Chapter IV: Part 4

The echoes of Spanish partisanship and the talk of nineteenth-century reforms had been heard in the Philippines before the revolution of 1868 and the opening of the Suez Canal, though it was only after these events that the people generally began to be stirred, and then only in the most populous districts. Because the clerical influence was all-powerful anyway, and the whole fabric of Philippine government reposed upon it, Carlism was felt in the islands before 1850 rather as an influence in certain military mutinies and as a source of strife between rival sets of civil officials than as involving primarily a defense of ecclesiastical privilege. Foremost among the events of the decade preceding the revolution of 1868 may be put the return of the Jesuits to the islands in 1859 (allowed by decree of 1852) and the beginning of educational reform with the decrees of 1863 ordering the establishment of a normal school and of primary schools under government control and supported directly by the local governments. [55] The Jesuits had already opened a secondary school in Manila, introducing for the first time something besides merely theoretical instruction in natural sciences, and more modern methods of instruction generally. Their secondary school was subsidized by the city government of Manila, their meteorological observatory was subsidized by the insular government, which also employed them to inaugurate and conduct the new normal school. [56] From this time forward the Society was both directly and indirectly a stimulus to educational progress in the Philippines, was influential both in diffusing more generally primary instruction and in improving methods and widening curriculums of higher instruction. In a large degree, the educational program remained to the end of Spanish rule a pretentious but most superficial thing, more sounding brass than solid achievement. But we may fairly date a new epoch in this respect from the return of the Jesuits and the decrees of 1863.

In another way the return of the Jesuits is to be associated with the beginning of a new era in the islands. They were not permitted to resume the parochial benefices which their order had held prior to their expulsion in 1768, but were to engage in missions in Mindanao and in educational and scientific work. Their resumption of the old missions in Mindanao was accomplished at the expense of the order of Recollects, which was thereupon given the provision of certain parishes, including several wealthy parishes in Luzon, which had for greater or less intervals been held by the more prominent and able of the secular priests, Filipinos of pure native blood or half-castes. [57] The cabildo of the Manila cathedral, including the more notable of the secular priests, and the curates of the few conspicuous parishes (in central Luzon) which it fell to the lot of the secular clergy to occupy, had come to regard these benefices as their property, in a "corporate" sense, as it were, quite as each religious order felt that certain parishes, or whole provinces "belonged" to it as an order. It is significant that here, for the first time, one notes a feeling of solidarity among the Filipino secular clergy--for the demonstration of which feeling one has looked in vain, except in isolated cases, prior to that time, above all in connection with the effort (1770) of the Spanish archbishop Santa Justa y Rufina, to secularize the parishes and displace the friars with native priests. Only the bolder of the Filipino priests expressed the complaints of their fellows, even now, and open talk of a campaign for secularization of all the parishes was scarcely heard until some courage was infused into these few and the small party of Filipino Liberals (mostly half-castes or Spaniards of Philippine birth) after the revolution of 1868 and the arrival of a governor-general who permitted public demonstrations in behalf of Liberal reforms. From the time of the execution of three Filipino priests for alleged complicity in the Cavite mutiny of 1872 [58]--the proofs of whose guilt the public has not seen, if the military courts which tried them did--there was added to the campaign for the expulsion of the friars [59] on account of their landed estates and of their stifling of intellectual freedom the demand that Philippine parishes be entrusted to a native priesthood. Only since American occupation has the demand for a national clergy found full expression, but it had for a quarter of a century before that been an important phase of the sentiment of nationality, a sentiment that was growing steadily, though slowly and in the main secretly until 1896 in the Tagálog provinces and 1898 in the archipelago at large.

The reactionary party had partially regained the upper hand when the mutiny occurred in Cavite in 1872. Instead of treating it as its comparative insignificance demanded, and as prudent statecraft would have counseled, they employed it as an excuse for vengeful violence, as a means for resuming full control of Philippine policy, and continued for twenty-five years thereafter to point to it as their most useful "horrible example," as an evidence of what must follow the inauguration, even in the slightest degree, of a liberal policy in the government of the islands. Rightly or wrongly, the people of that and the succeeding generation in the Tagálog provinces, and to a less degree in the others, were schooled in racial resentment through the belief that the native priests had been done to death, upon a pretext of manufactured evidence, by the malevolence of the friars. The proscription of the more conspicuous of the then small Liberal element among the Filipinos had consequences of no less importance. Those who were sent into exile for alleged complicity in the Cavite mutiny were certain conspicuous half-castes and a few Spaniards of Philippine birth or of long residence in the islands. The native element proper was for the moment scarcely affected, even in Manila and its environs; and no one has ever demonstrated that the few more advanced men of Spanish blood who were moved by the revolution in Spain to take a stand for Liberal measures in the Philippines were engaged in anything but legitimate political discussion, or indeed that they talked of going so far in this direction in the Philippines as had already been done in the Peninsula. These proscriptions powerfully stimulated the idea of a "Filipino cause." Some of the exiles escaped to Hongkong, and there founded a Filipino colony. Others settled eventually in Europe; the more progressive and ambitious Filipinos began sending their sons to Madrid and Paris for education in contact with the thought of modern Europe; and in these capitals, and later in Japan, little Filipino colonies became centers of discussion of political reforms, and through letters, publications in the Liberal periodicals of Spain, and finally through their own books and periodicals of propaganda, greatly influenced the growth of a public opinion in the backward society of the Philippines. Spanish Masonry gradually extended the circle of its initiations and of its secret operations (necessarily secret to an extraordinary degree) in the islands. At first only Spaniards had been admitted to a few lodges, then mestizos were admitted, and finally natives of some degree of education without regard to race. In the eighties and nineties, there seems to be no doubt, a sort of independent Grand Lodge in Spain (asserted by some to be of spurious Masonry), [60] managed by zealous Liberal propagandists with whom certain of the Filipino propagandists in Barcelona had associated themselves, directed the active organization of lodges in as many Filipino towns as contained favorable material, for the purpose of fostering in the islands a demand for political reforms, of distributing the literature of the propaganda, and of collecting funds to support the campaign in Spain for the extension of greater social, political, and religious freedom to the Filipinos. The Spaniards associated with this movement were for the most part men of no standing and quixotic visionaries. Some of the Filipinos who figured in the propaganda abroad were quite as unpractical, being inexperienced and excitable youths, full of jealousy of each other, while some few of them, moreover, misused the funds raised for them by their fellows at home. The whole program for "assimilation" of the Philippines to Spain as a province of the Peninsula, giving a distant archipelago in the Orient with its widely different population, social status, and economic conditions and needs, a government just like that of European Spain was manifestly absurd and inimical to the interests of the Filipinos themselves, not to add that its realization was an utter impossibility. But these things should not have been allowed to hide the justice of the demand for such reforms and privileges as were practical and compatible with the needs and conditions of the archipelago and its people: for a spokesman or spokesmen of the Philippines in the Cortes at Madrid; for reforms in judiciary and fundamental laws, not blindly copied from those promulgated in Spain but adapted to the Philippines, or if necessary especially drafted for them; for administrative reforms, above all as to the civil service and looking toward an increasing recognition of the native element in government, and toward a decentralization that should be gradually extended as far as deeply rooted habits and long-standing customs would permit; and, finally, for greater individual and social freedom, both in a political and a religious sense. This last was really the crux of the whole situation, so far as the continuance of Spanish sovereignty should not come to depend purely on force. In the old days it had rested on religious teachings, on the friars in fact, with the sense of race-prestige in the background to support Spanish authority. It was futile for the friars to cry out for a return to the old conditions, and to denounce as dangerous any reforms in the direction of freedom of thought or of speech; the pages of history could not be turned back. The idea of future independence from Spain was, to be sure, in the minds of some at least of the Filipino propagandists. But their present campaign was for greater political liberty, and the measures they advocated, and even the methods they employed almost to the last, would have been legitimate in any free country--were, in fact, legitimate even then in the Peninsula itself, where they could advocate publicly what they must whisper among their fellows at home. The very fact that such organizations as these spurious Masonic lodges were under the ban, and that even to be suspected of belonging thereto was to invite the danger of deportation from home as a "conspirator," is sufficient proof of the essential righteousness of the propagandists' cause. And the campaign that began with a few Spanish-Filipinos in Manila and gradually extended to the more independent men of education in the provinces eventually, under half-educated leaders of the small middle class, reached in a perverted form the masses themselves, especially in central Luzon, and found expression at last in violence and an outburst of race-hatred. The Katipunan was not Masonic, as the friars asserted, only copying some of the Masonic formulæ; but it was a natural and logical outgrowth of the smothering of what had been a legitimate movement for the expression of Filipino reform sentiment.

The title to these notes has indicated the year 1860 as marking in a general way the opening of the modern era in the Philippines, without reference to any one particular event. It is proposed to give here, briefly, such further notes as will afford a working bibliography on this period, while calling attention to some subjects and certain points that are commonly disregarded in the bibliographies and published works dealing with the last years of Spanish rule in the Philippines. No pretense to completeness is made. The aim is to call attention, under their proper heads, to the more distinctly useful (or, in some cases, the more unreliable, and hence to be avoided) titles already listed in the Philippine bibliography that is to be most readily obtained, and which is also the most complete and satisfactory work of this sort, viz., that published at Washington in 1903; [61] and also to supplement these titles with others there unnoticed and with other data not easily found. In the main, only such works are cited as the writer has himself consulted, though in some cases the notes or recommendations of others have been followed.

The first essential to a study of this period is a fair and comprehensive survey of Philippine conditions in the years just preceding--the "old régime," as we may call it, though it was then breaking down in certain particulars. One book alone will serve the student's purpose in this respect; and, whatever others are read, Jagor's [62] is indispensable. Next to him, and in addition to the documents appearing in this series immediately preceding the present volume may be cited the 1842 Informe of the Spanish diplomat in the Orient, Sinibaldo de Mas, and the two-volume treatise of 1846 by the Frenchman, J. Mallat. In certain respects, the latter has closely followed Mas; but his is no mere translated plagiarism, like that of John Bowring (1859), who was only a temporary visitor entertained by Spanish officialdom in Manila. The work of Paul de la Gironière, not his Twenty Years in the Philippines, but his more serious work of 1855 (Aventures d'un gentilhomme breton aux îles Philippines), merits attention as containing the observations of a cultivated foreigner who had the advantage of years of residence in Manila and a neighboring province.

As was indicated at the beginning of these notes, to make a thorough study of this period, we should consider it under three heads, viz., economic development, social development, and political development. Not only has there been no comprehensive review of the period as a whole, but there exists no review of it under any one of these heads, nor even any group of writings which can be offered to the inquirer as covering the field of inquiry in any one of these respects. For one thing, we must draw mainly upon Spanish sources of information, official and private, and rare indeed is the Spanish writer who does not either proceed regardless of the economic point of view, or else give entirely secondary consideration to the vital matter concerned in the economic and social progress of a people independently of political forms and governmental influences. The result is that Spanish writers, with them the Filipinos, and to a great extent the writers of Philippine treatises in other languages (drawing hastily upon Spanish sources), have over-emphasized the political history of this Philippine period. Of course, in Spain and the Spanish countries long-standing habit makes it the tendency to look to government for everything, and to think of all amelioration of evils and all incitements to progress as coming from above; while social and economic conditions in the Philippines are such as to emphasize this tendency, the aristocracy of wealth and education standing apart from the masses and being, to the latter, identified in the main with the government, with the "powers above." Nevertheless, it is to be insisted that social and economic progress in the Philippines during the last half-century should be considered separately and studied more particularly than they have been thus far.

It need hardly be said, for another thing, that it is not possible to make an absolute separation of this subject under the headings thus indicated. Such a thing cannot be done with any people in any period of history. In this particular case, one need only mention the Religious Question, with its phases as a contest between friars and native clergy, as a demand for modern freedom of thought and speech, and as an agrarian question, to show at once that matters social, economic, and political are here interwoven. So also the Spanish administration cannot be considered wholly apart from its bearing upon economic and social as well as purely political matters. No rigid classification is possible, but the student who approaches the history of this period--which, apart from its own interest, has had ever since 1898 the most vital bearing upon a public question of great importance in the United States today--will avoid confusion by giving consideration to these separate points of view.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

One would welcome an attempt by some one of the more ambitious Filipino writers and students whose attention has been occupied almost exclusively with political controversy to write the social history of his people during this last period of Spanish rule. The materials for such a study, so far as they now exist in print, are very fragmentary, and the work could hardly be well done by any but a resident of the islands during that period. But few references need be given here, and the inquirer must derive most of his information on this line from the numerous books and pamphlets whose object is primarily political questions and from the economic and fiscal tables and studies which shed light upon the general status of the people.

General historical surveys of the period are lacking. Montero y Vidal's three-volume history comes down only to 1873. And, though it is the best Philippine historical work for reference purposes, it is, after all, hardly more than a chronology of important events and compilation of official orders and projects, touching the life of the people scarcely at all. The same author's work of 1886, El archipiélago filipino, merits attention also in this connection, though primarily it sets forth facts geographical, statistical, etc. The works of Manuel Scheidnagel deserve also citation as those of a Spanish official of long and varied experience in the Philippines, and as shedding, incidentally to the particular subjects which they treat, light upon the conditions of country and people in general. [63]

The foreigners who traveled in the Philippines during this period, and who have written thereon, were occupied in most cases with scientific pursuits, and have confined themselves mainly to these objects in what they have published. The Luçon et Palaouan (Paris, 1887) of Alfred Marche touches upon the customs and conditions of the people in its record of six years' scientific research for the government of France. Edmond Plauchut's contributions to the Revue des deux mondes for 1869 and 1877, in lighter vein and perhaps not always accurate, are, like Gironière's writings of earlier date, interesting as presenting the observations of a resident foreigner. Among the works in English, revised or written since 1898 to meet the demand in the United States for information about the Philippines, Dean C. Worcester's The Philippine Islands and their People (New York, 1898), brings us nearest to the life of the people, particularly in the rural districts and regions most remote from modern changing influences. The treatises of the British engineers and experts in tropical agriculture, Frederick H. Sawyer and John Foreman, are written by men who were, naturally, best prepared to discuss the agricultural conditions and the material resources in general of the Philippines. Outside of these matters, except when reciting personal experiences and observations, both are compilers whose reading in Philippine bibliography has been very fragmentary. Foreman in particular has undertaken to cover the entire field of Philippine history and politics, and has, to state the plain truth, made a very bad botch of it. He has been so often quoted in the United States as authority for erroneous statements that it is time to make this fact clear. It is commonly impossible to draw the line in what he has written between fact and gossip, conjecture, or partial truth. His latest edition (1906) contains most of the old glaring errors or even worse omissions, with a full measure of new ones in his recital of the history of events since 1896. Some data contained in Foreman's book are not readily available to an American student outside of the large libraries; but a caution is to be uttered against relying upon him, even for his recital of fiscal details or for his statistical tables. Sawyer is very much more accurate and reliable, just as he is less pretentious in the program of his work.

In studying the social process of the Filipino people from about 1860 onward, the subject of education holds the first place. [64] It is, however, unnecessary to occupy ourselves here with the bibliography of the subject, which has been very fully covered in VOLS. XLV and XLVI of this work, the appendices to those volumes giving, in connection with other documents in this series and with the bibliographical notes, the most comprehensive treatment of the subject of education in the Philippines that is yet available in any language.

As we might expect from what has been said, the social life of the Philippines, at least from about 1875, may best be studied in the periodicals of Manila. In this connection it is only necessary to mention Retana's El periodismo filipino, which covers the subject down to 1894. La Revista de Filipinas, edited by J. F. del Pan, 1875-77, deserves special mention among the many periodicals of short life. Among those of longer duration may be named El Diario de Manila, and also, for the closing years of Spanish rule, La Oceanía Española, La Voz Española and El Comercio. [65] One should also consult these Spanish periodicals of Manila for the political history of these years, particularly of 1896-98. It must be remarked, however, that, just as these periodicals reflected mainly the life only of the capital, and that quite exclusively from the Spanish viewpoint, so also they treated political and administrative matters not merely under the constraint of their editors' notions as to "maintaining Spanish prestige" but also with a censorship in the background, maintained by and for the political and the ecclesiastical authorities. [66] Down to 1898 the Philippine law of censorship of 1857, modeled on that of Spain in the days of Isabel II, was in force, and it covered the publication of books and pamphlets of all sorts and of newspapers, the importation and sale of books, pictures, etc., and the regulation of theaters. [67] One will, therefore, look almost in vain in these periodicals prior to 1898 for expressions of the Filipino point of view, or, till the close of 1897, for any frank expression of liberal political views on the part of Spanish editors. The few Manila periodicals started by Filipinos before 1898, usually printed in Spanish and Tagálog, had but an ephemeral existence. [68] One must look for the expression of Filipino aims and ideas to the periodicals that have been published since 1898; indeed, even the Spanish press of Manila has treated Filipino questions with freedom only since American occupation began.

For population statistics, all practical purposes are served by the tables and comparisons of the American census of 1903. [69] Here one may find also the best data for reconstructing before his eyes the social and economic status of the Philippines and its inhabitants at the close of Spanish rule. The Spanish civil census of 1896 was unfortunately never published, nor completed in some provinces. The civil census of 1887, though published in very condensed form, merits attention. [70] Certain of the more notable statistical works of private individuals will require notice in connection with agriculture, industry, and commerce; here the student may be referred to the Bibliography under the names of Agustín de la Cavada, J. F. del Pan, and José Jimeno Agius. [71]

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Using, as throughout these notes, the Bibliography as a starting point, the student is referred to the first part of that work, viz., the List of the Library of Congress, under the headings Agriculture, Commerce, Finance, and Political and Social Economy; and to Pardo de Tavera's Biblioteca under the alphabetical lists of Aranceles, Balanzas, Boletín, Estatutos, Exposición, Guía, Instrucción, Memoria, and Reglamentos. Some of the works therein cited are obviously indispensable, and occasional biographical and bibliographical notes are also afforded, especially by Pardo de Tavera under the names of authors cited, which will help in forming an opinion on the value of their works. [72] It is in point here to designate among these works those most useful as references in a general way upon Philippine economic matters, to add some not listed in the Bibliography, and to give some special references under the particular headings of Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry.

General.--Jagor's book, already noted as the best introduction to the study of this period, is again mentioned here as affording data on the tobacco monopoly (which lasted until 1884, before its affairs were wound up), the attitude of the Spaniards toward the entry of foreign traders, and the part these foreigners played in developing the culture of abaká and sugar. Cavada's Historia geográfica, geológica y estadística de Filipinas (Manila, 1876) has a good arsenal of data drawn chiefly from the civil statistical inquiries of 1870, though, like almost all such works in Spanish, it is without a topical index and is put together in a disorderly manner most exasperating to the searcher for facts or figures on a specific point of inquiry. Of the works of José Jimeno y Agius, his Memoria sobre el desestanco del tabaco (Binondo, 1871) and Población y comercio de las islas Filipinas (Madrid, 1884) should be especially mentioned. Gregorio Sancianco y Goson's El progreso de Filipinas (Madrid, 1881), especially valuable on administrative matters just prior to the revision of the fiscal régime in connection with the abolition of the government tobacco monopoly, has also many data on land, commerce, and industry. Scattered through the eight volumes of the fortnightly La Política de España en Filipinas (Madrid, 1891-98) are useful items on Philippine currency and exchange, trade, etc., with occasional studies of these questions and those of Chinese and European immigration, in most cases hasty, unreliable pieces of work, often even fantastic for their utter disregard of the fundamentals of political economy. Foreman's book has already been characterized; nevertheless, checked up with Sawyer's, it is of use in this connection. Of the consular and other official reports, those of the British Foreign Office [73] are the most valuable as a series, though the comprehensive reports of the French Consul, M. de Bérard, covering the years 1888-92, merit first place as individual treatises. [74]

The testimony and memoranda presented before the American Peace Commission in Paris in 1898, together with some magazine articles on the Philippines, form appendices to Senate Document no. 62, 55th Congress, 3rd session; only the memorandum of General F. V. Greene (pp. 404-440) and Max L. Tornow's Sketch of the Economic Conditions of the Philippines require any consideration in this connection. [75] The reports on civil affairs (1899-1901) of the United States military government in the Philippines and the reports of the Philippine Commission have much retrospective value in connection with the previous economic and fiscal régime, and merit a general perusal in that light; some of their more especially pertinent revelations will be hereinafter cited. The Report on Certain Economic Questions in the English and Dutch Colonies in the Orient (Washington, 1902) by Jeremiah W. Jenks, special commissioner of the United States government, is of course of comparative value primarily, but contains some general remarks on Philippine conditions as regards currency, labor, land, and taxation. In many respects the best economic study ever made of the Philippines is Victor S. Clark's Labor Conditions in the Philippines (Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor no. 58, Washington, May, 1905); though discussing the labor question, and that under American occupation, it has been written with a view constantly to past conditions in the Philippines, social and political as well as economic. [76]

Agriculture, Land, etc.--Beyond the general references given, no special work can be recommended on the subject of Philippine agriculture. The reports and bulletins of the present Philippine Bureau of Agriculture (1902 to date) shed much light incidentally on past conditions and methods of cultivation. Numerous official provisions and some private treatises on the Spanish land laws are cited by Pardo de Tavera; but these remained for the most part dead letters, and for all practical purposes a little compilation in English [77] by the present Philippine Forestry Bureau suffices. In a report on the establishment of land banks in the Philippines, José Cabezas de Herrera provided a historical review and abstract of landed property in those islands. [78] In connection with his arguments in behalf of a tax on landed property as just and as also necessary in order to support a really efficient government in the Philippines, Sancianco y Goson gives considerable information on conditions of land tenure and cultivation down to 1881. [79]

Chinese.--Discussion of the Chinese in the Philippines is related more particularly to questions of industry and retail trade. Nevertheless, the Spanish government maintained almost to the end the theory--it was hardly more than an empty theory--that the Chinese immigration was being so regulated as to constitute a stimulus to agriculture. The subject also falls into place here because, from about 1886, when a campaign for the exclusion of the Chinese was started by Spanish merchants and newspaper men, a program for fostering the immigration of Spaniards into the Philippines, and especially into the undeveloped areas of Mindanao and Palawan, was quite regularly coupled with the arguments for Chinese exclusion. This program was usually presented without regard for the climatic and economic considerations involved; that it was a "patriotic" scheme was sufficient for some of these writers, who never stopped to ask themselves if their plans were practical. [80] Among the pamphlets on the Chinese in the Philippines cited by Pardo de Tavera, those of Del Pan and Jordana y Morera deserve attention. A good survey of the subject, though not accurate in its statistics, is G. García Ageo's Memorandum on the Chinese in the Philippines in Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900, ii, pp. 432-445. [81]

Industries.--The general references already cited must be relied upon, and it is a rather wearisome task to uncover the data for a study of Philippine industries from statistical tables, treatises and pamphlets which have given the subject a cursory or fragmentary treatment. The British and French consular reports may, however, be especially remarked. Also, the reports of the Chief of the Bureau of Internal Revenue in the reports of the Philippine Commission since 1904, when a new scheme of internal taxation was adopted, contain much information on industrial conditions, past and present.

Commerce, Internal Trade, Navigation, etc.--The Spanish statistical annuals, tariff regulations, etc., are fully listed by the Library of Congress and Pardo de Tavera, under the headings above noted for general references on economic matters. The most comprehensive survey of trade statistics, and one which almost serves the purpose by itself alone, is contained in the Monthly Summary of Commerce of the Philippine Islands, for December, 1904, published at Washington by the Bureau of Insular Affairs. It presents classified tables covering Philippine imports and exports for the fifty years 1855-1904; they were prepared from the best available Spanish trade statistics, reduced to terms of American gold currency at the average rate of exchange for each year, and, so far as the writer has checked these figures, they are the most reliable that are presented anywhere. [82] Among the very few Spanish writings, Azcárraga's Libertad de Comercio (Madrid, 1872) and Jimeno Agius's Población y comercio (1884) deserve special mention, also once more the useful little book of Sancianco y Goson, for brief but useful data for 1868-80 in its appendices. [83] For 1891-98, La Política de España en Filipinas has some scattering figures on trade and commerce, year by year, highly unsatisfactory for the most part. Besides the general references upon the Spanish customs tariffs, one will find in Senate Document no. 134, 57th Congress, 1st session (Washington, 1902), in its Exhibit D, a comparison of the 1901 tariff with the Spanish tariff of 1891. [84]

Currency.--The List of the Library of Congress, under the heading Finance, cites a few Spanish and foreign treatises on Philippine currency prior to 1898, and the earlier American official reports on the subject. One will get more enlightenment upon the actual conditions prevailing during the last years of Spanish rule from memoranda and testimony in certain of these American reports than from any of the printed sources of date earlier than 1898. Nevertheless, the petition of the Manila Chamber of Commerce in 1895 reproduced in La Política de España en Filipinas, v, no. 105, brings out in part the highly unsatisfactory conditions produced by the Spanish government's inaction and disregard of well-established economic principles. In ibid., vii, p. 217, is given the text of the decree of April 17, 1897, providing for the new Philippine silver peso which was beginning to circulate in the islands when American arms intervened, and which was proclaimed as a "settlement" of the Philippine currency evils, yet would obviously not have proved sufficient, unsupported as it was by provisions to sustain it in the face of the decline of silver. In much of the loose talk about economic depression in the Philippines since the wars of 1896-98 and 1899-1901, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that "hard times" had really begun before, during 1891-95 particularly, and that an unstable currency and exchange fluctuations had then played their part in producing these conditions; also that it was the Filipino laborer and small producer who was especially mulcted of his due by conditions produced in part officially and in part by governmental neglect. [85] In addition to the American documents listed by the Library of Congress, reference should be made, as regards currency and exchange evils before 1898, to the survey of the subject by the Schurman Commission (Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900, i, pp. 142-149), and the testimony of Manila bankers and business men in the same report (vol. ii); to magazine articles by Charles A. Conant printed as appendices in Report of the Commission on International Exchange (Washington, 1903); and, for a few details on previous conditions, with exchange tables, to the reports of E. W. Kemmerer, Chief of the Division of Currency, for 1904 and 1905. [86]

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT--SPANISH ADMINISTRATION

Our object here being primarily the political progress of the Filipino people, we are concerned incidentally, as it were, with the subject of Spanish administration considered by itself alone. A good study of that subject, be it said, is lacking, and it may be recommended as an opportunity worth improving.

No one who has read even a little about the Philippines and Filipinos need be told that it is necessary to trace the political development of this people along two lines--unfortunately, it proved for Spain, lines that are divergent in considerable degree. Hence the subdivision of this heading, regarding, first, development under Spanish Administration and then the Filipino Propaganda, first of Reform and finally of Revolution. We are concerned in the first instance, that is, with reforms and progress realized in consequence of measures "from above." It has already been said that very considerable progress had been made by the Spanish government from about 1860 onward, and was being made when the Tagálogs appealed to arms in 1896. [87] It is also true that the stimulus to the Filipino reform propaganda came in considerable degree from the movements toward betterment of the government itself, and from the agitations for reform in Spanish home politics. [88] But the development of the Filipino people, social, political, and economic, proceeded at last more rapidly, or less haltingly at least, than the progress in reform from above; the reform measures were only partial, often unpractical or ill-adapted to Philippine conditions; abuses of administration continued under so-called Liberal periods as well as in times of full clerical domination; in the action and reaction of Spanish politics, in which so often are party divisions merely nominal and superficial, the course of progress was so irregular and uncertain as to lend justification to the feeling of the Filipinos that they were being treated with insincerity; and all the while, in the midst of bitter partisan and religious controversy, conducted on both sides by writers most rabid and intemperate, the two peoples were constantly growing apart from each other, and were losing the mutual good-feeling of past years which, though always superficial in large part (as in any such domination of one race by another), had nevertheless had a foundation of genuine esteem.

The administrative organism.--For present purposes, it almost suffices to refer simply to the List of the Library of Congress under the headings Finance, Law, Political and Social Economy, and to Pardo de Tavera's Biblioteca under the names of authors cited in the above List and the alphabetical headings Aranceles, Balanza, Boletín, Colección, Disposiciones, Exposición, Guía, Memoria, Proyectos (those of 1870 for all sorts of reforms proposed after the Spanish Revolution of 1868), and Reglamentos. The bibliography of Colonization published by the Library of Congress, besides these special works on the Philippines, lists also works on Spanish colonies and works on colonization in general. [89] Of the compilations, annuals, etc., listed in these bibliographies, special attention may be directed to those cited under the names of Rodriguez San Pedro (to 1869) and Rodriguez Berriz (to 1888). The most complete reference work on Spanish legislation, executive regulations, etc., is the Colección legislativa de España, and this work contains provisions enacted at Madrid with regard to the Philippines down to and including 1898. For the full official record, not only of enactments at Madrid, but of the forms under which these were carried into effect in the islands themselves, the Philippine governmental regulations, proclamations, etc., covering this entire period down to the end of Spanish rule, the official gazette of the Philippines (published under the name La Gaceta de Manila, 1860-1898) is the final source; but the writer knows of no full collection thereof in any library of the United States, though there is of course one in the archives at Manila. In this connection, it should be remarked that the governor-general had very wide, and in some respects not very exactly prescribed, powers, one of the most indefinite and sweeping of which was that requiring any general law or special provision of Madrid, before it actually acquired force in the Philippines, to be published with the governor-general's "cúmplase" ("let it go into effect"). This might be, and usually was, a mere formality; but it was capable of being used so as at least to postpone the execution of a legislative decree or ministerial order which was distasteful to the chief authority of the Philippines, was violently opposed by the influential interests in the islands (particularly the ecclesiastical element), or, as happened in some cases, was manifestly inapplicable to Philippine conditions. Of course, the governor-general could readily be overruled, but even so, he could, if he desired, secure thus a delay and possible reconsideration of the matter, and the frequent changes of party administration in Spain encouraged delays of this and like sorts, not a few reform decrees remaining thus dead letters in the Philippines. It is often important, therefore, to discover not only what was the law or regulation provided for the Philippines in Madrid, but how it was put into force in the islands, or if it actually took effect at all. For this purpose, the Official Guide of the Philippines (Guía de forasteros to 1865, Guía oficial from 1879 to 1898) supplements in some respects the official gazette and the collection of Rodriguez Berriz. [90]

Of surveys and summaries of Spanish administration in the Philippines listed in the Bibliography may be mentioned Cabezas de Herrera's Apuntes (1883) and Fabié's Ensayo histórico (Madrid, 1896), also José de la Rosa's La administración pública en Filipinas. [91] In the compilation by Jesuit fathers published at Washington in 1900 under the title El archipiélago filipino, there is to be found in vol. i, a survey of the governmental organization and the various activities of the government both under civil and ecclesiastical control. This is reproduced in English in vol. iv of Report of the Philippine Commission, 1900. In vol. i of this report of the Schurman Commission (part iv, chapter i, also pp. 122-123) is an abstract of the Spanish system of government which, so far as the framework of that government is concerned, serves the purpose for one who can not readily consult the Spanish official sources from which it was drawn. [92] The major portion of this abstract is occupied by a translation and summary of the law reforming the Philippine local governments in 1893, commonly called the "Maura Law" after the Colonial Minister who promulgated it. [93] As put in force by Governor-General Blanco, however, it was somewhat altered and revised, and many of its more promising provisions for local autonomy had in most towns remained in reality dead letters up to the time when revolt broke out in the Tagálog provinces in 1896; elections under the new law were suspended, and martial law established. For this law in its original text and as promulgated by Blanco, with regulations and model forms for the municipalities, see Felix M. Roxas's Comentarios al reglamento provisional de las juntas provinciales (Manila, 1894). [94]

The administration in actual operation.--What most interests us is the actual working of this machine in Manila, the provinces and towns, and the works above cited will mostly provide for us only its skeleton on paper. To make it an effective machine, we must resort to personal testimony, occasional revelations thrown upon it by such of our writers as looked beyond mere routine, and perhaps most of all to the periodical literature of the times. [95] Few of the resident writers of the old régime thought it was quite patriotic, or would serve their personal interests, to discuss matters as frankly, for example, as did Sancianco y Goson. [96] Testimony before the Schurman Commission (vol. ii of its report) in 1899 brings out, here and there, revelations as to how the former government was actually administered. [97] Philippine government reports under American rule bring to light here and there revelations about the former administration, especially in fiscal and judicial matters. The customs collections benefited the treasury far less than they should have done; perhaps fully as much as was turned in was "absorbed" in one way and another. [98] Special surtaxes on the customs and port dues were collected at Manila for the improvement of its harbor from 1880 to 1898, amounting during the last five years alone to 3,500,000 pesos. Yet the work, when at last inaugurated, dragged along in desultory fashion and the value of the breakwater constructed and the equipment in hand in 1898 amounted to no more than $1,000,000 gold. [99]

Taxation.--No one of the works on administration just cited treats this subject in a comprehensive or satisfactory manner. The only special study of the subject that is known to the writer is Carl C. Plehn's Taxation in the Philippines (Political Science Quarterly, xvi, pp. 680-711, and xvii, pp. 125-148), and the author of this excellent survey had to drag his data forth from the official records and compilations. This survey gives all the most necessary information as to kinds of taxes, their incidence, and amounts; but for the most part there lie outside of its scope the questions one wishes to have answered as to methods of collection and the working of the fiscal administration in general, the actual receipts and expenditures for government purposes, and particularly the special local revenues so far as separate from general revenues. Sancianco y Goson again helps to fill the gap, as regards the system of taxation prevailing before the abolition of the tobacco monopoly and the reform of the tribute and the corvee in 1884. [100] Anyone who has had experience with Spanish fiscal tables need not be told that they do not always show what they appear to show. It is thus that the writers who have reproduced in English since 1898 Philippine budgets for various years [101] have unwittingly misled their readers as to the real cost of government under Spain. The figures shown in these budgets were the totals of net collections (and expenditures), for ordinary purposes, for the central government of the islands alone. They did not include the purely local licenses and other taxes, the surcharges on general taxes for local government (to be expended under supervision of the central authorities), the percentages that went to collectors, the other fees forming part or all of the compensation of some judicial and other officials, special surcharges for port works and other purposes not covered in the ordinary budget, etc. Naturally, no estimate was included of the value of the forced-labor levy. The products of "squeeze" and "pickings," in some cases so fully established as to be notorious, were of course not included; nevertheless, they represented part of the cost of government to the people. Finally, an ecclesiastical establishment, really a part of the government itself, drew support from the people in many ways beyond what would have been provided had not the power of government been behind it, under a system of voluntary contributions, for instance, apart from the communities which paid rent to the friars as landlords. [102]

The Spanish-Philippine debt of 40,000,000 pesos, incurred in 1897 in consequence of the insurrection, has not had sufficient notice as being originally the cause at Paris of the payment of $20,000,000 by the United States to Spain in connection with the clause of the treaty providing for the cession of the Philippines. Had the islands remained under Spanish sovereignty, they would have carried this their first public debt, expended wholly for war purposes, part of it being loaned for the payment of military operations in Cuba. [103]

Legal and judicial.--In the introduction to the List of the Library of Congress, under the heading Law, and on the pages of the List cited in that note will be found the formal bibliography of the subject. [104] Some references upon the actual conditions of the administration of justice in the Philippines have already been given. For this purpose, note also a comparison of the old criminal procedure with that introduced in 1899 in Military Governor on Civil Affairs (Rept. War Dept., 1900, i, part 10), pp. 17-20. The compilation of Rafael Morales y Prieto [105] is also to be specially mentioned for the criminal law and procedure, 1880 to 1894, and also for an appendix containing circulars as to judicial fees of various sorts. For brief summaries in English of the old judicial organizations see Exhibit J of the Report of the Taft Philippine Commission, 1900, a résumé by Chief Justice Arellano, especially for a statement as to the conflict of laws and codes, old and new, and as to the relative degree of authority of these codes; and Census of the Philippine Islands (Washington, 1905), chapter on the Judiciary. [106] Justice Willard's brief Notes on the Spanish Civil Code (Manila, 1903) also merits consultation.

Science and material resources.--So far as the scientific work of the period has a direct bearing upon our present purposes, it relates rather to the section on Economic Development. But the materials are sufficiently listed in the Bibliography, and the subject is introduced here only to say that this is one of the lines along which, in recent years, Spanish administration was beginning to make progress. This was true, however, chiefly of forestry and mineralogy, and was due almost entirely to the Spanish officials Abella y Casariego, Centeno y García, and Sebastian Vidal y Soler, and to the stimulus of the work of foreign investigators, especially Germans. The work of the Jesuits in meteorology should also be specially mentioned. It will be noted that little headway was made in the matter most vital for the Philippines, viz., agriculture; nor can we say that even a beginning was made in industrial chemistry or other researches calculated to foster either incipient or undeveloped industries, while the public health service was lamentably defective and scientific research relating thereto amounted practically to nothing. Reference may be made to the already large list of publications of the present Philippine government's Bureau of Science, Board of Health, Agriculture, Forestry, and Mining bureaus as showing the state of scientific investigation before 1898, also for bibliographical data. [107]

Moros and pagan peoples.--Ethnology as a science does not claim a place here. [108] We are concerned with the Spanish advance toward the establishment of effective control over large areas either partly occupied or kept in a wild state of nature by backward or warring tribes; though considerable headway was made in the last half of the nineteenth century, Spanish sovereignty over these areas was after all only nominal in 1898. Moreover, especially as regards the Moros, the materials and bibliography have been presented in other volumes of this series. [109] Attention is called to a useful compilation of Spanish campaigns against the Moros by Lieut. W. E. W. McKinley, [110] especially for its reviews of Malcampo's campaign of 1876, Terrero's of 1886-87, Weyler's of 1888-91, and Blanco's of 1894-96. [111] The American military reports from 1899 to date and reports on the Moro Province since 1903 contain scattered data on Spanish relations with the Moros and also the hill tribes of Mindanao. Similarly, the reports and publications of the Philippine Ethnological Survey from 1902 to date contain references to Spanish contact in recent years with the pagan peoples of Luzón, Mindoro, and Palawan. [112]

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT--FILIPINO PROPAGANDA AND REVOLUTION

Religious Question.--It need scarcely be repeated that the "friar controversy" enters not only into this, but every phase of our discussion, and in one form or another, is touched upon in almost all our sources of information about the Philippines. For one thing, however, we are not here concerned with a historical judgment upon the work of the friars in the Philippines, though it is proper to note that there has of late been evident a reaction in their favor from the tendency common in the United States immediately after 1898 to judge them wholly by recent events, and their work is now more fairly viewed in its three-century perspective. We are, moreover, excused from entering upon a comprehensive survey of literature about the friars and their work in general by the fact that the subject has been constantly to the fore throughout this series. What is needed here is only the citation, supplementary to the Bibliography and to the great accumulation of bibliographical references in other volumes of this series, of certain titles easily overlooked (some because of recent publication) and of such special passages in all these works as elucidate particular matters of importance.

As with all the political literature of the Philippines, 1860-1898, the reader is to be warned against the exaggerations of both sides. Always and everywhere, religious privileges and prejudices have aroused discussion both violent and intolerant; and in this case we find, on one side, a defense of religious and ecclesiastical privileges of a medieval character and in a tone and temper inherited from those times. Nor, even setting the purely ecclesiastical and religious questions aside, need we expect to find in this literature any review or discussion written in a calm and scientific spirit. Spanish political literature is almost entirely polemic, and Spanish polemics is sui generis. So, as with the friars and their defenders, we find here the principles of modern political science, which appeal properly to cool reason and the tolerance of liberalism, put forward by Spaniards and Filipinos in a language and with a spirit that hark back to times which we have come to think of as far remote from ours.

The bitterness of tone, the intolerance and contempt of the Filipino, and the flaunting of "race superiority," which came to characterize the writings of the friars and their defenders in this period--and which played no small part in leading the Filipinos to the brink of separation--are shown to the full in the numbers of La Política de España en Filipinas, 1891-98. The purpose of this organ was to combat in Spain the program of those who would further liberalize the régime of society and government in the Philippines. W. E. Retana, at first an associate editor with José Feced, was after 1895 its sole editor. Just what were the relations of the Madrid establishments of the Philippine religious orders with the business department of this periodical is not known; but it is admitted that "the friars helped by subscriptions" at least, and it has generally been supposed that their connection with it was really closer, in short that it was practically an organ of theirs. [113] In it will be found the pro-friar and anti-liberal account and view of events and matters current during the years of its publication, and also various studies of earlier years written from the same point of view. The case for the friars, especially for the period from 1863 on, may also be found quite typically set forth in a single volume of five hundred pages by a Philippine Augustinian, Padre Eladio Zamora (Las corporaciones religiosas en Filipinas, Valladolid, 1901). [114] Testimony given before Hon. William H. Taft in 1900 regarding the friars and their part in the old régime, by the Spanish archbishop and heads of the orders themselves as well as by Filipinos on the other side will be found in Senate Document no. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd session.