidence as to the “reign of terror” that was inaugurated in Manila may be drawn from the Spanish treatises to be cited, wherein the episode is recitedwith gusto. The Spanish press of Manila for 1896–98; also that of Spain, especially Philippine letters of 1896–98 inLa Política de España en Filipinas,El Heraldo,El ImparcialandEl Correoof Madrid, furnished the original source of information for these writers, and should be used to supplement this history of the insurrection. Transcriptions of testimony taken by the special court for sedition and conspiracy appear in Retana’sArchivo, iii and iv, and evidences that the more yielding witnesses had their phraseology, and sometimes their statements of fact, dictated to them will be noted by the careful reader, especially if he be familiar with Spanish methods of judicial procedure. References to the common use of torture to make witnesses (in some cases eager enough to insure their own safety by “delation”) sign such testimony, will be found in the Filipino press since 1898, occasionally also in Spanish periodicals of Manila since 1898.104These same sources also supplement the citations on Rizal already given, for the story of his trial and execution, and the increase of severity and terrorism after Polavieja took charge. They are also, in the main, our sole, fragmentary sources on the state of Cavite during insurgent control of the province, the insurgent organization, etc.105The Spanish treatises and pamphlets on the insurrection are:106José M. del Castillo y Jimenez,El Katipunan, ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas(Madrid, 1897). Partial accounts of events of 1896–97; already characterized as rabid and cheaply patriotic.Ricardo Monet y Carretero,Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897(Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.E. Reverter y Delmas.—Filipinos por España. Narración episódica de la rebelión en el archipiélago Filipino(Barcelona, 1897); 2 vols. The title of a later edition isLa insurrección de Filipinas. Known to the writer only by title.107Enrique Abella y Casariego,Filipinas(Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.Federico de Monteverde y Sedano,Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897(Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897(Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint fromRevue militaire de l’étranger.L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar(Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.Manuel Sastrón—La insurrección en Filipinas y guerra hispano-americana(Madrid, 1901).108Writtenby a Spanish official in Manila during this time, and composed of accounts and documents drawn mainly from the press of Manila. It is, however, the most useful arsenal of data.Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898(appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, inReport of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues.(Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.The Pact of Biak-na-bató.—Purposely, the word “treaty,” so often applied to this transaction, is here avoided; for, apart from technical objections to a word that applies to agreements between sovereign powers, this was no treaty in any sense of the word. There was some mystery surrounding the negotiations by which the insurgent chiefs surrendered a few hundred nondescript firearms and retired to Hongkong; untrue or half-true charges were bandied back and forth, for political effect, in the Cortes and the press of Spain; and, of the chief actors in the affair, only Primo de Rivera has given his account—perhaps not with entire frankness.109Aguinaldohas confined his statements on the subject to the most brief assertions of a general nature110to the effect that reforms by the Spanish government were promised. Primo de Rivera categorically denies this; while Pedro A. Paterno, the go-between, has made no statement at all during the nine years that have passed since the conflicting statements have been before the public, involving directly the question of his own veracity and good faith. Primo de Rivera is anex partewitness, to be sure; but his statements upon the more vital points involved are corroborated by the very insurgent documents on this subject captured by the American army in 1899 and now in the War Department at Washington.111Primo de Rivera says that, when Paterno presented a paper early in the negotiations containing a full program of reforms,112he rejected the document absolutely,saying he could not discuss such matters with the insurgent chiefs, that the Spanish government would accord such reforms as it thought wise, and he could only interpose his good offices to make recommendations in that respect. The copy of this document now in the War Department at Washington shows the clauses about reform to have been crossed out. Primo de Rivera says that, from that time forth, the negotiation was purely on the basis of a payment to the rebel chiefs to surrender their arms, order the insurgents in the other provinces to do the same, and emigrate to foreign parts. The only documents bearing signatures on both sides, either of those published at Washington or elsewhere, refer exclusively to these particular points of money, surrender of arms, and program of emigration, though Paterno inserted in a preliminary of the final contract on these subjects a clause as to reposing confidence in the Spanish government to “satisfy the desire of the Filipino people.”113Primo de Rivera recommended the transaction to his government for one reason, expressly because it would “discredit [desprestigiando] the chiefs selling out and emigrating.”114The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, underauthority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”115The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown116); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “thinkit prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”117Enough has been developed to show the demoralizing character of the transaction. In justice to Aguinaldo and his closest associates, it is to be said that they had kept the money practically intact, for use in a possible future insurrection, until they spent some of it for arms after Commodore Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay.118Nor are we able to say categorically that Aguinaldo and the other leaders in Biak-na-bató were not led to believe that specific reforms had been promised verbally by Primo de Rivera in the name of his government; Aguinaldo and Paterno could clear up that matter, but neither speaks. Just what informal discussion of this subject there was between Paterno and Primo de Rivera, we do not know; but the latter’s own version will warrant the conclusion that he at least permitted Paterno to lay before the insurgents the fact that he was making recommendations on this line, and to hold out the expectation of results, once he was not confronted with armed rebellion.119He declares thata scheme of Philippine reform, covering also the friar question, had been drawn up and agreed upon, when Premier Cánovas was assassinated and the Conservatives soon after fell from power; but he does not tell us what were the reforms as to the friars. Primo de Rivera continued to give his ideas as to the need for reform in provision of parishes, church fees, local government, education, civil service, etc., after the Liberals came into power. Yet, though stating the case against the friars in strong terms, virtually confirming every charge made against them, he appears to have advised only a curtailment of their power and a more rigid discipline, not their elimination as parish-priests, which was the aim of most of the insurgents.120When a Spanish editor in Manila began writing in February, 1898, of political reforms in the direction of “autonomy,” without submitting his articles to previous censure, Primo de Rivera suspended publication of the periodical.121That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in expectation, in late 1897 and early 1898, of the announcement of some comprehensive scheme ofPhilippine reform, is apparent from the press of the time.122The Liberal press of Madrid and Barcelona was also actively agitating reform for the Philippines, and Spanish Liberals and Filipinos addressed petitions on the subject to the government at Madrid.123The general belief at Manila was also that some sort of promise of reforms had passed at Biak-na-bató, even that it included the gradual withdrawal of the friars.124That the religious orders themselves knew that they were the storm-center is sufficiently shown by the Memorial of April 21, 1898, reproducedpost, pp. 227–286.125The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it undera plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?The fact is, one can sustain any view he prefers to take of this subject, by detached citations from documents of one sort or another. The real answer is to be found only by a careful survey of all the evidence as to Filipino activities and aspirations. We note that, when Rizal discusses the possibility of future independence for his people, he sets it as a century hence. We need not take him literally, nor, on the other hand, need we say his title was merely hypocritical, and he was insidiously inciting his people to think of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warnedhim to restrain his and their youthful impatience on the subject. In discussing Del Pilar and Rizal, it has already been pointed out how the former changed places with the younger man and became the more impatient of the two; and the connection of this growing impatience with the more violent nature of the Katipunan has been shown. So it is not enough to cite detached passages from Rizal or Del Pilar, for example, to prove either that they were just filibusters under cover of protestations or, on the contrary, that they never dreamed of independence.126The propagandists felt differently at different times, under the pressure sometimes of self-interest, influenced sometimes by momentary incidents or passions. It is plain that, with some of them at least, a new tone had been adopted toward Spain when, at the beginning of 1896, the manifesto of the Katipunan organ to the Filipinos bitterly exclaimed:“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in successionLa Solidaridadvoluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continuallamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest inEl Filibusterismo(1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitousacts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”Doubtless Rizal felt that his people had made progress toward social independence in the five years that followed, till the Katipunan outbreak came; but he condemned that beforehand as a foolish venture, and reprobated it as harmful to Filipino interests before his death. Though in a sense this was a movement for independence, we have seen that only vague ideas of a political organization were in the minds of the leaders, while the deluded masses who followed them with, for the most part,bolosonly, had virtually no idea of such an organization, except that Filipinos should succeed Spaniards.127The prematurely commenced revolt, as it gained at the outset, some defensive advantages over the bad military organization of Spain, developed ideas and aspirations quite beyond the early crude dreams of its leaders; they were really surprised at their own (temporary) success, and emboldened thereby.128Even after the loss of Cavite, when the revolutionists were hemmed in and hiding in the Bulakan Mountains, they put forward, in an “Assembly” at Biak-na-bató, a more comprehensive and ambitious political program (a Filipino Republic, in short) than had ever before been drawn up by Filipinos.129We know also that no small part was played by the “reign of terror” in turning even the moderate Filipinos against Spanish rule as an entirety. We should be far from the truth if we should say that this Tagálog rebellion, and the demonstrations of sympathy withit in other provinces, brought the Filipino people together in a unanimous sentiment for independence. That it did greatly stimulate this feeling is certain. He would be a bold man who would now assert that independence was not the common aspiration, when outside pressure suddenly pricked the bubble of Spanish authority in 1898 and released the people for the free expression of their sentiments. But he is equally bold who asserts that the Filipino people had been suddenly and miraculously transformed into a realnationby these events, or that the Aguinaldo government had the support of or really represented the whole country, above all of the most sober-thinking Filipinos.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTIONReligious 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 theBibliographyand 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 characterand 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 issui 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 ofLa 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.66In it will befound 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).67Testimonygiven 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 inSenate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitledLands 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); andReport of Secretary of War, 1902, appendix O (Rome negotiations of 1902).68The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over thesubjection 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.For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in theListof the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo de Tavera’sBibliotecaunder the same name and numbers 681, 873, 1,348 and 1,962.69We mustcome down to the period of American rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate, who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands, has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook to review the entire subject in hisDefensa del clero filipinoand its supplementEl clero secular filipino, both published at Manila in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino clergy by the Vatican.70Their claims are set forth inMemorial elevado á Sa Santidad El PapaLeón XIII por el Pueblo Filipino(Manila, 1900).71For the full exposition of the question, one must study it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903.72Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.73But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial(which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.74The usually sober andcolorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in theRevue des deux mondesfor 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.75Reforms and Demands for more. “Assimilation.”—The reactionists had regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavitemutiny as a “horrible example,” and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative matters. Till after 1880, the “Filipino cause” was in hiding. But meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education, and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers, in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos, Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down.76Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea, already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern; and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part) who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868–72, had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain—and all the reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief—at any rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates of Spanish-Philippine union. Theycarried the matter, indeed, to the extreme, in the campaign for “assimilation,” which has already been characterized as unpractical.Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations, we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists before higher authority; the friars’ tenants around Kalamba, where José Rizal’s parents lived, challenged the administrator of that Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887;77and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and the friars, even the archbishop, had been almostopenly intransigent about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times.78In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero’s term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the successorof Terrero as Governor-General. The friars’ representations at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra79was still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal’s family.80The Propagandists.—A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement.81Itis significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties were, one may say, genuine “sons of the people” though associated with them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal, came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter started the first Filipino periodical of consequence,La Solidaridad, and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31, 1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face withLa Política de España en Filipinasfrom 1891, and, as the latter is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the controversy, soLa Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship, is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists.82Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified privately with the cause. Del Pilar’s writings show nothing of the poet or dreamer, as do Rizal’s; he had, in some degree, an “economic mind,” though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events,it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan, to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently, lost faith in the ideals of “assimilation,” of Spanish-Filipino unity, which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos, especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too prone to temporize for safety’s sake, that the time had come to make the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan, and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to resort to Cuba’s example and not to political petitions only.83Even inNoli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. InEl filibusterismo(Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation ofNoli me tangere,84and none at all ofEl filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two.85It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing hismental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana’s biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly,Nuestro Tiempo, 1904–06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere.86Rizal’s edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga’sSucesos de las islas Filipinashas already been cited in connection with that work inVOLS.XVandXVIof this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotationsare Rizal’s chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value.87There also deserve mention here Rizal’s discussion in 1889 of the future of his people,88and some of Blumentritt’s writings about Rizal and in his defense.89Masonry,Liga Filipina,etc.—In almost all the Spanish writings about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find it ascribed primarily to “Franc-Masonería,” the terrible bugaboo in naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So, as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and foreigners, into which some of the half-castesand more well-to-do Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines, and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time whenLa Solidaridadwas moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos, also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated deductions from such facts as came to light.90Interesting reading is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2,1896, addressed to Governor-General Blanco.91It approves his deportation of theprincipales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations (forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom “there may be indications enough to believe that they are affiliated,” etc. (opening up thus a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives; so also he is to invite coöperation of “the parish-priests who belong to the religious orders.” As to punishments, it is preferable to deport the “suspected,” fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam, rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad and conduct a propaganda.The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association calledSolidaridad Filipina,92which came to nothing practical, and theLiga Filipina, organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July, 1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it that theLiga Filipinawas really separatist in character, and the prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal’s conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League as prepared by Rizal93entirely support hisassertion that the design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos, to “raise the arts and sciences,” and develop Filipino commercial and economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society, in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a “brotherhood,” and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese and others upon the trade of the country—in which respects it would likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions and Rizal’s deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges of its “brothers” to stand by each other for the “remedy of abuses” as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the idea of bringing his people together for such political action as might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.The Katipunan.—We come now to the parting of the ways. Just as Marcelo del Pilar had concluded that the time was at hand for more vigorous measures, so on the other hand some of the Filipinos of education and social position (cautious also, in some cases, because of their property) had become discouraged and faint-hearted. The deportation of Rizal had its effect in 1892, and the local government reforms of 1893–94 were followed by a reactionary government in Spain which might nullify even suchconcessions, in the face of the constant demand for a check upon the half-liberal régime of Blanco. Some of the middle-class leaders of Manila, who had been drawn into the Masonic movement, had decided that the time had come to organize the masses, at least in the Tagálog provinces. Andrés Bonifacio, an employe of a foreign business house in Manila, was the leading spirit; gathering his ideas of modern reform from reading Spanish treatises on the French Revolution, he had imbibed also a notion that the methods of the mob in Paris were those best adapted to secure amelioration for the Filipinos. His ideas were those of a socialist, and of a socialist of the French Revolution type, and he thought them applicable to an undeveloped tropical country, where the pressure of industrial competition is almost unknown, and where with the slightest reasonable exertion starvation may be dismissed from thought. There was in this new propaganda an element of resentment toward the wealthy, upper-class Filipinos, the landed proprietors in general, as well as toward the friar landlords and the whole fabric of government and society resting on them. Summing up all the evidence he has been able to obtain on the Katipunan, the writer agrees with Felipe G. Calderón, a Filipino, in his opinion94that its socialistic character negatives the assertion of the Spanish writers that the upper-class Filipinos were its real supporters and directors, working in the background; and that, while this propaganda from below looked to independence and the substitution of Spanish rule by Filipino rule, yet it was without any political program, properlyspeaking, and there was merely a crude idea in the minds of the masses that they were somehow going to shake off their masters, get rid of the whites, and divide up the big estates not only of the friars but of Filipino landholders as well. Calderón does not discuss the alleged plan of the Katipunan to assassinate the whites, especially the friars. It is certain that such bloodthirsty ideas were in the minds of some of the leaders; but the more direct documentary evidence that has been produced on this point is perhaps open to the suspicion that it was manufactured in connection with the courts-martial which operated with such fury after the outbreak of revolt in 1896.95After all the furore that had been made, the actual revelations as to the importance of the organization, character of its leaders, number of its followers, and extent of its operations, would have made the whole affair somewhat ridiculous, had it not been represented that behind this humble organization of perhaps forty thousand initiates in the Tagálog towns there was a great program for setting up an independent government and that the upper-class Filipinos were simply using this organization as a stalking-horse. The truth appears to be that, while these over-important Katipunan leaders thought in terms grandiloquent, and led their humblefollowers in the towns around Manila most affected by the propaganda to indulge in futile and ridiculous dreams of a coming millennium (while some of themselves were quarreling over the obols contributed), the movement was mostly talk even up to the time when an Augustinian curate in Manila made himself the hero of the rabid Spanish element in Manila by “exposing” an organization about which the governmental authorities had had partial information for some weeks, or even months. Bonifacio started this separate organization in 1894, but Calderón seems to be correct in saying that work in the towns outside of Manila was only begun in the spring of 1896. The humble followers were assured that the Japanese government would help them oust Spain, and that rifles to arm the whole population would come from there. But Japan never in the least violated her obligations to Spain, and, if the leaders evenboughtany rifles in Japan, they must have been few indeed.96When Bonifacio sent an emissary to Dapitan in the spring of 1896, to propose to Rizal a plan of armed revolt and that he should escape on a steam vessel sent for the purpose, and join in this campaign, Rizal rejected the proposition as folly, and displayed his great impatience with it.97On every ground, it seems probable that, had not Friar Gil and the Spanish press of Manila been so insistent on giving great publicity to some Katipunan engraving-stones, receiptsfor dues, etc., kept in hiding by the affiliated employes of a Spanish newspaper, the revolt might never have come about at all. Certainly, no date was set for it (though various future dates had been vaguely discussed), till the sudden arrests of August 19 and 20, 1896, sent Bonifacio and his companions fleeing to Bulakan Province where, practically without arms, they appealed to their fellow-workers in Bulakan, Manila, and Cavite provinces to rise in revolt on August 30. The friars and the rabid element of Spanish patriots were so anxious to force the hand of Blanco, and to discredit him, that, it may be, they forced upon a military commander whose troops were mostly in Mindanao a revolt that, a few months further on, might either have dissipated itself or have been avoided by an adequate show of force.98Because the friars are so much to the fore in all the discussions of these events, we must not overlook the part played by governmental abuses, as already described. The Civil Guard, given a more extensive organization and scope of action during these closing years of Spanish rule, by its abuses (committed, for the most part, by Filipinos upon their own fellows) played probably the foremost part in drawing odium upon the government.99Next to police abuses, andsometimes allied with them, were the misuses of the powers of local government (with which alone the great majority of the people came into direct contact), especially in regard to the levy of forced labor; and here again, the humble Filipino’s complaint was chiefly against his own fellow-countrymen of power and position. But, summing up all the administrative abuses and all the evils of the government system, we are still left a long way from agreement with the friars’ assertions that the masses loved them and that governmental abuses were the sole cause of rebellion.100Insurrection of 1896–97.—No history from theFilipino side has yet come to light, and there are certain points that can be cleared up only by the frank testimony of the Filipino participants.101We are dependent chiefly on Spanish sources, written in the passion of the times by men not careful about sifting the facts. All things considered, the two best sources, both for what they say and for what may be inferred from them, are the so-calledMemoriasof two Governor-Generals, prepared in order to defend their administrations before the Spanish Senate and the public; that of Blanco covering the preparatory stage and early months of the rebellion, that of Primo de Rivera its closing stages. Between these two Governor-Generals, the work of Monteverde y Sedano covers the military operations under Polavieja.Blanco’sMemoria102affords, unconsciously, the most severe indictment that could be passed on Spain’s fitness to hold the Philippines (or her other colonies) in 1898. This man was really of liberal temperament; he had formed a just conception of the real insignificance of the Katipunan movement; and he strove, when the crisis was prematurely forced on him, to restrain the vindictiveness of the rabid Spanish element, and really believed in the efficacy of a “policy of attraction.” But instead of setting forth on broader grounds the reasons for his course of action and discussing with sincerity and franknessa policy for the Philippines, he felt compelled after his return to Spain to bow before the howls of press and public. He defends himself before his clerical-conservative critics not by showing the folly of their illiberal policy for the colony, but endeavors to prove that they were wrong in accusing him of lack of severity as well as of energy. Thus we learn (p. 20) that, even under a Blanco, before the outbreak came, one thousand and forty-two persons had been deported “as Masons, disaffected and suspicious or harmful to their towns.” During the night of August 19–20, 1896, following the sensation created by Friar Gil, there were forty-three arrests in Manila, and three hundred more within the next week. During September, thirty seven men taken in arms were shot, after summary trials (p. 25.) The number of Filipinos, mostly men of some position, who had not taken up arms, but were arrested for alleged complicity in the Katipunan, and involved in the trials before a special court for conspiracy and sedition, very soon mounted to five hundred, including those sent in from the provinces. Some remainedincomunicadosfor more than forty days. The men executed from September 4 to December 12, 1896, when Blanco surrendered command to Polavieja, numbered seventy-four in all.103Evidence as to the “reign of terror” that was inaugurated in Manila may be drawn from the Spanish treatises to be cited, wherein the episode is recitedwith gusto. The Spanish press of Manila for 1896–98; also that of Spain, especially Philippine letters of 1896–98 inLa Política de España en Filipinas,El Heraldo,El ImparcialandEl Correoof Madrid, furnished the original source of information for these writers, and should be used to supplement this history of the insurrection. Transcriptions of testimony taken by the special court for sedition and conspiracy appear in Retana’sArchivo, iii and iv, and evidences that the more yielding witnesses had their phraseology, and sometimes their statements of fact, dictated to them will be noted by the careful reader, especially if he be familiar with Spanish methods of judicial procedure. References to the common use of torture to make witnesses (in some cases eager enough to insure their own safety by “delation”) sign such testimony, will be found in the Filipino press since 1898, occasionally also in Spanish periodicals of Manila since 1898.104These same sources also supplement the citations on Rizal already given, for the story of his trial and execution, and the increase of severity and terrorism after Polavieja took charge. They are also, in the main, our sole, fragmentary sources on the state of Cavite during insurgent control of the province, the insurgent organization, etc.105The Spanish treatises and pamphlets on the insurrection are:106José M. del Castillo y Jimenez,El Katipunan, ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas(Madrid, 1897). Partial accounts of events of 1896–97; already characterized as rabid and cheaply patriotic.Ricardo Monet y Carretero,Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897(Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.E. Reverter y Delmas.—Filipinos por España. Narración episódica de la rebelión en el archipiélago Filipino(Barcelona, 1897); 2 vols. The title of a later edition isLa insurrección de Filipinas. Known to the writer only by title.107Enrique Abella y Casariego,Filipinas(Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.Federico de Monteverde y Sedano,Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897(Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897(Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint fromRevue militaire de l’étranger.L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar(Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.Manuel Sastrón—La insurrección en Filipinas y guerra hispano-americana(Madrid, 1901).108Writtenby a Spanish official in Manila during this time, and composed of accounts and documents drawn mainly from the press of Manila. It is, however, the most useful arsenal of data.Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898(appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, inReport of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues.(Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.The Pact of Biak-na-bató.—Purposely, the word “treaty,” so often applied to this transaction, is here avoided; for, apart from technical objections to a word that applies to agreements between sovereign powers, this was no treaty in any sense of the word. There was some mystery surrounding the negotiations by which the insurgent chiefs surrendered a few hundred nondescript firearms and retired to Hongkong; untrue or half-true charges were bandied back and forth, for political effect, in the Cortes and the press of Spain; and, of the chief actors in the affair, only Primo de Rivera has given his account—perhaps not with entire frankness.109Aguinaldohas confined his statements on the subject to the most brief assertions of a general nature110to the effect that reforms by the Spanish government were promised. Primo de Rivera categorically denies this; while Pedro A. Paterno, the go-between, has made no statement at all during the nine years that have passed since the conflicting statements have been before the public, involving directly the question of his own veracity and good faith. Primo de Rivera is anex partewitness, to be sure; but his statements upon the more vital points involved are corroborated by the very insurgent documents on this subject captured by the American army in 1899 and now in the War Department at Washington.111Primo de Rivera says that, when Paterno presented a paper early in the negotiations containing a full program of reforms,112he rejected the document absolutely,saying he could not discuss such matters with the insurgent chiefs, that the Spanish government would accord such reforms as it thought wise, and he could only interpose his good offices to make recommendations in that respect. The copy of this document now in the War Department at Washington shows the clauses about reform to have been crossed out. Primo de Rivera says that, from that time forth, the negotiation was purely on the basis of a payment to the rebel chiefs to surrender their arms, order the insurgents in the other provinces to do the same, and emigrate to foreign parts. The only documents bearing signatures on both sides, either of those published at Washington or elsewhere, refer exclusively to these particular points of money, surrender of arms, and program of emigration, though Paterno inserted in a preliminary of the final contract on these subjects a clause as to reposing confidence in the Spanish government to “satisfy the desire of the Filipino people.”113Primo de Rivera recommended the transaction to his government for one reason, expressly because it would “discredit [desprestigiando] the chiefs selling out and emigrating.”114The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, underauthority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”115The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown116); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “thinkit prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”117Enough has been developed to show the demoralizing character of the transaction. In justice to Aguinaldo and his closest associates, it is to be said that they had kept the money practically intact, for use in a possible future insurrection, until they spent some of it for arms after Commodore Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay.118Nor are we able to say categorically that Aguinaldo and the other leaders in Biak-na-bató were not led to believe that specific reforms had been promised verbally by Primo de Rivera in the name of his government; Aguinaldo and Paterno could clear up that matter, but neither speaks. Just what informal discussion of this subject there was between Paterno and Primo de Rivera, we do not know; but the latter’s own version will warrant the conclusion that he at least permitted Paterno to lay before the insurgents the fact that he was making recommendations on this line, and to hold out the expectation of results, once he was not confronted with armed rebellion.119He declares thata scheme of Philippine reform, covering also the friar question, had been drawn up and agreed upon, when Premier Cánovas was assassinated and the Conservatives soon after fell from power; but he does not tell us what were the reforms as to the friars. Primo de Rivera continued to give his ideas as to the need for reform in provision of parishes, church fees, local government, education, civil service, etc., after the Liberals came into power. Yet, though stating the case against the friars in strong terms, virtually confirming every charge made against them, he appears to have advised only a curtailment of their power and a more rigid discipline, not their elimination as parish-priests, which was the aim of most of the insurgents.120When a Spanish editor in Manila began writing in February, 1898, of political reforms in the direction of “autonomy,” without submitting his articles to previous censure, Primo de Rivera suspended publication of the periodical.121That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in expectation, in late 1897 and early 1898, of the announcement of some comprehensive scheme ofPhilippine reform, is apparent from the press of the time.122The Liberal press of Madrid and Barcelona was also actively agitating reform for the Philippines, and Spanish Liberals and Filipinos addressed petitions on the subject to the government at Madrid.123The general belief at Manila was also that some sort of promise of reforms had passed at Biak-na-bató, even that it included the gradual withdrawal of the friars.124That the religious orders themselves knew that they were the storm-center is sufficiently shown by the Memorial of April 21, 1898, reproducedpost, pp. 227–286.125The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it undera plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?The fact is, one can sustain any view he prefers to take of this subject, by detached citations from documents of one sort or another. The real answer is to be found only by a careful survey of all the evidence as to Filipino activities and aspirations. We note that, when Rizal discusses the possibility of future independence for his people, he sets it as a century hence. We need not take him literally, nor, on the other hand, need we say his title was merely hypocritical, and he was insidiously inciting his people to think of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warnedhim to restrain his and their youthful impatience on the subject. In discussing Del Pilar and Rizal, it has already been pointed out how the former changed places with the younger man and became the more impatient of the two; and the connection of this growing impatience with the more violent nature of the Katipunan has been shown. So it is not enough to cite detached passages from Rizal or Del Pilar, for example, to prove either that they were just filibusters under cover of protestations or, on the contrary, that they never dreamed of independence.126The propagandists felt differently at different times, under the pressure sometimes of self-interest, influenced sometimes by momentary incidents or passions. It is plain that, with some of them at least, a new tone had been adopted toward Spain when, at the beginning of 1896, the manifesto of the Katipunan organ to the Filipinos bitterly exclaimed:“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in successionLa Solidaridadvoluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continuallamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest inEl Filibusterismo(1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitousacts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”Doubtless Rizal felt that his people had made progress toward social independence in the five years that followed, till the Katipunan outbreak came; but he condemned that beforehand as a foolish venture, and reprobated it as harmful to Filipino interests before his death. Though in a sense this was a movement for independence, we have seen that only vague ideas of a political organization were in the minds of the leaders, while the deluded masses who followed them with, for the most part,bolosonly, had virtually no idea of such an organization, except that Filipinos should succeed Spaniards.127The prematurely commenced revolt, as it gained at the outset, some defensive advantages over the bad military organization of Spain, developed ideas and aspirations quite beyond the early crude dreams of its leaders; they were really surprised at their own (temporary) success, and emboldened thereby.128Even after the loss of Cavite, when the revolutionists were hemmed in and hiding in the Bulakan Mountains, they put forward, in an “Assembly” at Biak-na-bató, a more comprehensive and ambitious political program (a Filipino Republic, in short) than had ever before been drawn up by Filipinos.129We know also that no small part was played by the “reign of terror” in turning even the moderate Filipinos against Spanish rule as an entirety. We should be far from the truth if we should say that this Tagálog rebellion, and the demonstrations of sympathy withit in other provinces, brought the Filipino people together in a unanimous sentiment for independence. That it did greatly stimulate this feeling is certain. He would be a bold man who would now assert that independence was not the common aspiration, when outside pressure suddenly pricked the bubble of Spanish authority in 1898 and released the people for the free expression of their sentiments. But he is equally bold who asserts that the Filipino people had been suddenly and miraculously transformed into a realnationby these events, or that the Aguinaldo government had the support of or really represented the whole country, above all of the most sober-thinking Filipinos.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTIONReligious 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 theBibliographyand 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 characterand 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 issui 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 ofLa 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.66In it will befound 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).67Testimonygiven 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 inSenate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitledLands 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); andReport of Secretary of War, 1902, appendix O (Rome negotiations of 1902).68The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over thesubjection 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.For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in theListof the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo de Tavera’sBibliotecaunder the same name and numbers 681, 873, 1,348 and 1,962.69We mustcome down to the period of American rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate, who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands, has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook to review the entire subject in hisDefensa del clero filipinoand its supplementEl clero secular filipino, both published at Manila in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino clergy by the Vatican.70Their claims are set forth inMemorial elevado á Sa Santidad El PapaLeón XIII por el Pueblo Filipino(Manila, 1900).71For the full exposition of the question, one must study it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903.72Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.73But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial(which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.74The usually sober andcolorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in theRevue des deux mondesfor 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.75Reforms and Demands for more. “Assimilation.”—The reactionists had regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavitemutiny as a “horrible example,” and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative matters. Till after 1880, the “Filipino cause” was in hiding. But meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education, and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers, in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos, Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down.76Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea, already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern; and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part) who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868–72, had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain—and all the reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief—at any rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates of Spanish-Philippine union. Theycarried the matter, indeed, to the extreme, in the campaign for “assimilation,” which has already been characterized as unpractical.Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations, we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists before higher authority; the friars’ tenants around Kalamba, where José Rizal’s parents lived, challenged the administrator of that Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887;77and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and the friars, even the archbishop, had been almostopenly intransigent about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times.78In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero’s term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the successorof Terrero as Governor-General. The friars’ representations at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra79was still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal’s family.80The Propagandists.—A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement.81Itis significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties were, one may say, genuine “sons of the people” though associated with them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal, came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter started the first Filipino periodical of consequence,La Solidaridad, and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31, 1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face withLa Política de España en Filipinasfrom 1891, and, as the latter is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the controversy, soLa Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship, is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists.82Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified privately with the cause. Del Pilar’s writings show nothing of the poet or dreamer, as do Rizal’s; he had, in some degree, an “economic mind,” though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events,it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan, to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently, lost faith in the ideals of “assimilation,” of Spanish-Filipino unity, which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos, especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too prone to temporize for safety’s sake, that the time had come to make the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan, and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to resort to Cuba’s example and not to political petitions only.83Even inNoli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. InEl filibusterismo(Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation ofNoli me tangere,84and none at all ofEl filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two.85It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing hismental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana’s biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly,Nuestro Tiempo, 1904–06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere.86Rizal’s edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga’sSucesos de las islas Filipinashas already been cited in connection with that work inVOLS.XVandXVIof this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotationsare Rizal’s chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value.87There also deserve mention here Rizal’s discussion in 1889 of the future of his people,88and some of Blumentritt’s writings about Rizal and in his defense.89Masonry,Liga Filipina,etc.—In almost all the Spanish writings about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find it ascribed primarily to “Franc-Masonería,” the terrible bugaboo in naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So, as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and foreigners, into which some of the half-castesand more well-to-do Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines, and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time whenLa Solidaridadwas moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos, also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated deductions from such facts as came to light.90Interesting reading is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2,1896, addressed to Governor-General Blanco.91It approves his deportation of theprincipales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations (forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom “there may be indications enough to believe that they are affiliated,” etc. (opening up thus a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives; so also he is to invite coöperation of “the parish-priests who belong to the religious orders.” As to punishments, it is preferable to deport the “suspected,” fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam, rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad and conduct a propaganda.The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association calledSolidaridad Filipina,92which came to nothing practical, and theLiga Filipina, organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July, 1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it that theLiga Filipinawas really separatist in character, and the prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal’s conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League as prepared by Rizal93entirely support hisassertion that the design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos, to “raise the arts and sciences,” and develop Filipino commercial and economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society, in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a “brotherhood,” and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese and others upon the trade of the country—in which respects it would likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions and Rizal’s deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges of its “brothers” to stand by each other for the “remedy of abuses” as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the idea of bringing his people together for such political action as might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.The Katipunan.—We come now to the parting of the ways. Just as Marcelo del Pilar had concluded that the time was at hand for more vigorous measures, so on the other hand some of the Filipinos of education and social position (cautious also, in some cases, because of their property) had become discouraged and faint-hearted. The deportation of Rizal had its effect in 1892, and the local government reforms of 1893–94 were followed by a reactionary government in Spain which might nullify even suchconcessions, in the face of the constant demand for a check upon the half-liberal régime of Blanco. Some of the middle-class leaders of Manila, who had been drawn into the Masonic movement, had decided that the time had come to organize the masses, at least in the Tagálog provinces. Andrés Bonifacio, an employe of a foreign business house in Manila, was the leading spirit; gathering his ideas of modern reform from reading Spanish treatises on the French Revolution, he had imbibed also a notion that the methods of the mob in Paris were those best adapted to secure amelioration for the Filipinos. His ideas were those of a socialist, and of a socialist of the French Revolution type, and he thought them applicable to an undeveloped tropical country, where the pressure of industrial competition is almost unknown, and where with the slightest reasonable exertion starvation may be dismissed from thought. There was in this new propaganda an element of resentment toward the wealthy, upper-class Filipinos, the landed proprietors in general, as well as toward the friar landlords and the whole fabric of government and society resting on them. Summing up all the evidence he has been able to obtain on the Katipunan, the writer agrees with Felipe G. Calderón, a Filipino, in his opinion94that its socialistic character negatives the assertion of the Spanish writers that the upper-class Filipinos were its real supporters and directors, working in the background; and that, while this propaganda from below looked to independence and the substitution of Spanish rule by Filipino rule, yet it was without any political program, properlyspeaking, and there was merely a crude idea in the minds of the masses that they were somehow going to shake off their masters, get rid of the whites, and divide up the big estates not only of the friars but of Filipino landholders as well. Calderón does not discuss the alleged plan of the Katipunan to assassinate the whites, especially the friars. It is certain that such bloodthirsty ideas were in the minds of some of the leaders; but the more direct documentary evidence that has been produced on this point is perhaps open to the suspicion that it was manufactured in connection with the courts-martial which operated with such fury after the outbreak of revolt in 1896.95After all the furore that had been made, the actual revelations as to the importance of the organization, character of its leaders, number of its followers, and extent of its operations, would have made the whole affair somewhat ridiculous, had it not been represented that behind this humble organization of perhaps forty thousand initiates in the Tagálog towns there was a great program for setting up an independent government and that the upper-class Filipinos were simply using this organization as a stalking-horse. The truth appears to be that, while these over-important Katipunan leaders thought in terms grandiloquent, and led their humblefollowers in the towns around Manila most affected by the propaganda to indulge in futile and ridiculous dreams of a coming millennium (while some of themselves were quarreling over the obols contributed), the movement was mostly talk even up to the time when an Augustinian curate in Manila made himself the hero of the rabid Spanish element in Manila by “exposing” an organization about which the governmental authorities had had partial information for some weeks, or even months. Bonifacio started this separate organization in 1894, but Calderón seems to be correct in saying that work in the towns outside of Manila was only begun in the spring of 1896. The humble followers were assured that the Japanese government would help them oust Spain, and that rifles to arm the whole population would come from there. But Japan never in the least violated her obligations to Spain, and, if the leaders evenboughtany rifles in Japan, they must have been few indeed.96When Bonifacio sent an emissary to Dapitan in the spring of 1896, to propose to Rizal a plan of armed revolt and that he should escape on a steam vessel sent for the purpose, and join in this campaign, Rizal rejected the proposition as folly, and displayed his great impatience with it.97On every ground, it seems probable that, had not Friar Gil and the Spanish press of Manila been so insistent on giving great publicity to some Katipunan engraving-stones, receiptsfor dues, etc., kept in hiding by the affiliated employes of a Spanish newspaper, the revolt might never have come about at all. Certainly, no date was set for it (though various future dates had been vaguely discussed), till the sudden arrests of August 19 and 20, 1896, sent Bonifacio and his companions fleeing to Bulakan Province where, practically without arms, they appealed to their fellow-workers in Bulakan, Manila, and Cavite provinces to rise in revolt on August 30. The friars and the rabid element of Spanish patriots were so anxious to force the hand of Blanco, and to discredit him, that, it may be, they forced upon a military commander whose troops were mostly in Mindanao a revolt that, a few months further on, might either have dissipated itself or have been avoided by an adequate show of force.98Because the friars are so much to the fore in all the discussions of these events, we must not overlook the part played by governmental abuses, as already described. The Civil Guard, given a more extensive organization and scope of action during these closing years of Spanish rule, by its abuses (committed, for the most part, by Filipinos upon their own fellows) played probably the foremost part in drawing odium upon the government.99Next to police abuses, andsometimes allied with them, were the misuses of the powers of local government (with which alone the great majority of the people came into direct contact), especially in regard to the levy of forced labor; and here again, the humble Filipino’s complaint was chiefly against his own fellow-countrymen of power and position. But, summing up all the administrative abuses and all the evils of the government system, we are still left a long way from agreement with the friars’ assertions that the masses loved them and that governmental abuses were the sole cause of rebellion.100Insurrection of 1896–97.—No history from theFilipino side has yet come to light, and there are certain points that can be cleared up only by the frank testimony of the Filipino participants.101We are dependent chiefly on Spanish sources, written in the passion of the times by men not careful about sifting the facts. All things considered, the two best sources, both for what they say and for what may be inferred from them, are the so-calledMemoriasof two Governor-Generals, prepared in order to defend their administrations before the Spanish Senate and the public; that of Blanco covering the preparatory stage and early months of the rebellion, that of Primo de Rivera its closing stages. Between these two Governor-Generals, the work of Monteverde y Sedano covers the military operations under Polavieja.Blanco’sMemoria102affords, unconsciously, the most severe indictment that could be passed on Spain’s fitness to hold the Philippines (or her other colonies) in 1898. This man was really of liberal temperament; he had formed a just conception of the real insignificance of the Katipunan movement; and he strove, when the crisis was prematurely forced on him, to restrain the vindictiveness of the rabid Spanish element, and really believed in the efficacy of a “policy of attraction.” But instead of setting forth on broader grounds the reasons for his course of action and discussing with sincerity and franknessa policy for the Philippines, he felt compelled after his return to Spain to bow before the howls of press and public. He defends himself before his clerical-conservative critics not by showing the folly of their illiberal policy for the colony, but endeavors to prove that they were wrong in accusing him of lack of severity as well as of energy. Thus we learn (p. 20) that, even under a Blanco, before the outbreak came, one thousand and forty-two persons had been deported “as Masons, disaffected and suspicious or harmful to their towns.” During the night of August 19–20, 1896, following the sensation created by Friar Gil, there were forty-three arrests in Manila, and three hundred more within the next week. During September, thirty seven men taken in arms were shot, after summary trials (p. 25.) The number of Filipinos, mostly men of some position, who had not taken up arms, but were arrested for alleged complicity in the Katipunan, and involved in the trials before a special court for conspiracy and sedition, very soon mounted to five hundred, including those sent in from the provinces. Some remainedincomunicadosfor more than forty days. The men executed from September 4 to December 12, 1896, when Blanco surrendered command to Polavieja, numbered seventy-four in all.103Evidence as to the “reign of terror” that was inaugurated in Manila may be drawn from the Spanish treatises to be cited, wherein the episode is recitedwith gusto. The Spanish press of Manila for 1896–98; also that of Spain, especially Philippine letters of 1896–98 inLa Política de España en Filipinas,El Heraldo,El ImparcialandEl Correoof Madrid, furnished the original source of information for these writers, and should be used to supplement this history of the insurrection. Transcriptions of testimony taken by the special court for sedition and conspiracy appear in Retana’sArchivo, iii and iv, and evidences that the more yielding witnesses had their phraseology, and sometimes their statements of fact, dictated to them will be noted by the careful reader, especially if he be familiar with Spanish methods of judicial procedure. References to the common use of torture to make witnesses (in some cases eager enough to insure their own safety by “delation”) sign such testimony, will be found in the Filipino press since 1898, occasionally also in Spanish periodicals of Manila since 1898.104These same sources also supplement the citations on Rizal already given, for the story of his trial and execution, and the increase of severity and terrorism after Polavieja took charge. They are also, in the main, our sole, fragmentary sources on the state of Cavite during insurgent control of the province, the insurgent organization, etc.105The Spanish treatises and pamphlets on the insurrection are:106José M. del Castillo y Jimenez,El Katipunan, ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas(Madrid, 1897). Partial accounts of events of 1896–97; already characterized as rabid and cheaply patriotic.Ricardo Monet y Carretero,Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897(Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.E. Reverter y Delmas.—Filipinos por España. Narración episódica de la rebelión en el archipiélago Filipino(Barcelona, 1897); 2 vols. The title of a later edition isLa insurrección de Filipinas. Known to the writer only by title.107Enrique Abella y Casariego,Filipinas(Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.Federico de Monteverde y Sedano,Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897(Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897(Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint fromRevue militaire de l’étranger.L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar(Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.Manuel Sastrón—La insurrección en Filipinas y guerra hispano-americana(Madrid, 1901).108Writtenby a Spanish official in Manila during this time, and composed of accounts and documents drawn mainly from the press of Manila. It is, however, the most useful arsenal of data.Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898(appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, inReport of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues.(Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.The Pact of Biak-na-bató.—Purposely, the word “treaty,” so often applied to this transaction, is here avoided; for, apart from technical objections to a word that applies to agreements between sovereign powers, this was no treaty in any sense of the word. There was some mystery surrounding the negotiations by which the insurgent chiefs surrendered a few hundred nondescript firearms and retired to Hongkong; untrue or half-true charges were bandied back and forth, for political effect, in the Cortes and the press of Spain; and, of the chief actors in the affair, only Primo de Rivera has given his account—perhaps not with entire frankness.109Aguinaldohas confined his statements on the subject to the most brief assertions of a general nature110to the effect that reforms by the Spanish government were promised. Primo de Rivera categorically denies this; while Pedro A. Paterno, the go-between, has made no statement at all during the nine years that have passed since the conflicting statements have been before the public, involving directly the question of his own veracity and good faith. Primo de Rivera is anex partewitness, to be sure; but his statements upon the more vital points involved are corroborated by the very insurgent documents on this subject captured by the American army in 1899 and now in the War Department at Washington.111Primo de Rivera says that, when Paterno presented a paper early in the negotiations containing a full program of reforms,112he rejected the document absolutely,saying he could not discuss such matters with the insurgent chiefs, that the Spanish government would accord such reforms as it thought wise, and he could only interpose his good offices to make recommendations in that respect. The copy of this document now in the War Department at Washington shows the clauses about reform to have been crossed out. Primo de Rivera says that, from that time forth, the negotiation was purely on the basis of a payment to the rebel chiefs to surrender their arms, order the insurgents in the other provinces to do the same, and emigrate to foreign parts. The only documents bearing signatures on both sides, either of those published at Washington or elsewhere, refer exclusively to these particular points of money, surrender of arms, and program of emigration, though Paterno inserted in a preliminary of the final contract on these subjects a clause as to reposing confidence in the Spanish government to “satisfy the desire of the Filipino people.”113Primo de Rivera recommended the transaction to his government for one reason, expressly because it would “discredit [desprestigiando] the chiefs selling out and emigrating.”114The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, underauthority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”115The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown116); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “thinkit prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”117Enough has been developed to show the demoralizing character of the transaction. In justice to Aguinaldo and his closest associates, it is to be said that they had kept the money practically intact, for use in a possible future insurrection, until they spent some of it for arms after Commodore Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay.118Nor are we able to say categorically that Aguinaldo and the other leaders in Biak-na-bató were not led to believe that specific reforms had been promised verbally by Primo de Rivera in the name of his government; Aguinaldo and Paterno could clear up that matter, but neither speaks. Just what informal discussion of this subject there was between Paterno and Primo de Rivera, we do not know; but the latter’s own version will warrant the conclusion that he at least permitted Paterno to lay before the insurgents the fact that he was making recommendations on this line, and to hold out the expectation of results, once he was not confronted with armed rebellion.119He declares thata scheme of Philippine reform, covering also the friar question, had been drawn up and agreed upon, when Premier Cánovas was assassinated and the Conservatives soon after fell from power; but he does not tell us what were the reforms as to the friars. Primo de Rivera continued to give his ideas as to the need for reform in provision of parishes, church fees, local government, education, civil service, etc., after the Liberals came into power. Yet, though stating the case against the friars in strong terms, virtually confirming every charge made against them, he appears to have advised only a curtailment of their power and a more rigid discipline, not their elimination as parish-priests, which was the aim of most of the insurgents.120When a Spanish editor in Manila began writing in February, 1898, of political reforms in the direction of “autonomy,” without submitting his articles to previous censure, Primo de Rivera suspended publication of the periodical.121That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in expectation, in late 1897 and early 1898, of the announcement of some comprehensive scheme ofPhilippine reform, is apparent from the press of the time.122The Liberal press of Madrid and Barcelona was also actively agitating reform for the Philippines, and Spanish Liberals and Filipinos addressed petitions on the subject to the government at Madrid.123The general belief at Manila was also that some sort of promise of reforms had passed at Biak-na-bató, even that it included the gradual withdrawal of the friars.124That the religious orders themselves knew that they were the storm-center is sufficiently shown by the Memorial of April 21, 1898, reproducedpost, pp. 227–286.125The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it undera plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?The fact is, one can sustain any view he prefers to take of this subject, by detached citations from documents of one sort or another. The real answer is to be found only by a careful survey of all the evidence as to Filipino activities and aspirations. We note that, when Rizal discusses the possibility of future independence for his people, he sets it as a century hence. We need not take him literally, nor, on the other hand, need we say his title was merely hypocritical, and he was insidiously inciting his people to think of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warnedhim to restrain his and their youthful impatience on the subject. In discussing Del Pilar and Rizal, it has already been pointed out how the former changed places with the younger man and became the more impatient of the two; and the connection of this growing impatience with the more violent nature of the Katipunan has been shown. So it is not enough to cite detached passages from Rizal or Del Pilar, for example, to prove either that they were just filibusters under cover of protestations or, on the contrary, that they never dreamed of independence.126The propagandists felt differently at different times, under the pressure sometimes of self-interest, influenced sometimes by momentary incidents or passions. It is plain that, with some of them at least, a new tone had been adopted toward Spain when, at the beginning of 1896, the manifesto of the Katipunan organ to the Filipinos bitterly exclaimed:“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in successionLa Solidaridadvoluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continuallamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest inEl Filibusterismo(1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitousacts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”Doubtless Rizal felt that his people had made progress toward social independence in the five years that followed, till the Katipunan outbreak came; but he condemned that beforehand as a foolish venture, and reprobated it as harmful to Filipino interests before his death. Though in a sense this was a movement for independence, we have seen that only vague ideas of a political organization were in the minds of the leaders, while the deluded masses who followed them with, for the most part,bolosonly, had virtually no idea of such an organization, except that Filipinos should succeed Spaniards.127The prematurely commenced revolt, as it gained at the outset, some defensive advantages over the bad military organization of Spain, developed ideas and aspirations quite beyond the early crude dreams of its leaders; they were really surprised at their own (temporary) success, and emboldened thereby.128Even after the loss of Cavite, when the revolutionists were hemmed in and hiding in the Bulakan Mountains, they put forward, in an “Assembly” at Biak-na-bató, a more comprehensive and ambitious political program (a Filipino Republic, in short) than had ever before been drawn up by Filipinos.129We know also that no small part was played by the “reign of terror” in turning even the moderate Filipinos against Spanish rule as an entirety. We should be far from the truth if we should say that this Tagálog rebellion, and the demonstrations of sympathy withit in other provinces, brought the Filipino people together in a unanimous sentiment for independence. That it did greatly stimulate this feeling is certain. He would be a bold man who would now assert that independence was not the common aspiration, when outside pressure suddenly pricked the bubble of Spanish authority in 1898 and released the people for the free expression of their sentiments. But he is equally bold who asserts that the Filipino people had been suddenly and miraculously transformed into a realnationby these events, or that the Aguinaldo government had the support of or really represented the whole country, above all of the most sober-thinking Filipinos.
POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT—FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTIONReligious 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 theBibliographyand 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 characterand 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 issui 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 ofLa 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.66In it will befound 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).67Testimonygiven 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 inSenate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitledLands 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); andReport of Secretary of War, 1902, appendix O (Rome negotiations of 1902).68The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over thesubjection 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.For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in theListof the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo de Tavera’sBibliotecaunder the same name and numbers 681, 873, 1,348 and 1,962.69We mustcome down to the period of American rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate, who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands, has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook to review the entire subject in hisDefensa del clero filipinoand its supplementEl clero secular filipino, both published at Manila in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino clergy by the Vatican.70Their claims are set forth inMemorial elevado á Sa Santidad El PapaLeón XIII por el Pueblo Filipino(Manila, 1900).71For the full exposition of the question, one must study it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903.72Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.73But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial(which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.74The usually sober andcolorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in theRevue des deux mondesfor 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.75Reforms and Demands for more. “Assimilation.”—The reactionists had regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavitemutiny as a “horrible example,” and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative matters. Till after 1880, the “Filipino cause” was in hiding. But meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education, and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers, in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos, Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down.76Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea, already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern; and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part) who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868–72, had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain—and all the reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief—at any rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates of Spanish-Philippine union. Theycarried the matter, indeed, to the extreme, in the campaign for “assimilation,” which has already been characterized as unpractical.Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations, we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists before higher authority; the friars’ tenants around Kalamba, where José Rizal’s parents lived, challenged the administrator of that Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887;77and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and the friars, even the archbishop, had been almostopenly intransigent about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times.78In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero’s term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the successorof Terrero as Governor-General. The friars’ representations at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra79was still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal’s family.80The Propagandists.—A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement.81Itis significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties were, one may say, genuine “sons of the people” though associated with them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal, came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter started the first Filipino periodical of consequence,La Solidaridad, and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31, 1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face withLa Política de España en Filipinasfrom 1891, and, as the latter is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the controversy, soLa Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship, is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists.82Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified privately with the cause. Del Pilar’s writings show nothing of the poet or dreamer, as do Rizal’s; he had, in some degree, an “economic mind,” though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events,it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan, to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently, lost faith in the ideals of “assimilation,” of Spanish-Filipino unity, which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos, especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too prone to temporize for safety’s sake, that the time had come to make the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan, and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to resort to Cuba’s example and not to political petitions only.83Even inNoli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. InEl filibusterismo(Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation ofNoli me tangere,84and none at all ofEl filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two.85It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing hismental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana’s biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly,Nuestro Tiempo, 1904–06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere.86Rizal’s edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga’sSucesos de las islas Filipinashas already been cited in connection with that work inVOLS.XVandXVIof this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotationsare Rizal’s chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value.87There also deserve mention here Rizal’s discussion in 1889 of the future of his people,88and some of Blumentritt’s writings about Rizal and in his defense.89Masonry,Liga Filipina,etc.—In almost all the Spanish writings about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find it ascribed primarily to “Franc-Masonería,” the terrible bugaboo in naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So, as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and foreigners, into which some of the half-castesand more well-to-do Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines, and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time whenLa Solidaridadwas moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos, also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated deductions from such facts as came to light.90Interesting reading is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2,1896, addressed to Governor-General Blanco.91It approves his deportation of theprincipales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations (forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom “there may be indications enough to believe that they are affiliated,” etc. (opening up thus a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives; so also he is to invite coöperation of “the parish-priests who belong to the religious orders.” As to punishments, it is preferable to deport the “suspected,” fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam, rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad and conduct a propaganda.The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association calledSolidaridad Filipina,92which came to nothing practical, and theLiga Filipina, organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July, 1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it that theLiga Filipinawas really separatist in character, and the prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal’s conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League as prepared by Rizal93entirely support hisassertion that the design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos, to “raise the arts and sciences,” and develop Filipino commercial and economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society, in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a “brotherhood,” and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese and others upon the trade of the country—in which respects it would likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions and Rizal’s deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges of its “brothers” to stand by each other for the “remedy of abuses” as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the idea of bringing his people together for such political action as might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.The Katipunan.—We come now to the parting of the ways. Just as Marcelo del Pilar had concluded that the time was at hand for more vigorous measures, so on the other hand some of the Filipinos of education and social position (cautious also, in some cases, because of their property) had become discouraged and faint-hearted. The deportation of Rizal had its effect in 1892, and the local government reforms of 1893–94 were followed by a reactionary government in Spain which might nullify even suchconcessions, in the face of the constant demand for a check upon the half-liberal régime of Blanco. Some of the middle-class leaders of Manila, who had been drawn into the Masonic movement, had decided that the time had come to organize the masses, at least in the Tagálog provinces. Andrés Bonifacio, an employe of a foreign business house in Manila, was the leading spirit; gathering his ideas of modern reform from reading Spanish treatises on the French Revolution, he had imbibed also a notion that the methods of the mob in Paris were those best adapted to secure amelioration for the Filipinos. His ideas were those of a socialist, and of a socialist of the French Revolution type, and he thought them applicable to an undeveloped tropical country, where the pressure of industrial competition is almost unknown, and where with the slightest reasonable exertion starvation may be dismissed from thought. There was in this new propaganda an element of resentment toward the wealthy, upper-class Filipinos, the landed proprietors in general, as well as toward the friar landlords and the whole fabric of government and society resting on them. Summing up all the evidence he has been able to obtain on the Katipunan, the writer agrees with Felipe G. Calderón, a Filipino, in his opinion94that its socialistic character negatives the assertion of the Spanish writers that the upper-class Filipinos were its real supporters and directors, working in the background; and that, while this propaganda from below looked to independence and the substitution of Spanish rule by Filipino rule, yet it was without any political program, properlyspeaking, and there was merely a crude idea in the minds of the masses that they were somehow going to shake off their masters, get rid of the whites, and divide up the big estates not only of the friars but of Filipino landholders as well. Calderón does not discuss the alleged plan of the Katipunan to assassinate the whites, especially the friars. It is certain that such bloodthirsty ideas were in the minds of some of the leaders; but the more direct documentary evidence that has been produced on this point is perhaps open to the suspicion that it was manufactured in connection with the courts-martial which operated with such fury after the outbreak of revolt in 1896.95After all the furore that had been made, the actual revelations as to the importance of the organization, character of its leaders, number of its followers, and extent of its operations, would have made the whole affair somewhat ridiculous, had it not been represented that behind this humble organization of perhaps forty thousand initiates in the Tagálog towns there was a great program for setting up an independent government and that the upper-class Filipinos were simply using this organization as a stalking-horse. The truth appears to be that, while these over-important Katipunan leaders thought in terms grandiloquent, and led their humblefollowers in the towns around Manila most affected by the propaganda to indulge in futile and ridiculous dreams of a coming millennium (while some of themselves were quarreling over the obols contributed), the movement was mostly talk even up to the time when an Augustinian curate in Manila made himself the hero of the rabid Spanish element in Manila by “exposing” an organization about which the governmental authorities had had partial information for some weeks, or even months. Bonifacio started this separate organization in 1894, but Calderón seems to be correct in saying that work in the towns outside of Manila was only begun in the spring of 1896. The humble followers were assured that the Japanese government would help them oust Spain, and that rifles to arm the whole population would come from there. But Japan never in the least violated her obligations to Spain, and, if the leaders evenboughtany rifles in Japan, they must have been few indeed.96When Bonifacio sent an emissary to Dapitan in the spring of 1896, to propose to Rizal a plan of armed revolt and that he should escape on a steam vessel sent for the purpose, and join in this campaign, Rizal rejected the proposition as folly, and displayed his great impatience with it.97On every ground, it seems probable that, had not Friar Gil and the Spanish press of Manila been so insistent on giving great publicity to some Katipunan engraving-stones, receiptsfor dues, etc., kept in hiding by the affiliated employes of a Spanish newspaper, the revolt might never have come about at all. Certainly, no date was set for it (though various future dates had been vaguely discussed), till the sudden arrests of August 19 and 20, 1896, sent Bonifacio and his companions fleeing to Bulakan Province where, practically without arms, they appealed to their fellow-workers in Bulakan, Manila, and Cavite provinces to rise in revolt on August 30. The friars and the rabid element of Spanish patriots were so anxious to force the hand of Blanco, and to discredit him, that, it may be, they forced upon a military commander whose troops were mostly in Mindanao a revolt that, a few months further on, might either have dissipated itself or have been avoided by an adequate show of force.98Because the friars are so much to the fore in all the discussions of these events, we must not overlook the part played by governmental abuses, as already described. The Civil Guard, given a more extensive organization and scope of action during these closing years of Spanish rule, by its abuses (committed, for the most part, by Filipinos upon their own fellows) played probably the foremost part in drawing odium upon the government.99Next to police abuses, andsometimes allied with them, were the misuses of the powers of local government (with which alone the great majority of the people came into direct contact), especially in regard to the levy of forced labor; and here again, the humble Filipino’s complaint was chiefly against his own fellow-countrymen of power and position. But, summing up all the administrative abuses and all the evils of the government system, we are still left a long way from agreement with the friars’ assertions that the masses loved them and that governmental abuses were the sole cause of rebellion.100Insurrection of 1896–97.—No history from theFilipino side has yet come to light, and there are certain points that can be cleared up only by the frank testimony of the Filipino participants.101We are dependent chiefly on Spanish sources, written in the passion of the times by men not careful about sifting the facts. All things considered, the two best sources, both for what they say and for what may be inferred from them, are the so-calledMemoriasof two Governor-Generals, prepared in order to defend their administrations before the Spanish Senate and the public; that of Blanco covering the preparatory stage and early months of the rebellion, that of Primo de Rivera its closing stages. Between these two Governor-Generals, the work of Monteverde y Sedano covers the military operations under Polavieja.Blanco’sMemoria102affords, unconsciously, the most severe indictment that could be passed on Spain’s fitness to hold the Philippines (or her other colonies) in 1898. This man was really of liberal temperament; he had formed a just conception of the real insignificance of the Katipunan movement; and he strove, when the crisis was prematurely forced on him, to restrain the vindictiveness of the rabid Spanish element, and really believed in the efficacy of a “policy of attraction.” But instead of setting forth on broader grounds the reasons for his course of action and discussing with sincerity and franknessa policy for the Philippines, he felt compelled after his return to Spain to bow before the howls of press and public. He defends himself before his clerical-conservative critics not by showing the folly of their illiberal policy for the colony, but endeavors to prove that they were wrong in accusing him of lack of severity as well as of energy. Thus we learn (p. 20) that, even under a Blanco, before the outbreak came, one thousand and forty-two persons had been deported “as Masons, disaffected and suspicious or harmful to their towns.” During the night of August 19–20, 1896, following the sensation created by Friar Gil, there were forty-three arrests in Manila, and three hundred more within the next week. During September, thirty seven men taken in arms were shot, after summary trials (p. 25.) The number of Filipinos, mostly men of some position, who had not taken up arms, but were arrested for alleged complicity in the Katipunan, and involved in the trials before a special court for conspiracy and sedition, very soon mounted to five hundred, including those sent in from the provinces. Some remainedincomunicadosfor more than forty days. The men executed from September 4 to December 12, 1896, when Blanco surrendered command to Polavieja, numbered seventy-four in all.103Evidence as to the “reign of terror” that was inaugurated in Manila may be drawn from the Spanish treatises to be cited, wherein the episode is recitedwith gusto. The Spanish press of Manila for 1896–98; also that of Spain, especially Philippine letters of 1896–98 inLa Política de España en Filipinas,El Heraldo,El ImparcialandEl Correoof Madrid, furnished the original source of information for these writers, and should be used to supplement this history of the insurrection. Transcriptions of testimony taken by the special court for sedition and conspiracy appear in Retana’sArchivo, iii and iv, and evidences that the more yielding witnesses had their phraseology, and sometimes their statements of fact, dictated to them will be noted by the careful reader, especially if he be familiar with Spanish methods of judicial procedure. References to the common use of torture to make witnesses (in some cases eager enough to insure their own safety by “delation”) sign such testimony, will be found in the Filipino press since 1898, occasionally also in Spanish periodicals of Manila since 1898.104These same sources also supplement the citations on Rizal already given, for the story of his trial and execution, and the increase of severity and terrorism after Polavieja took charge. They are also, in the main, our sole, fragmentary sources on the state of Cavite during insurgent control of the province, the insurgent organization, etc.105The Spanish treatises and pamphlets on the insurrection are:106José M. del Castillo y Jimenez,El Katipunan, ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas(Madrid, 1897). Partial accounts of events of 1896–97; already characterized as rabid and cheaply patriotic.Ricardo Monet y Carretero,Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897(Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.E. Reverter y Delmas.—Filipinos por España. Narración episódica de la rebelión en el archipiélago Filipino(Barcelona, 1897); 2 vols. The title of a later edition isLa insurrección de Filipinas. Known to the writer only by title.107Enrique Abella y Casariego,Filipinas(Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.Federico de Monteverde y Sedano,Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897(Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897(Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint fromRevue militaire de l’étranger.L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar(Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.Manuel Sastrón—La insurrección en Filipinas y guerra hispano-americana(Madrid, 1901).108Writtenby a Spanish official in Manila during this time, and composed of accounts and documents drawn mainly from the press of Manila. It is, however, the most useful arsenal of data.Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898(appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, inReport of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues.(Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.The Pact of Biak-na-bató.—Purposely, the word “treaty,” so often applied to this transaction, is here avoided; for, apart from technical objections to a word that applies to agreements between sovereign powers, this was no treaty in any sense of the word. There was some mystery surrounding the negotiations by which the insurgent chiefs surrendered a few hundred nondescript firearms and retired to Hongkong; untrue or half-true charges were bandied back and forth, for political effect, in the Cortes and the press of Spain; and, of the chief actors in the affair, only Primo de Rivera has given his account—perhaps not with entire frankness.109Aguinaldohas confined his statements on the subject to the most brief assertions of a general nature110to the effect that reforms by the Spanish government were promised. Primo de Rivera categorically denies this; while Pedro A. Paterno, the go-between, has made no statement at all during the nine years that have passed since the conflicting statements have been before the public, involving directly the question of his own veracity and good faith. Primo de Rivera is anex partewitness, to be sure; but his statements upon the more vital points involved are corroborated by the very insurgent documents on this subject captured by the American army in 1899 and now in the War Department at Washington.111Primo de Rivera says that, when Paterno presented a paper early in the negotiations containing a full program of reforms,112he rejected the document absolutely,saying he could not discuss such matters with the insurgent chiefs, that the Spanish government would accord such reforms as it thought wise, and he could only interpose his good offices to make recommendations in that respect. The copy of this document now in the War Department at Washington shows the clauses about reform to have been crossed out. Primo de Rivera says that, from that time forth, the negotiation was purely on the basis of a payment to the rebel chiefs to surrender their arms, order the insurgents in the other provinces to do the same, and emigrate to foreign parts. The only documents bearing signatures on both sides, either of those published at Washington or elsewhere, refer exclusively to these particular points of money, surrender of arms, and program of emigration, though Paterno inserted in a preliminary of the final contract on these subjects a clause as to reposing confidence in the Spanish government to “satisfy the desire of the Filipino people.”113Primo de Rivera recommended the transaction to his government for one reason, expressly because it would “discredit [desprestigiando] the chiefs selling out and emigrating.”114The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, underauthority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”115The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown116); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “thinkit prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”117Enough has been developed to show the demoralizing character of the transaction. In justice to Aguinaldo and his closest associates, it is to be said that they had kept the money practically intact, for use in a possible future insurrection, until they spent some of it for arms after Commodore Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay.118Nor are we able to say categorically that Aguinaldo and the other leaders in Biak-na-bató were not led to believe that specific reforms had been promised verbally by Primo de Rivera in the name of his government; Aguinaldo and Paterno could clear up that matter, but neither speaks. Just what informal discussion of this subject there was between Paterno and Primo de Rivera, we do not know; but the latter’s own version will warrant the conclusion that he at least permitted Paterno to lay before the insurgents the fact that he was making recommendations on this line, and to hold out the expectation of results, once he was not confronted with armed rebellion.119He declares thata scheme of Philippine reform, covering also the friar question, had been drawn up and agreed upon, when Premier Cánovas was assassinated and the Conservatives soon after fell from power; but he does not tell us what were the reforms as to the friars. Primo de Rivera continued to give his ideas as to the need for reform in provision of parishes, church fees, local government, education, civil service, etc., after the Liberals came into power. Yet, though stating the case against the friars in strong terms, virtually confirming every charge made against them, he appears to have advised only a curtailment of their power and a more rigid discipline, not their elimination as parish-priests, which was the aim of most of the insurgents.120When a Spanish editor in Manila began writing in February, 1898, of political reforms in the direction of “autonomy,” without submitting his articles to previous censure, Primo de Rivera suspended publication of the periodical.121That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in expectation, in late 1897 and early 1898, of the announcement of some comprehensive scheme ofPhilippine reform, is apparent from the press of the time.122The Liberal press of Madrid and Barcelona was also actively agitating reform for the Philippines, and Spanish Liberals and Filipinos addressed petitions on the subject to the government at Madrid.123The general belief at Manila was also that some sort of promise of reforms had passed at Biak-na-bató, even that it included the gradual withdrawal of the friars.124That the religious orders themselves knew that they were the storm-center is sufficiently shown by the Memorial of April 21, 1898, reproducedpost, pp. 227–286.125The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it undera plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?The fact is, one can sustain any view he prefers to take of this subject, by detached citations from documents of one sort or another. The real answer is to be found only by a careful survey of all the evidence as to Filipino activities and aspirations. We note that, when Rizal discusses the possibility of future independence for his people, he sets it as a century hence. We need not take him literally, nor, on the other hand, need we say his title was merely hypocritical, and he was insidiously inciting his people to think of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warnedhim to restrain his and their youthful impatience on the subject. In discussing Del Pilar and Rizal, it has already been pointed out how the former changed places with the younger man and became the more impatient of the two; and the connection of this growing impatience with the more violent nature of the Katipunan has been shown. So it is not enough to cite detached passages from Rizal or Del Pilar, for example, to prove either that they were just filibusters under cover of protestations or, on the contrary, that they never dreamed of independence.126The propagandists felt differently at different times, under the pressure sometimes of self-interest, influenced sometimes by momentary incidents or passions. It is plain that, with some of them at least, a new tone had been adopted toward Spain when, at the beginning of 1896, the manifesto of the Katipunan organ to the Filipinos bitterly exclaimed:“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in successionLa Solidaridadvoluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continuallamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest inEl Filibusterismo(1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitousacts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”Doubtless Rizal felt that his people had made progress toward social independence in the five years that followed, till the Katipunan outbreak came; but he condemned that beforehand as a foolish venture, and reprobated it as harmful to Filipino interests before his death. Though in a sense this was a movement for independence, we have seen that only vague ideas of a political organization were in the minds of the leaders, while the deluded masses who followed them with, for the most part,bolosonly, had virtually no idea of such an organization, except that Filipinos should succeed Spaniards.127The prematurely commenced revolt, as it gained at the outset, some defensive advantages over the bad military organization of Spain, developed ideas and aspirations quite beyond the early crude dreams of its leaders; they were really surprised at their own (temporary) success, and emboldened thereby.128Even after the loss of Cavite, when the revolutionists were hemmed in and hiding in the Bulakan Mountains, they put forward, in an “Assembly” at Biak-na-bató, a more comprehensive and ambitious political program (a Filipino Republic, in short) than had ever before been drawn up by Filipinos.129We know also that no small part was played by the “reign of terror” in turning even the moderate Filipinos against Spanish rule as an entirety. We should be far from the truth if we should say that this Tagálog rebellion, and the demonstrations of sympathy withit in other provinces, brought the Filipino people together in a unanimous sentiment for independence. That it did greatly stimulate this feeling is certain. He would be a bold man who would now assert that independence was not the common aspiration, when outside pressure suddenly pricked the bubble of Spanish authority in 1898 and released the people for the free expression of their sentiments. But he is equally bold who asserts that the Filipino people had been suddenly and miraculously transformed into a realnationby these events, or that the Aguinaldo government had the support of or really represented the whole country, above all of the most sober-thinking Filipinos.
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 theBibliographyand 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 characterand 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 issui 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 ofLa 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.66In it will befound 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).67Testimonygiven 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 inSenate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitledLands 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); andReport of Secretary of War, 1902, appendix O (Rome negotiations of 1902).68The Filipino clergy and their Cause.—Contests between secular and regular ecclesiastics, and over thesubjection 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.For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in theListof the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo de Tavera’sBibliotecaunder the same name and numbers 681, 873, 1,348 and 1,962.69We mustcome down to the period of American rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate, who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands, has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook to review the entire subject in hisDefensa del clero filipinoand its supplementEl clero secular filipino, both published at Manila in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino clergy by the Vatican.70Their claims are set forth inMemorial elevado á Sa Santidad El PapaLeón XIII por el Pueblo Filipino(Manila, 1900).71For the full exposition of the question, one must study it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903.72Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.73But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial(which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.74The usually sober andcolorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in theRevue des deux mondesfor 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.75Reforms and Demands for more. “Assimilation.”—The reactionists had regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavitemutiny as a “horrible example,” and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative matters. Till after 1880, the “Filipino cause” was in hiding. But meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education, and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers, in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos, Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down.76Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea, already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern; and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part) who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868–72, had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain—and all the reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief—at any rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates of Spanish-Philippine union. Theycarried the matter, indeed, to the extreme, in the campaign for “assimilation,” which has already been characterized as unpractical.Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations, we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists before higher authority; the friars’ tenants around Kalamba, where José Rizal’s parents lived, challenged the administrator of that Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887;77and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and the friars, even the archbishop, had been almostopenly intransigent about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times.78In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero’s term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the successorof Terrero as Governor-General. The friars’ representations at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra79was still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal’s family.80The Propagandists.—A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement.81Itis significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties were, one may say, genuine “sons of the people” though associated with them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal, came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter started the first Filipino periodical of consequence,La Solidaridad, and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31, 1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face withLa Política de España en Filipinasfrom 1891, and, as the latter is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the controversy, soLa Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship, is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists.82Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified privately with the cause. Del Pilar’s writings show nothing of the poet or dreamer, as do Rizal’s; he had, in some degree, an “economic mind,” though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events,it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan, to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently, lost faith in the ideals of “assimilation,” of Spanish-Filipino unity, which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos, especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too prone to temporize for safety’s sake, that the time had come to make the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan, and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to resort to Cuba’s example and not to political petitions only.83Even inNoli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. InEl filibusterismo(Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation ofNoli me tangere,84and none at all ofEl filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two.85It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing hismental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana’s biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly,Nuestro Tiempo, 1904–06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere.86Rizal’s edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga’sSucesos de las islas Filipinashas already been cited in connection with that work inVOLS.XVandXVIof this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotationsare Rizal’s chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value.87There also deserve mention here Rizal’s discussion in 1889 of the future of his people,88and some of Blumentritt’s writings about Rizal and in his defense.89Masonry,Liga Filipina,etc.—In almost all the Spanish writings about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find it ascribed primarily to “Franc-Masonería,” the terrible bugaboo in naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So, as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and foreigners, into which some of the half-castesand more well-to-do Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines, and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time whenLa Solidaridadwas moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos, also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated deductions from such facts as came to light.90Interesting reading is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2,1896, addressed to Governor-General Blanco.91It approves his deportation of theprincipales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations (forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom “there may be indications enough to believe that they are affiliated,” etc. (opening up thus a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives; so also he is to invite coöperation of “the parish-priests who belong to the religious orders.” As to punishments, it is preferable to deport the “suspected,” fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam, rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad and conduct a propaganda.The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association calledSolidaridad Filipina,92which came to nothing practical, and theLiga Filipina, organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July, 1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it that theLiga Filipinawas really separatist in character, and the prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal’s conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League as prepared by Rizal93entirely support hisassertion that the design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos, to “raise the arts and sciences,” and develop Filipino commercial and economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society, in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a “brotherhood,” and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese and others upon the trade of the country—in which respects it would likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions and Rizal’s deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges of its “brothers” to stand by each other for the “remedy of abuses” as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the idea of bringing his people together for such political action as might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.The Katipunan.—We come now to the parting of the ways. Just as Marcelo del Pilar had concluded that the time was at hand for more vigorous measures, so on the other hand some of the Filipinos of education and social position (cautious also, in some cases, because of their property) had become discouraged and faint-hearted. The deportation of Rizal had its effect in 1892, and the local government reforms of 1893–94 were followed by a reactionary government in Spain which might nullify even suchconcessions, in the face of the constant demand for a check upon the half-liberal régime of Blanco. Some of the middle-class leaders of Manila, who had been drawn into the Masonic movement, had decided that the time had come to organize the masses, at least in the Tagálog provinces. Andrés Bonifacio, an employe of a foreign business house in Manila, was the leading spirit; gathering his ideas of modern reform from reading Spanish treatises on the French Revolution, he had imbibed also a notion that the methods of the mob in Paris were those best adapted to secure amelioration for the Filipinos. His ideas were those of a socialist, and of a socialist of the French Revolution type, and he thought them applicable to an undeveloped tropical country, where the pressure of industrial competition is almost unknown, and where with the slightest reasonable exertion starvation may be dismissed from thought. There was in this new propaganda an element of resentment toward the wealthy, upper-class Filipinos, the landed proprietors in general, as well as toward the friar landlords and the whole fabric of government and society resting on them. Summing up all the evidence he has been able to obtain on the Katipunan, the writer agrees with Felipe G. Calderón, a Filipino, in his opinion94that its socialistic character negatives the assertion of the Spanish writers that the upper-class Filipinos were its real supporters and directors, working in the background; and that, while this propaganda from below looked to independence and the substitution of Spanish rule by Filipino rule, yet it was without any political program, properlyspeaking, and there was merely a crude idea in the minds of the masses that they were somehow going to shake off their masters, get rid of the whites, and divide up the big estates not only of the friars but of Filipino landholders as well. Calderón does not discuss the alleged plan of the Katipunan to assassinate the whites, especially the friars. It is certain that such bloodthirsty ideas were in the minds of some of the leaders; but the more direct documentary evidence that has been produced on this point is perhaps open to the suspicion that it was manufactured in connection with the courts-martial which operated with such fury after the outbreak of revolt in 1896.95After all the furore that had been made, the actual revelations as to the importance of the organization, character of its leaders, number of its followers, and extent of its operations, would have made the whole affair somewhat ridiculous, had it not been represented that behind this humble organization of perhaps forty thousand initiates in the Tagálog towns there was a great program for setting up an independent government and that the upper-class Filipinos were simply using this organization as a stalking-horse. The truth appears to be that, while these over-important Katipunan leaders thought in terms grandiloquent, and led their humblefollowers in the towns around Manila most affected by the propaganda to indulge in futile and ridiculous dreams of a coming millennium (while some of themselves were quarreling over the obols contributed), the movement was mostly talk even up to the time when an Augustinian curate in Manila made himself the hero of the rabid Spanish element in Manila by “exposing” an organization about which the governmental authorities had had partial information for some weeks, or even months. Bonifacio started this separate organization in 1894, but Calderón seems to be correct in saying that work in the towns outside of Manila was only begun in the spring of 1896. The humble followers were assured that the Japanese government would help them oust Spain, and that rifles to arm the whole population would come from there. But Japan never in the least violated her obligations to Spain, and, if the leaders evenboughtany rifles in Japan, they must have been few indeed.96When Bonifacio sent an emissary to Dapitan in the spring of 1896, to propose to Rizal a plan of armed revolt and that he should escape on a steam vessel sent for the purpose, and join in this campaign, Rizal rejected the proposition as folly, and displayed his great impatience with it.97On every ground, it seems probable that, had not Friar Gil and the Spanish press of Manila been so insistent on giving great publicity to some Katipunan engraving-stones, receiptsfor dues, etc., kept in hiding by the affiliated employes of a Spanish newspaper, the revolt might never have come about at all. Certainly, no date was set for it (though various future dates had been vaguely discussed), till the sudden arrests of August 19 and 20, 1896, sent Bonifacio and his companions fleeing to Bulakan Province where, practically without arms, they appealed to their fellow-workers in Bulakan, Manila, and Cavite provinces to rise in revolt on August 30. The friars and the rabid element of Spanish patriots were so anxious to force the hand of Blanco, and to discredit him, that, it may be, they forced upon a military commander whose troops were mostly in Mindanao a revolt that, a few months further on, might either have dissipated itself or have been avoided by an adequate show of force.98Because the friars are so much to the fore in all the discussions of these events, we must not overlook the part played by governmental abuses, as already described. The Civil Guard, given a more extensive organization and scope of action during these closing years of Spanish rule, by its abuses (committed, for the most part, by Filipinos upon their own fellows) played probably the foremost part in drawing odium upon the government.99Next to police abuses, andsometimes allied with them, were the misuses of the powers of local government (with which alone the great majority of the people came into direct contact), especially in regard to the levy of forced labor; and here again, the humble Filipino’s complaint was chiefly against his own fellow-countrymen of power and position. But, summing up all the administrative abuses and all the evils of the government system, we are still left a long way from agreement with the friars’ assertions that the masses loved them and that governmental abuses were the sole cause of rebellion.100Insurrection of 1896–97.—No history from theFilipino side has yet come to light, and there are certain points that can be cleared up only by the frank testimony of the Filipino participants.101We are dependent chiefly on Spanish sources, written in the passion of the times by men not careful about sifting the facts. All things considered, the two best sources, both for what they say and for what may be inferred from them, are the so-calledMemoriasof two Governor-Generals, prepared in order to defend their administrations before the Spanish Senate and the public; that of Blanco covering the preparatory stage and early months of the rebellion, that of Primo de Rivera its closing stages. Between these two Governor-Generals, the work of Monteverde y Sedano covers the military operations under Polavieja.Blanco’sMemoria102affords, unconsciously, the most severe indictment that could be passed on Spain’s fitness to hold the Philippines (or her other colonies) in 1898. This man was really of liberal temperament; he had formed a just conception of the real insignificance of the Katipunan movement; and he strove, when the crisis was prematurely forced on him, to restrain the vindictiveness of the rabid Spanish element, and really believed in the efficacy of a “policy of attraction.” But instead of setting forth on broader grounds the reasons for his course of action and discussing with sincerity and franknessa policy for the Philippines, he felt compelled after his return to Spain to bow before the howls of press and public. He defends himself before his clerical-conservative critics not by showing the folly of their illiberal policy for the colony, but endeavors to prove that they were wrong in accusing him of lack of severity as well as of energy. Thus we learn (p. 20) that, even under a Blanco, before the outbreak came, one thousand and forty-two persons had been deported “as Masons, disaffected and suspicious or harmful to their towns.” During the night of August 19–20, 1896, following the sensation created by Friar Gil, there were forty-three arrests in Manila, and three hundred more within the next week. During September, thirty seven men taken in arms were shot, after summary trials (p. 25.) The number of Filipinos, mostly men of some position, who had not taken up arms, but were arrested for alleged complicity in the Katipunan, and involved in the trials before a special court for conspiracy and sedition, very soon mounted to five hundred, including those sent in from the provinces. Some remainedincomunicadosfor more than forty days. The men executed from September 4 to December 12, 1896, when Blanco surrendered command to Polavieja, numbered seventy-four in all.103Evidence as to the “reign of terror” that was inaugurated in Manila may be drawn from the Spanish treatises to be cited, wherein the episode is recitedwith gusto. The Spanish press of Manila for 1896–98; also that of Spain, especially Philippine letters of 1896–98 inLa Política de España en Filipinas,El Heraldo,El ImparcialandEl Correoof Madrid, furnished the original source of information for these writers, and should be used to supplement this history of the insurrection. Transcriptions of testimony taken by the special court for sedition and conspiracy appear in Retana’sArchivo, iii and iv, and evidences that the more yielding witnesses had their phraseology, and sometimes their statements of fact, dictated to them will be noted by the careful reader, especially if he be familiar with Spanish methods of judicial procedure. References to the common use of torture to make witnesses (in some cases eager enough to insure their own safety by “delation”) sign such testimony, will be found in the Filipino press since 1898, occasionally also in Spanish periodicals of Manila since 1898.104These same sources also supplement the citations on Rizal already given, for the story of his trial and execution, and the increase of severity and terrorism after Polavieja took charge. They are also, in the main, our sole, fragmentary sources on the state of Cavite during insurgent control of the province, the insurgent organization, etc.105The Spanish treatises and pamphlets on the insurrection are:106José M. del Castillo y Jimenez,El Katipunan, ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas(Madrid, 1897). Partial accounts of events of 1896–97; already characterized as rabid and cheaply patriotic.Ricardo Monet y Carretero,Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897(Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.E. Reverter y Delmas.—Filipinos por España. Narración episódica de la rebelión en el archipiélago Filipino(Barcelona, 1897); 2 vols. The title of a later edition isLa insurrección de Filipinas. Known to the writer only by title.107Enrique Abella y Casariego,Filipinas(Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.Federico de Monteverde y Sedano,Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897(Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897(Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint fromRevue militaire de l’étranger.L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar(Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.Manuel Sastrón—La insurrección en Filipinas y guerra hispano-americana(Madrid, 1901).108Writtenby a Spanish official in Manila during this time, and composed of accounts and documents drawn mainly from the press of Manila. It is, however, the most useful arsenal of data.Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898(appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, inReport of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues.(Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.The Pact of Biak-na-bató.—Purposely, the word “treaty,” so often applied to this transaction, is here avoided; for, apart from technical objections to a word that applies to agreements between sovereign powers, this was no treaty in any sense of the word. There was some mystery surrounding the negotiations by which the insurgent chiefs surrendered a few hundred nondescript firearms and retired to Hongkong; untrue or half-true charges were bandied back and forth, for political effect, in the Cortes and the press of Spain; and, of the chief actors in the affair, only Primo de Rivera has given his account—perhaps not with entire frankness.109Aguinaldohas confined his statements on the subject to the most brief assertions of a general nature110to the effect that reforms by the Spanish government were promised. Primo de Rivera categorically denies this; while Pedro A. Paterno, the go-between, has made no statement at all during the nine years that have passed since the conflicting statements have been before the public, involving directly the question of his own veracity and good faith. Primo de Rivera is anex partewitness, to be sure; but his statements upon the more vital points involved are corroborated by the very insurgent documents on this subject captured by the American army in 1899 and now in the War Department at Washington.111Primo de Rivera says that, when Paterno presented a paper early in the negotiations containing a full program of reforms,112he rejected the document absolutely,saying he could not discuss such matters with the insurgent chiefs, that the Spanish government would accord such reforms as it thought wise, and he could only interpose his good offices to make recommendations in that respect. The copy of this document now in the War Department at Washington shows the clauses about reform to have been crossed out. Primo de Rivera says that, from that time forth, the negotiation was purely on the basis of a payment to the rebel chiefs to surrender their arms, order the insurgents in the other provinces to do the same, and emigrate to foreign parts. The only documents bearing signatures on both sides, either of those published at Washington or elsewhere, refer exclusively to these particular points of money, surrender of arms, and program of emigration, though Paterno inserted in a preliminary of the final contract on these subjects a clause as to reposing confidence in the Spanish government to “satisfy the desire of the Filipino people.”113Primo de Rivera recommended the transaction to his government for one reason, expressly because it would “discredit [desprestigiando] the chiefs selling out and emigrating.”114The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, underauthority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”115The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown116); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “thinkit prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”117Enough has been developed to show the demoralizing character of the transaction. In justice to Aguinaldo and his closest associates, it is to be said that they had kept the money practically intact, for use in a possible future insurrection, until they spent some of it for arms after Commodore Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay.118Nor are we able to say categorically that Aguinaldo and the other leaders in Biak-na-bató were not led to believe that specific reforms had been promised verbally by Primo de Rivera in the name of his government; Aguinaldo and Paterno could clear up that matter, but neither speaks. Just what informal discussion of this subject there was between Paterno and Primo de Rivera, we do not know; but the latter’s own version will warrant the conclusion that he at least permitted Paterno to lay before the insurgents the fact that he was making recommendations on this line, and to hold out the expectation of results, once he was not confronted with armed rebellion.119He declares thata scheme of Philippine reform, covering also the friar question, had been drawn up and agreed upon, when Premier Cánovas was assassinated and the Conservatives soon after fell from power; but he does not tell us what were the reforms as to the friars. Primo de Rivera continued to give his ideas as to the need for reform in provision of parishes, church fees, local government, education, civil service, etc., after the Liberals came into power. Yet, though stating the case against the friars in strong terms, virtually confirming every charge made against them, he appears to have advised only a curtailment of their power and a more rigid discipline, not their elimination as parish-priests, which was the aim of most of the insurgents.120When a Spanish editor in Manila began writing in February, 1898, of political reforms in the direction of “autonomy,” without submitting his articles to previous censure, Primo de Rivera suspended publication of the periodical.121That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in expectation, in late 1897 and early 1898, of the announcement of some comprehensive scheme ofPhilippine reform, is apparent from the press of the time.122The Liberal press of Madrid and Barcelona was also actively agitating reform for the Philippines, and Spanish Liberals and Filipinos addressed petitions on the subject to the government at Madrid.123The general belief at Manila was also that some sort of promise of reforms had passed at Biak-na-bató, even that it included the gradual withdrawal of the friars.124That the religious orders themselves knew that they were the storm-center is sufficiently shown by the Memorial of April 21, 1898, reproducedpost, pp. 227–286.125The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it undera plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?The fact is, one can sustain any view he prefers to take of this subject, by detached citations from documents of one sort or another. The real answer is to be found only by a careful survey of all the evidence as to Filipino activities and aspirations. We note that, when Rizal discusses the possibility of future independence for his people, he sets it as a century hence. We need not take him literally, nor, on the other hand, need we say his title was merely hypocritical, and he was insidiously inciting his people to think of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warnedhim to restrain his and their youthful impatience on the subject. In discussing Del Pilar and Rizal, it has already been pointed out how the former changed places with the younger man and became the more impatient of the two; and the connection of this growing impatience with the more violent nature of the Katipunan has been shown. So it is not enough to cite detached passages from Rizal or Del Pilar, for example, to prove either that they were just filibusters under cover of protestations or, on the contrary, that they never dreamed of independence.126The propagandists felt differently at different times, under the pressure sometimes of self-interest, influenced sometimes by momentary incidents or passions. It is plain that, with some of them at least, a new tone had been adopted toward Spain when, at the beginning of 1896, the manifesto of the Katipunan organ to the Filipinos bitterly exclaimed:“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in successionLa Solidaridadvoluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continuallamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest inEl Filibusterismo(1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitousacts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”Doubtless Rizal felt that his people had made progress toward social independence in the five years that followed, till the Katipunan outbreak came; but he condemned that beforehand as a foolish venture, and reprobated it as harmful to Filipino interests before his death. Though in a sense this was a movement for independence, we have seen that only vague ideas of a political organization were in the minds of the leaders, while the deluded masses who followed them with, for the most part,bolosonly, had virtually no idea of such an organization, except that Filipinos should succeed Spaniards.127The prematurely commenced revolt, as it gained at the outset, some defensive advantages over the bad military organization of Spain, developed ideas and aspirations quite beyond the early crude dreams of its leaders; they were really surprised at their own (temporary) success, and emboldened thereby.128Even after the loss of Cavite, when the revolutionists were hemmed in and hiding in the Bulakan Mountains, they put forward, in an “Assembly” at Biak-na-bató, a more comprehensive and ambitious political program (a Filipino Republic, in short) than had ever before been drawn up by Filipinos.129We know also that no small part was played by the “reign of terror” in turning even the moderate Filipinos against Spanish rule as an entirety. We should be far from the truth if we should say that this Tagálog rebellion, and the demonstrations of sympathy withit in other provinces, brought the Filipino people together in a unanimous sentiment for independence. That it did greatly stimulate this feeling is certain. He would be a bold man who would now assert that independence was not the common aspiration, when outside pressure suddenly pricked the bubble of Spanish authority in 1898 and released the people for the free expression of their sentiments. But he is equally bold who asserts that the Filipino people had been suddenly and miraculously transformed into a realnationby these events, or that the Aguinaldo government had the support of or really represented the whole country, above all of the most sober-thinking Filipinos.
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 theBibliographyand 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 characterand 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 issui 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 ofLa 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.66In it will befound 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).67Testimonygiven 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 inSenate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.
Friars’ Estates.—The above document, which is entitledLands 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); andReport 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 thesubjection 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.
For the documents showing what was the modern phase of the question regarding parishes in its beginnings, see the pamphlets cited in theListof the Library of Congress under Agu[a]do (p. 64), and in Pardo de Tavera’sBibliotecaunder the same name and numbers 681, 873, 1,348 and 1,962.69We mustcome down to the period of American rule for full statements of the case of the Filipino clergy against the friars. A Spanish cleric, formerly an Augustinian friar-curate, who was excloistered on his own petition some time before the end of Spanish rule and has since continued to reside in the islands, has been the chief spokesman for the Filipino clergy. He is Salvador Pons y Torres, and, apart from frequent contributions on the subject to the press of Manila since 1898 and various pamphlets, he undertook to review the entire subject in hisDefensa del clero filipinoand its supplementEl clero secular filipino, both published at Manila in 1900; while in connection with the visit of Delegate Chapelle, a campaign was being conducted for fuller recognition of the Filipino clergy by the Vatican.70Their claims are set forth inMemorial elevado á Sa Santidad El PapaLeón XIII por el Pueblo Filipino(Manila, 1900).71For the full exposition of the question, one must study it under the Filipino revolution against the United States and in the history of the Aglipay schism since 1903.72
Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.73But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial(which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.74The usually sober andcolorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in theRevue des deux mondesfor 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.75
Reforms and Demands for more. “Assimilation.”—The reactionists had regained the saddle in the Philippines even before the Republic in Spain came to an end; they used the incident of the Cavitemutiny as a “horrible example,” and succeeded in repealing or nullifying all reforms not to their taste even in educational or purely administrative matters. Till after 1880, the “Filipino cause” was in hiding. But meanwhile young Filipinos of wealth were going abroad for education, and above all a new generation of Filipinos were coming from the new middle class produced by the better industrial opportunities consequent upon expanding trade and commerce, were breathing in popular ideas of hostility to the friars in the more advanced rural districts, and were exchanging ideas, and imbibing in the exchange a new sentiment of nationality, when they met, in constantly increasing numbers, in the colleges and normal school at Manila, Tagálogs, Ilokanos, Bisayans and others of the hitherto separate communities. Regional feeling was still strong, but it was beginning to break down.76Those who went abroad for education soon began to propagate the idea, already half expressed at home, that Philippine education, even with the improvements, was still archaic and in some ways anti-modern; and every avenue out of this condition was found to be blocked by the friars. If in reality the men of Spanish blood (in whole or part) who had agitated for greater political liberties during 1868–72, had aimed at separating the Philippines from Spain—and all the reasonable probabilities are opposed to such a belief—at any rate, the new generation of Filipinos who took up the cause in the eighties were ardent and, for some time at least, sincere advocates of Spanish-Philippine union. Theycarried the matter, indeed, to the extreme, in the campaign for “assimilation,” which has already been characterized as unpractical.
Reforms of a partial nature, any statesman could predict, would breed the demand for more. So, during the eighties, when most headway was made in administrative and legal reforms under Liberal administrations, we find the Filipinos formulating demands for the first time; and it is significant that they all centered about the friars. Under the liberal Governor-General Terrero, and with sympathetic Spaniards in the posts of secretary of the civil administration and civil governor of Manila, officers of some of the Tagálog towns ventured to display a sense of independence of the traditional friar-dictatorship in local affairs, even (in the case of Malolos and the Binondo district of Manila) to carry contests with the friars over the personal tax-lists before higher authority; the friars’ tenants around Kalamba, where José Rizal’s parents lived, challenged the administrator of that Dominican estate, and aired their protests publicly in 1887;77and in 1888 a public demonstration against the friars, and especially Archbishop Payo, took place in Manila, and a petition for the removal of the friars was addressed to the Queen Regent. In 1887 these civil authorities of Liberal affiliation had issued official orders regarding cemeteries and church funerals, contravening, on grounds of public health, long-standing practices of the friar-curates; and the friars, even the archbishop, had been almostopenly intransigent about the matter, indicating the belief that they would soon upset this régime of affairs by the exercise of their power at Madrid. The demand on the part of some Spanish periodicals of Manila that the proposed government trade school should not be surrendered to the Augustinians was another indication of the current of the times.78
In form at least, there was nothing in any of these demonstrations or representations which would not be perfectly legitimate under any free government. Yet, even before the expiration of Terrero’s term, he was prevailed upon to send home Centeno y García, the civil governor of Manila, and the processes of law had been set in action by judicial authority against some of the participants. And, even before the downfall of the Liberal ministry at Madrid, the mere display of a disposition on the part of Filipinos to speak for themselves as a people had started the currents of reaction there. Weyler was the successorof Terrero as Governor-General. The friars’ representations at Madrid obtained, while the Liberal minister Becerra79was still in office, the omission of the provisions for civil marriage and registration from the Civil Code as it was extended to the Philippines in 1889. Weyler used force to quell the subsequent disturbances at Kalamba, and among the score or so of deportees were some of Rizal’s family.80
The Propagandists.—A full history of the Filipino Propaganda would list a large number of names, both of members of the Filipino colonies abroad and of secret agitators and wealthy contributors at home. But the story must be developed from the various sources to be cited, and we are concerned here with those who figured most actively by their writings. Of these, Marcelo H. del Pilar and José Rizal were altogether the most notable, their prominence indeed leading to the formation of factions about them and the display of those personal jealousies which wreck or threaten to wreck every Filipino movement.81Itis significant that the propagandists coming to the front in the eighties were, one may say, genuine “sons of the people” though associated with them were others who were sons of the half-caste aristocracy. It is significant also, that, though these two leaders Del Pilar and Rizal, came from Bulakan and Laguna provinces respectively, the heart of the more advanced communities of Tagálogs around Manila, yet the islands as a whole were beginning to be represented in the propaganda, notably by the Lunas, from Ilokos, and Graciano Lopez Jaena, a Bisayan. The latter started the first Filipino periodical of consequence,La Solidaridad, and published eighteen numbers of it at Barcelona up to October 31, 1889, when Del Pilar took charge of it, transferred it to Madrid and edited it there as a fortnightly till 1895. It was face to face withLa Política de España en Filipinasfrom 1891, and, as the latter is the chief source for the pro-friar and anti-liberal side of the controversy, soLa Solidaridad, which circulated among the educated Filipinos in many parts of the archipelago despite the censorship, is the chief source for the writings of the propagandists.82
Marcelo H. del Pilar had taken an active part in stimulating opposition to the friar-curates, particularly in matters of local government, in his native province (Bulakan) for some years before the troubles of 1888. When the pendulum swung towards reaction, he left his family (being then a man of middle-age) and went to Spain to carry on the fight close by the center of government, support of his campaign being pledged by a committee who undertook to secure Filipino subscriptions, certain wealthy Filipinos being identified privately with the cause. Del Pilar’s writings show nothing of the poet or dreamer, as do Rizal’s; he had, in some degree, an “economic mind,” though entirely untrained in that line, and he was at the outset of the active propaganda in Spain (1889) a maturer man than Rizal. Coming straight from the problems of actual life among his people, he stated their grievances with more practical reference to direct and immediate remedies and with special reference to their economic status; while Rizal, as a student in contact with modern European life and thought, dreamed of and preached, in more general terms but on a far wider scope, the social regeneration of his people and the expansion of their political rights. Del Pilar would have made a good representative of his people in the Cortes. But Rizal was a genius, who with the touch of imagination and satire lifted the cause of the Filipinos to a place in the thought of the world, and at the same time, as poet and patriot combined, fired the enthusiasm of his own people and became their idol. And, in the course of events,it was Rizal who proved the soberer, the more mature as time went by. He was opposed to means of violence, even to the last, and the whole record bears out his protestations on this score; he still looked to the future as a dreamer-patriot, but he also looked to the present state of his people and saw that the most vital problem was the teaching them that they must raise themselves by their own efforts, must deserve a better destiny. Del Pilar, disappointed by the failure to achieve greater immediate, practical results by relying upon the progress of Liberalism in Spain, after seven years of propaganda along these lines, was starting for Hongkong or Japan, to conduct there a really revolutionary campaign, when death overtook him shortly before the Tagálog revolt in 1896. He had, apparently, lost faith in the ideals of “assimilation,” of Spanish-Filipino unity, which he had set forth in glowing phrases in 1888 and 1889. He had also, apparently, become convinced that the upper-class Filipinos, especially the most wealthy and prominent, were too lukewarm or too prone to temporize for safety’s sake, that the time had come to make the cause more distinctly one of the people as a whole. He is credited with having suggested and outlined the organization of the Katipunan, and he seems to have concluded that it was time for the Filipinos to resort to Cuba’s example and not to political petitions only.83
Even inNoli me tangere, first published under his own eye at Berlin in 1887, when Rizal, at the age of twenty-six, was just fairly setting out in life, there are many evidences that the author, if he meant primarily to set before the world the backwardness of the existing social and political régime in the Philippines, its stifling of thought, and its many tyrannies, had also in mind to set before his people, in some of his instantaneous photographs of Philippine life, their own defects. InEl filibusterismo(Ghent, 1891), the more mature reformer preached yet more plainly the necessity of social and political progress beginning from below, and not simply inspired from above. That his people took the lessons meant for themselves (and take them still today) less to heart than they responded to the satire and invective directed against the form of rule imposed upon them, was the fault not of Rizal but of human nature, prone to apply the preacher’s words only to the other fellow.
It is a great misfortune that we have in English no real translation ofNoli me tangere,84and none at all ofEl filibusterismo, which, as a political document, is the stronger of the two.85It is no less regrettable that no biography of Rizal, tracing hismental development and his relation with the events of 1880 to 1896, nor even a good biographical sketch of him, has been published in the English language. Retana’s biographical and bibliographical notes, published in a Madrid monthly,Nuestro Tiempo, 1904–06, and about to appear in book form, are indispensable as the only comprehensive work on the subject, and resort must be had to them for a full array of citations, as also for many documents not available elsewhere.86Rizal’s edition (Paris, 1890) of Morga’sSucesos de las islas Filipinashas already been cited in connection with that work inVOLS.XVandXVIof this series (see note 3 of former). Its annotationsare Rizal’s chief contribution to the history of his people, and it must be said that his political feeling has crept into them to the damage often of their scientific value.87There also deserve mention here Rizal’s discussion in 1889 of the future of his people,88and some of Blumentritt’s writings about Rizal and in his defense.89
Masonry,Liga Filipina,etc.—In almost all the Spanish writings about the Philippine insurrection, especially those by friars, we find it ascribed primarily to “Franc-Masonería,” the terrible bugaboo in naming which the Spanish friar sums up in one word his notion of all that is pernicious in modern life since the French Revolution, and the chief cause of the loss by Spain of her American colonies. So, as to the Philippines, the argument is, had not Spanish Masons been able secretly to organize there, and to pervert the minds of certain Filipinos, the colony would have remained in its loyalty of primitive simplicity and happiness. The truth is that Masonry played a very secondary part in the Filipino agitation for reform, furnishing simply a convenient medium for conducting the propaganda. Up to the last ten years of Spanish rule, only a few lodges of Spanish Liberals and foreigners, into which some of the half-castesand more well-to-do Filipinos had been admitted, had been organized in the Philippines, and had led a rather irregular existence. At about the time whenLa Solidaridadwas moved to Madrid, a Spanish-Filipino Association was there formed, in which Spaniards and Filipinos combined to agitate for reform. This circle was virtually identified in membership with a certain Spanish Grand Lodge (probably spurious, as regards the legitimate parent organization of Free Masonry), which delegated agents to conduct the active organization of new Philippine lodges dependent upon it. It appears certain that this was done with the idea definitely in view of being able thus to propagate liberal political ideas and secretly distribute such literature among the Filipinos, also the more easily to raise funds for the work. But had not such a favorable means of conducting the propaganda been presented, it would have been improvised. One must subject to critical examination the Spanish writings, and will readily discover their exaggerated deductions from such facts as came to light.90Interesting reading is afforded by the confidential Royal Order of July 2,1896, addressed to Governor-General Blanco.91It approves his deportation of theprincipales, or headmen, of Malolos and Taal (who had defied the local friar-curates), and orders him to have provincial and other officials watch and report confidentially on all secret organizations (forbidden by the Laws of the Indies, as recited in Royal Order of August 2, 1888) and list all persons of whom “there may be indications enough to believe that they are affiliated,” etc. (opening up thus a splendid opportunity for private denunciations). He is to use in this secret work only officials who are Peninsulars, never natives; so also he is to invite coöperation of “the parish-priests who belong to the religious orders.” As to punishments, it is preferable to deport the “suspected,” fixing their residence in the Moro country or Guam, rather than to exile them, as they would then join the colonies abroad and conduct a propaganda.
The project of Marcelo del Pilar for an association calledSolidaridad Filipina,92which came to nothing practical, and theLiga Filipina, organized by Rizal just before his deportation from Manila in July, 1892, though in part modeled after Masonry, are among the things which show that the Filipino propagandists did not confine their efforts to Masonic organization. Our Spanish sources would have it that theLiga Filipinawas really separatist in character, and the prosecution deliberately based upon this charge the demand for Rizal’s conviction in 1896. It remains unproved, and the statutes of the League as prepared by Rizal93entirely support hisassertion that the design of the League was to foster coöperation among the Filipinos, to “raise the arts and sciences,” and develop Filipino commercial and economic interests generally. The organization was a fraternal society, in effect, the aim being to bring Filipinos closer together in a “brotherhood,” and incidentally to undermine the control of Chinese and others upon the trade of the country—in which respects it would likely have proved mostly utopian, even had not political conditions and Rizal’s deportation brought it virtually to naught. In the pledges of its “brothers” to stand by each other for the “remedy of abuses” as well as for other things, the League very plainly looked toward unity of action in matters social and political, and no doubt the idea of bringing his people together for such political action as might become possible was foremost in the mind of Rizal and its other organizers. But this does not prove the charge that it merely covered up a plan to get arms and rise in rebellion as soon as possible.
The Katipunan.—We come now to the parting of the ways. Just as Marcelo del Pilar had concluded that the time was at hand for more vigorous measures, so on the other hand some of the Filipinos of education and social position (cautious also, in some cases, because of their property) had become discouraged and faint-hearted. The deportation of Rizal had its effect in 1892, and the local government reforms of 1893–94 were followed by a reactionary government in Spain which might nullify even suchconcessions, in the face of the constant demand for a check upon the half-liberal régime of Blanco. Some of the middle-class leaders of Manila, who had been drawn into the Masonic movement, had decided that the time had come to organize the masses, at least in the Tagálog provinces. Andrés Bonifacio, an employe of a foreign business house in Manila, was the leading spirit; gathering his ideas of modern reform from reading Spanish treatises on the French Revolution, he had imbibed also a notion that the methods of the mob in Paris were those best adapted to secure amelioration for the Filipinos. His ideas were those of a socialist, and of a socialist of the French Revolution type, and he thought them applicable to an undeveloped tropical country, where the pressure of industrial competition is almost unknown, and where with the slightest reasonable exertion starvation may be dismissed from thought. There was in this new propaganda an element of resentment toward the wealthy, upper-class Filipinos, the landed proprietors in general, as well as toward the friar landlords and the whole fabric of government and society resting on them. Summing up all the evidence he has been able to obtain on the Katipunan, the writer agrees with Felipe G. Calderón, a Filipino, in his opinion94that its socialistic character negatives the assertion of the Spanish writers that the upper-class Filipinos were its real supporters and directors, working in the background; and that, while this propaganda from below looked to independence and the substitution of Spanish rule by Filipino rule, yet it was without any political program, properlyspeaking, and there was merely a crude idea in the minds of the masses that they were somehow going to shake off their masters, get rid of the whites, and divide up the big estates not only of the friars but of Filipino landholders as well. Calderón does not discuss the alleged plan of the Katipunan to assassinate the whites, especially the friars. It is certain that such bloodthirsty ideas were in the minds of some of the leaders; but the more direct documentary evidence that has been produced on this point is perhaps open to the suspicion that it was manufactured in connection with the courts-martial which operated with such fury after the outbreak of revolt in 1896.95After all the furore that had been made, the actual revelations as to the importance of the organization, character of its leaders, number of its followers, and extent of its operations, would have made the whole affair somewhat ridiculous, had it not been represented that behind this humble organization of perhaps forty thousand initiates in the Tagálog towns there was a great program for setting up an independent government and that the upper-class Filipinos were simply using this organization as a stalking-horse. The truth appears to be that, while these over-important Katipunan leaders thought in terms grandiloquent, and led their humblefollowers in the towns around Manila most affected by the propaganda to indulge in futile and ridiculous dreams of a coming millennium (while some of themselves were quarreling over the obols contributed), the movement was mostly talk even up to the time when an Augustinian curate in Manila made himself the hero of the rabid Spanish element in Manila by “exposing” an organization about which the governmental authorities had had partial information for some weeks, or even months. Bonifacio started this separate organization in 1894, but Calderón seems to be correct in saying that work in the towns outside of Manila was only begun in the spring of 1896. The humble followers were assured that the Japanese government would help them oust Spain, and that rifles to arm the whole population would come from there. But Japan never in the least violated her obligations to Spain, and, if the leaders evenboughtany rifles in Japan, they must have been few indeed.96When Bonifacio sent an emissary to Dapitan in the spring of 1896, to propose to Rizal a plan of armed revolt and that he should escape on a steam vessel sent for the purpose, and join in this campaign, Rizal rejected the proposition as folly, and displayed his great impatience with it.97On every ground, it seems probable that, had not Friar Gil and the Spanish press of Manila been so insistent on giving great publicity to some Katipunan engraving-stones, receiptsfor dues, etc., kept in hiding by the affiliated employes of a Spanish newspaper, the revolt might never have come about at all. Certainly, no date was set for it (though various future dates had been vaguely discussed), till the sudden arrests of August 19 and 20, 1896, sent Bonifacio and his companions fleeing to Bulakan Province where, practically without arms, they appealed to their fellow-workers in Bulakan, Manila, and Cavite provinces to rise in revolt on August 30. The friars and the rabid element of Spanish patriots were so anxious to force the hand of Blanco, and to discredit him, that, it may be, they forced upon a military commander whose troops were mostly in Mindanao a revolt that, a few months further on, might either have dissipated itself or have been avoided by an adequate show of force.98
Because the friars are so much to the fore in all the discussions of these events, we must not overlook the part played by governmental abuses, as already described. The Civil Guard, given a more extensive organization and scope of action during these closing years of Spanish rule, by its abuses (committed, for the most part, by Filipinos upon their own fellows) played probably the foremost part in drawing odium upon the government.99Next to police abuses, andsometimes allied with them, were the misuses of the powers of local government (with which alone the great majority of the people came into direct contact), especially in regard to the levy of forced labor; and here again, the humble Filipino’s complaint was chiefly against his own fellow-countrymen of power and position. But, summing up all the administrative abuses and all the evils of the government system, we are still left a long way from agreement with the friars’ assertions that the masses loved them and that governmental abuses were the sole cause of rebellion.100
Insurrection of 1896–97.—No history from theFilipino side has yet come to light, and there are certain points that can be cleared up only by the frank testimony of the Filipino participants.101We are dependent chiefly on Spanish sources, written in the passion of the times by men not careful about sifting the facts. All things considered, the two best sources, both for what they say and for what may be inferred from them, are the so-calledMemoriasof two Governor-Generals, prepared in order to defend their administrations before the Spanish Senate and the public; that of Blanco covering the preparatory stage and early months of the rebellion, that of Primo de Rivera its closing stages. Between these two Governor-Generals, the work of Monteverde y Sedano covers the military operations under Polavieja.
Blanco’sMemoria102affords, unconsciously, the most severe indictment that could be passed on Spain’s fitness to hold the Philippines (or her other colonies) in 1898. This man was really of liberal temperament; he had formed a just conception of the real insignificance of the Katipunan movement; and he strove, when the crisis was prematurely forced on him, to restrain the vindictiveness of the rabid Spanish element, and really believed in the efficacy of a “policy of attraction.” But instead of setting forth on broader grounds the reasons for his course of action and discussing with sincerity and franknessa policy for the Philippines, he felt compelled after his return to Spain to bow before the howls of press and public. He defends himself before his clerical-conservative critics not by showing the folly of their illiberal policy for the colony, but endeavors to prove that they were wrong in accusing him of lack of severity as well as of energy. Thus we learn (p. 20) that, even under a Blanco, before the outbreak came, one thousand and forty-two persons had been deported “as Masons, disaffected and suspicious or harmful to their towns.” During the night of August 19–20, 1896, following the sensation created by Friar Gil, there were forty-three arrests in Manila, and three hundred more within the next week. During September, thirty seven men taken in arms were shot, after summary trials (p. 25.) The number of Filipinos, mostly men of some position, who had not taken up arms, but were arrested for alleged complicity in the Katipunan, and involved in the trials before a special court for conspiracy and sedition, very soon mounted to five hundred, including those sent in from the provinces. Some remainedincomunicadosfor more than forty days. The men executed from September 4 to December 12, 1896, when Blanco surrendered command to Polavieja, numbered seventy-four in all.103
Evidence as to the “reign of terror” that was inaugurated in Manila may be drawn from the Spanish treatises to be cited, wherein the episode is recitedwith gusto. The Spanish press of Manila for 1896–98; also that of Spain, especially Philippine letters of 1896–98 inLa Política de España en Filipinas,El Heraldo,El ImparcialandEl Correoof Madrid, furnished the original source of information for these writers, and should be used to supplement this history of the insurrection. Transcriptions of testimony taken by the special court for sedition and conspiracy appear in Retana’sArchivo, iii and iv, and evidences that the more yielding witnesses had their phraseology, and sometimes their statements of fact, dictated to them will be noted by the careful reader, especially if he be familiar with Spanish methods of judicial procedure. References to the common use of torture to make witnesses (in some cases eager enough to insure their own safety by “delation”) sign such testimony, will be found in the Filipino press since 1898, occasionally also in Spanish periodicals of Manila since 1898.104These same sources also supplement the citations on Rizal already given, for the story of his trial and execution, and the increase of severity and terrorism after Polavieja took charge. They are also, in the main, our sole, fragmentary sources on the state of Cavite during insurgent control of the province, the insurgent organization, etc.105
The Spanish treatises and pamphlets on the insurrection are:106José M. del Castillo y Jimenez,El Katipunan, ó el Filibusterismo en Filipinas(Madrid, 1897). Partial accounts of events of 1896–97; already characterized as rabid and cheaply patriotic.
Ricardo Monet y Carretero,Comandancia general de Panay y Negros. Alteraciones de órden público … desde Octubre de 1896 á Marzo de 1897(Iloilo, 1897). Mostly official proclamations, etc., by the author as commander in the western district of Bisayas, regarding disturbances there and symptoms of a tendency to revolt.
E. Reverter y Delmas.—Filipinos por España. Narración episódica de la rebelión en el archipiélago Filipino(Barcelona, 1897); 2 vols. The title of a later edition isLa insurrección de Filipinas. Known to the writer only by title.107
Enrique Abella y Casariego,Filipinas(Madrid, 1898). More temperate than most other Spanish writings. Treats of the development of the insurrection, and of the course of events under Blanco, Polavieja, and Primo de Rivera.
Federico de Monteverde y Sedano,Campaña de Filipinas, La división Lachambre. 1897(Madrid, 1898.) Excellent account of the campaign of Polavieja by his aide; somewhat grandiloquent, considering the comparative insignificance of the military operations themselves.
Les Philippines et l’insurrection de 1896–1897(Paris, 1899); a thirty-nine-page reprint fromRevue militaire de l’étranger.
L. Aycart—La campaña de Filipinas. Recuerdos é impresiones de un médico militar(Madrid, 1900). Contains some charts and some interesting data on the military campaign as such.
Manuel Sastrón—La insurrección en Filipinas y guerra hispano-americana(Madrid, 1901).108Writtenby a Spanish official in Manila during this time, and composed of accounts and documents drawn mainly from the press of Manila. It is, however, the most useful arsenal of data.
Major John S. Mallory—The Philippine Insurrection, 1896–1898(appendix viii to report of Major-General G. W. Davis, commanding the division of the Philippines, inReport of War Department, 1903, vol. 3, pp. 399–425). A non-critical compilation, mostly from Sastrón and Monteverde y Sedano. It is, however, by far the best review of the 1896–97 insurrection as such that is available in English, and is a fairly satisfactory account for one who cannot consult the Spanish sources. Far better than Foreman’s account.
M. Arroyo Vea-Murguía—Defensa del sitio de Naic (Filipinas). Antes y despues.(Madrid, 1904.) Of little value.
The Pact of Biak-na-bató.—Purposely, the word “treaty,” so often applied to this transaction, is here avoided; for, apart from technical objections to a word that applies to agreements between sovereign powers, this was no treaty in any sense of the word. There was some mystery surrounding the negotiations by which the insurgent chiefs surrendered a few hundred nondescript firearms and retired to Hongkong; untrue or half-true charges were bandied back and forth, for political effect, in the Cortes and the press of Spain; and, of the chief actors in the affair, only Primo de Rivera has given his account—perhaps not with entire frankness.109Aguinaldohas confined his statements on the subject to the most brief assertions of a general nature110to the effect that reforms by the Spanish government were promised. Primo de Rivera categorically denies this; while Pedro A. Paterno, the go-between, has made no statement at all during the nine years that have passed since the conflicting statements have been before the public, involving directly the question of his own veracity and good faith. Primo de Rivera is anex partewitness, to be sure; but his statements upon the more vital points involved are corroborated by the very insurgent documents on this subject captured by the American army in 1899 and now in the War Department at Washington.111Primo de Rivera says that, when Paterno presented a paper early in the negotiations containing a full program of reforms,112he rejected the document absolutely,saying he could not discuss such matters with the insurgent chiefs, that the Spanish government would accord such reforms as it thought wise, and he could only interpose his good offices to make recommendations in that respect. The copy of this document now in the War Department at Washington shows the clauses about reform to have been crossed out. Primo de Rivera says that, from that time forth, the negotiation was purely on the basis of a payment to the rebel chiefs to surrender their arms, order the insurgents in the other provinces to do the same, and emigrate to foreign parts. The only documents bearing signatures on both sides, either of those published at Washington or elsewhere, refer exclusively to these particular points of money, surrender of arms, and program of emigration, though Paterno inserted in a preliminary of the final contract on these subjects a clause as to reposing confidence in the Spanish government to “satisfy the desire of the Filipino people.”113Primo de Rivera recommended the transaction to his government for one reason, expressly because it would “discredit [desprestigiando] the chiefs selling out and emigrating.”114
The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, underauthority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”115The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown116); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “thinkit prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”117
Enough has been developed to show the demoralizing character of the transaction. In justice to Aguinaldo and his closest associates, it is to be said that they had kept the money practically intact, for use in a possible future insurrection, until they spent some of it for arms after Commodore Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay.118Nor are we able to say categorically that Aguinaldo and the other leaders in Biak-na-bató were not led to believe that specific reforms had been promised verbally by Primo de Rivera in the name of his government; Aguinaldo and Paterno could clear up that matter, but neither speaks. Just what informal discussion of this subject there was between Paterno and Primo de Rivera, we do not know; but the latter’s own version will warrant the conclusion that he at least permitted Paterno to lay before the insurgents the fact that he was making recommendations on this line, and to hold out the expectation of results, once he was not confronted with armed rebellion.119He declares thata scheme of Philippine reform, covering also the friar question, had been drawn up and agreed upon, when Premier Cánovas was assassinated and the Conservatives soon after fell from power; but he does not tell us what were the reforms as to the friars. Primo de Rivera continued to give his ideas as to the need for reform in provision of parishes, church fees, local government, education, civil service, etc., after the Liberals came into power. Yet, though stating the case against the friars in strong terms, virtually confirming every charge made against them, he appears to have advised only a curtailment of their power and a more rigid discipline, not their elimination as parish-priests, which was the aim of most of the insurgents.120When a Spanish editor in Manila began writing in February, 1898, of political reforms in the direction of “autonomy,” without submitting his articles to previous censure, Primo de Rivera suspended publication of the periodical.121That Spanish circles in Manila as well as the Filipinos were in expectation, in late 1897 and early 1898, of the announcement of some comprehensive scheme ofPhilippine reform, is apparent from the press of the time.122The Liberal press of Madrid and Barcelona was also actively agitating reform for the Philippines, and Spanish Liberals and Filipinos addressed petitions on the subject to the government at Madrid.123The general belief at Manila was also that some sort of promise of reforms had passed at Biak-na-bató, even that it included the gradual withdrawal of the friars.124That the religious orders themselves knew that they were the storm-center is sufficiently shown by the Memorial of April 21, 1898, reproducedpost, pp. 227–286.125
The Question of Independence.—We have, on one hand, the assertions of rabid Spanish writers that separation from Spain was throughout the real aim of the Filipino leaders, who merely covered it undera plea for reforms (the friars say, under a false assertion that the Filipinos were opposed to them). We have, in direct opposition, the assertions of Spanish Liberals and of some Filipinos that the movement was inspired by genuine loyalty to Spain, and was only a protest and appeal for reforms even in its last phase as an outbreak in arms, 1896–98. This view was accepted by the Schurman Commission in 1899. Again, during the years from 1898 to date, when demands for independence were made upon the United States, the more radical Filipino leaders, first in insurrection, now in political agitation, have asserted that complete political independence was definitely the aim in 1896–97, and was the ideal in mind for some years before. Thus they would corroborate the assertions of the more rabid Spaniards who claimed that Rizal and all his co-workers, both in the aristocratic ranks above and in the Katipunan below, were hypocritical in their protestations of loyalty to Spain. Where does the truth lie?
The fact is, one can sustain any view he prefers to take of this subject, by detached citations from documents of one sort or another. The real answer is to be found only by a careful survey of all the evidence as to Filipino activities and aspirations. We note that, when Rizal discusses the possibility of future independence for his people, he sets it as a century hence. We need not take him literally, nor, on the other hand, need we say his title was merely hypocritical, and he was insidiously inciting his people to think of immediate independence; we shall be fairer to survey his writings as a whole, probably reaching the conclusion that the independence of his people was constantly in his mind, but sober reason warnedhim to restrain his and their youthful impatience on the subject. In discussing Del Pilar and Rizal, it has already been pointed out how the former changed places with the younger man and became the more impatient of the two; and the connection of this growing impatience with the more violent nature of the Katipunan has been shown. So it is not enough to cite detached passages from Rizal or Del Pilar, for example, to prove either that they were just filibusters under cover of protestations or, on the contrary, that they never dreamed of independence.126The propagandists felt differently at different times, under the pressure sometimes of self-interest, influenced sometimes by momentary incidents or passions. It is plain that, with some of them at least, a new tone had been adopted toward Spain when, at the beginning of 1896, the manifesto of the Katipunan organ to the Filipinos bitterly exclaimed:
“At the end of three hundred years of slavery …, our people have done nothing but lament and ask a little consideration and a little clemency; but they have answered our lamentations with exile and imprisonment. For seven years in successionLa Solidaridadvoluntarily lent itself and exhausted its powers to obtain, not all that they ought to concede, but only just what of right is owing to us. And what has been the fruit of our effort unto fatigue and of our loyal faith? Deception, ridicule, death, and bitterness.
“Today, tired of lifting our hands in continuallamentation, we are at last ourselves; little by little our voice has lost its tone of melancholy gained in continual complaint; now … we raise our heads, so long accustomed to being bowed, and imbibe strength from the firm hope we possess by reason of the grandeur of our aim …. We can tell them bluntly that the phrase ‘Spain the Mother’ is nothing but just a bit of adulation, that it is not to be compared with the piece of cloth or rag by which it is enchained, which trails on the ground; that there is no such mother and no such child; that there is only a race that robs, a people that fattens on what is not its own, and a people that is weary of going, not merely ungorged, but unfed; that we have to put reliance in nothing but our own powers and in our defense of our own selves.”
Rizal put in the mouth of the old Filipino priest inEl Filibusterismo(1891) the view of the thoughtful Filipino patriot, considering the social defects of his people: “We owe the ill that afflicts us to ourselves; let us not put the blame on anyone else. If Spain saw that we were less complaisant in the face of tyranny, and readier to strive and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to give us liberty …. But so long as the Filipino people has not sufficient vigor to proclaim, with erect front and bared breast, its right to the social life and to make that right good by sacrifice, with its own blood; so long as we see that our countrymen, though hearing in their private life the voice of shame and the clamors of conscience, yet in public life hold their peace or join the chorus about him who commits abuses and ridicules the victim of the abuse; so long as we see them shut themselves up to their own egotism and praise with forced smile the most iniquitousacts, while their eyes are begging a part of the booty of such acts, why should liberty be given to them? With Spain or without Spain, they would be always the same, and perhaps, perhaps, they would be worse. Of what use would be independence if the slaves of today would be the tyrants of tomorrow? And they would be so without doubt, for he loves tyranny who submits to it.”
Doubtless Rizal felt that his people had made progress toward social independence in the five years that followed, till the Katipunan outbreak came; but he condemned that beforehand as a foolish venture, and reprobated it as harmful to Filipino interests before his death. Though in a sense this was a movement for independence, we have seen that only vague ideas of a political organization were in the minds of the leaders, while the deluded masses who followed them with, for the most part,bolosonly, had virtually no idea of such an organization, except that Filipinos should succeed Spaniards.127The prematurely commenced revolt, as it gained at the outset, some defensive advantages over the bad military organization of Spain, developed ideas and aspirations quite beyond the early crude dreams of its leaders; they were really surprised at their own (temporary) success, and emboldened thereby.128Even after the loss of Cavite, when the revolutionists were hemmed in and hiding in the Bulakan Mountains, they put forward, in an “Assembly” at Biak-na-bató, a more comprehensive and ambitious political program (a Filipino Republic, in short) than had ever before been drawn up by Filipinos.129We know also that no small part was played by the “reign of terror” in turning even the moderate Filipinos against Spanish rule as an entirety. We should be far from the truth if we should say that this Tagálog rebellion, and the demonstrations of sympathy withit in other provinces, brought the Filipino people together in a unanimous sentiment for independence. That it did greatly stimulate this feeling is certain. He would be a bold man who would now assert that independence was not the common aspiration, when outside pressure suddenly pricked the bubble of Spanish authority in 1898 and released the people for the free expression of their sentiments. But he is equally bold who asserts that the Filipino people had been suddenly and miraculously transformed into a realnationby these events, or that the Aguinaldo government had the support of or really represented the whole country, above all of the most sober-thinking Filipinos.