the first who ought to destroy, not only in their official, but in
their private acts, and as politicians, authors, government employees,
military men, in the different orders of social life, the ridiculous
and contemptuous idea that free thought has sown against priests
and religious, permitting themselves to talk of them in a tone that
honors the clergy so little, and which when known by the elements of
other inferior social classes, cause respect to the Catholic priest to
become weakened daily, many judging that the religion of officials is
frequently nothing more than a social hypocrisy and a practice of pure
political convenience. Hence the government ought to very carefully
see that all its personnel in the archipelago be sincere and earnest
Catholics, in order that the sad spectacle may not be again seen,
that we have so often and so prodigally witnessed, by which the chief
ones, in opposing the apostolic labor of the religious corporations,
are the very ones, who, inasmuch as they are functionaries of a
Catholic state, ought to be those who support and strengthen it the
most. Hence every association, assembly, or undertaking which is
trying to sow here anti-religious or anti-clerical ideas, under any
color or pretext, even the exercise of political rights, ought to be
prevented at all hazards from having any representation or branch in
these islands; and the previous censorship over every kind of book,
pamphlet, and engraving that comes from outside, and over those
which shall be published here, should be restored, or better said,
strengthened. Hence, the close union of all the peninsular element
here resident becomes more necessary, so that, all united for the
protection of our divine religion, by all respected and obeyed,
we may resist the enemies of the fatherland with greater force; may
not by our discords give the rebel camp opportunity to gain strength;
and as far as possible, may succeed in elevating the moral prestige,
today, unfortunately fallen so low. Hence, likewise, is the great
necessity of the disappearance in gubernatorial circles of an erroneous
idea, most fatal and extremely disrespectful to the orders, which,
propagated by sectarian spirits or by bad or lukewarm Catholics,
seems now to be a postulate of many politicians in Madrid, and of
the majority of peninsulars who come to this archipelago.
Infamous idea in regard to the importance of the orders and the manner
in which they are generally regarded. We refer to the idea which began
to spread after the revolution of '68, which looks upon the religious
of Filipinas as an evil necessity, as an archaic institution, with
which differences must be composed for reasons of state; as a purely
political resource, and a convenience to the nation, which cannot
be substituted with others. That infamous idea, manifested at times
frankly, and at times with reticence or with insinuations that cut more
deeply than a knife, is known by our declared enemies. It is known
by the natives of the country who have been in the Peninsula. It is
known, because it has been propagated in newspapers and other products
of the press that have penetrated the archipelago, by a vast number
of natives, who, with having left Filipinas, are notably offended by
it. All the peninsulars who make war on us, whether by anti-religious
prejudices, by doctrinal compromise, by personal resentment, by
flippancy, or by envy (for among all those classes do we have enemies)
help to spread and propagate that idea throughout the islands.
From that idea many deduce the opinion that we are dragging out in
this country an existence of pure compassion and condescension;
that we are living here, tolerated and as if on alms, instead of
honored and respected as any other institution of the mother-country;
that in many ways, one would believe that we religious are less and
have less value than the military, than the government employes, or
than those of other professions and careers; and that with wonderful
facility one imputes to us, as to the most abandoned and destitute,
the blame for all the evils that afflict the country, governors
and other representatives of the government and administration
of the islands availing themselves of our name of obliged appeal,
in order to evade and shun responsibilities, whenever any calamity
comes upon them or whenever there is any unpleasant event to bewail
in their conduct. For all, there is indulgence, for all, excuse, for
all kindness and the eyes of charity. The epoch is one of adjustment
and respect for all manner of extensions, although with the loss of
morality and justice. Only in what concerns priests and religious
must one look with contemptuous pride, with extreme rigor, and with
despotic exaction. The religious has to pay it all; on him must all
the blame be cast; to him belong the feelings of anger, the aversions,
the censures, the expressions of contempt. We appear, your Excellency,
to be only the anima vilis [213] of the archipelago.
It is evident that we, as the priestly and religious class, and as a
Spanish corporation, cannot in any manner consent to this humiliating
position, which, as private persons, obliged to greater perfection
than the generality of Christians, we endure patiently, remembering
the words of the apostle "tamquam purgamenta hujus mundi facti sumus
omnium peripsema usque adhuc," [214] and of which we would not speak
if the evil were restricted to one of so many annoyances annexed
to our ministry; so much the more as we unfortunately see that that
injurious and erroneous idea is greatly injuring our ministry, and is
daily causing our influence among the people who are entrusted to us
to become lessened, since they are assailed strongly and tenaciously
by all the disturbing agents that have caused the insurrection.
Respect that they merit as religious and as Spaniards. The religious
corporations ought to be greatly honored and distinguished (and it
grieves us deeply, your Excellency, to have to speak of these things):
firstly, because their individual members are adorned with the priestly
character, which is the greatest honor and dignity among Christians
that men can have; secondly, because their apostolic mission has
here propagated and preserves the splendors of Catholicism. They
are priests and they are religious: thus they unite the two devices
that inspire the greatest veneration among any society, which feels
some needs superior to the material, or those of their proud reason
divorced from Jesus Christ.
Not less respect do they merit in their character as Spanish
entities. Besides being here ministers of the official religion, they
are public ecclesiastical persons, recognized by the state. They live
under its safeguard, as do the military and civil entities. They have
labored, and are laboring, for the fatherland, at least as much as any
other class of Spaniards residing in the archipelago. And in the point
of intelligence, within their respective profession and of morality
and private and civic virtues, they rise not only collectively, but
individually, to so great a height as the class that is considered
the most high and reputable in the archipelago.
There is one most special reason and one of extraordinary importance
which demands that that respect should be sanctioned by the laws and
supported by customs, namely, that the religious in his respective
duties, becomes, as a general rule, the only peninsular, and,
therefore, the only representative of the mother-country in the
majority of the Filipino villages. Consequently, Spanish prestige is
greatly interested in that he be the object of such considerations and
guaranties that these inhabitants far from seeing, as unfortunately
they have not a few times seen, that he is despised and humbled,
be daily more fortified in the traditional idea that their cura or
missionary is, at once the minister of God and the representative
of España, a lofty idea that has redounded, and redounds, so greatly
to the favor of the mother-country, and says so much in honor of all
the Spanish entities.
We came to the archipelago through our love to religion and España,
and have remained in it more than three centuries, ready to continue
here so long as conscience does not dictate the contrary to us. Gross
temporal considerations do not move us, nor sentiments of pride and
of mere personal dignity. In the fulfilment of our duties, we have
striven to attain even sacrifice and by the grace of God, we shall
continue the sacrifice. A good proof of this is offered the impartial
critic by the present epoch of rebellions and insurrections. The
cura and missionaries, in spite of persuasions that they were putting
their lives in great danger by the continual plots of the ferocious
Katipunan, have steadfastly maintained themselves in their posts,
foreseeing that if they abandoned their parishioners, a general rising
of the islands was almost certain. This procedure, if not heroic, is
sufficiently near it, and has cost us many victims, snatching away our
dearest brethren from us, some treacherously assassinated and others
immolated by reckless mobs seduced by filibusters and masons. And
although this sad sacrifice has seemingly not been bewailed and
appreciated, as perhaps it ought to be by the loyal sons of España,
we trust that God, the compassionate and generous remunerator of every
good deed, will in His infinite mercy, receive it as a propitiation
for the evils of this unfortunate country, and will have rewarded
the martyrs of religion and of the fatherland.
Character and objects of this exposition. May the nation, government,
and your Excellency, pardon this slight extension of our sentiments of
dignity, offended as religious and as Spaniards. This is not a memorial
of merits and services, since we have never solicited applause or
recompense, which never constitute the lever of our labors. Neither is
it a panegyric, which we are not called upon to make, and which we do
not believe is wanting, since the history of the religious corporations
of Filipinas detaches itself so patiently and cleanly in all kinds
of just and upright progress. It contains some apologetic matter and
much of most sensible complaint because of the unjustifiable injuries
that almost daily are received by us. It is the weak expression of the
profound bitterness that seizes upon us at contemplating and viewing
from anear the condition of vast disturbance in which this beautiful
portion of the fatherland finds itself. With the utmost respect and
submission, laying aside absolutely whatever proceeds from political
parties and much more from private persons, it tells the government
with Christian simplicity and synthetically that it should adopt and
maintain a perfectly logical criterion with regard to the religious
corporations of Filipinas; and that, therefore, if it thinks, as is
just and decorous, that we, the religious corporations, exercise a
most lofty and necessary mission in the archipelago, honorable and
worthy of the greatest consideration, of its own accord and without
utilitarian considerations and false reasons of state, it so manifest
clearly and with nobility, making a beginning by giving a practical
example of that in its laws and decrees, and in its instructions to the
authorities of these islands, and that it do not allow us to be annoyed
or insulted; and so much the more since being weak and helpless,
and bound as we are by religious weakness and patience, we have no
other means of defense than our right and the protection of the good,
and we can never appeal to the means of repression and influence to
which we allude in the beginning of this expository statement.
But if the government, on the contrary, by an error that we would
respect, not without qualifying it, in our humble judgment, as most
fatal to the interests of religion and the fatherland, should believe
that the religious have terminated their traditional mission here,
let it also have the frankness to say so. We shall listen to its
resolution calmly. But let it not imagine, in adopting measures which,
attaching, although without claiming it, the privileges of the Church,
our profession as priests and regulars, and our honor as refined
Spaniards, that in practice it might appear that it was trying to
burn one candle to Christ and another to Belial, that it was trying
to please masons and Catholics, good patriots and separatists, by
placing the orders in a so graceless situation that they might become
like the mouthful that was thrown into the jaws of the wild beast in
order to silence its roars for the time being.
Synthesis of the same. Such would happen if the secularization
of the regular ministries; the secularization of education; the
disamortization of the property of the corporations, or the expression
of the liberty that belongs to them to enjoy and dispose of them;
the declaration of the tolerance of worship; the establishment of
civil marriage; the permission of every kind of association; and
the liberty of the press became law. Such would happen, in what more
directly concerns us, if the government continuing here and there its
campaign against us, unjustifiable from every point of view, were to
show by its acts that it actually conceives that we have been the cause
of the insurrection, and that we are opposed to the progress of these
islands, and to the unfolding of their legitimate aspirations. Such
would happen, if the government, failing to rigorously prosecute
secret societies, and to effectively correct the seditious ones who
are exciting the ignorant masses of the people against the regulars
and against all that is most holy and Spanish in the islands, should
desire the religious to continue in their ministries, liable at any
moment to be sacrificed, as is the terrible watchword of the sect,
and which has already unfortunately occurred, without, perhaps, their
having even the consolation that those sacrifices are appreciated.
If we religious are to continue to be of use in the islands to religion
and España, no one can have any doubt that it must be by thoroughly
guarantying our persons, our prestige, and our ministry, it must be by
knowing that the fatherland appreciates and treats us as its sons, and
that it must not abandon us as an object of derision to our enemies,
and as victims to the rancor of masonry and separatism. Martyrdom
does not terrify us, but only honors us, although we do not consider
ourselves worthy of so holy an honor: but we do not desire to die as
if criminals, enveloped with the censures of friends and enemies,
and perhaps, abandoned and despised by those who ought to protect
and esteem us.
That is the extremely gloomy and graceless situation in which the
orders find themselves, especially since the beginning of the Tagárog
insurrection, and above all, since the extension of the Katipunan,
a situation that threatens to become worse, if the government becomes
the echo of the filibusters, of the masons, of the radical elements,
which, it seems, have conspired together to give the finishing stroke
to the great social-religious edifice, raised in these islands by
Catholic España.
By that no one should be surprised that we religious, placed in so
imminent a peril, desirous of not offering abstracts to the policy of
any government, and of avoiding the censure that we are the cause of
the evils of the country and the bar to its progress, should choose the
abandonment of our ministries, exile, and expatriation, in preference
to our continuance in the islands in a situation, which, if prolonged
for a longer time, will result as decidedly dishonoring to our class,
and would make our permanence in the archipelago unfruitful.
We have fulfilled our duty here as good men; such is our firm
conviction. Should we go elsewhere, there, by the grace of God,
we shall also be able to fulfil our duty. And for that result, the
holy see, if contrary to all our just expectations, it cannot succeed
in making itself heard by the Spanish nation, will not deny us the
opportune permission.
Fortunately, we have trust in the noble sentiments and deeply-rooted
Catholicism of her Majesty, the queen regent; we trust in the devotion
and patriotism of the ministers of the crown; we trust in the sensible
opinion shared by the majority of the Spanish people; we trust in the
intelligence and spirit of justice of the Catholic minister of the
colonies; and we trust that, after listening to the most dignified
prelates of these islands, and after taking into consideration the
prescriptions of natural and canonical law, the exalted advantages
of the fatherland in these regions, and the undeniable services that
the religious orders in Filipinas have contributed, no resolution
contrary to the teachings and precepts of our holy Mother, the Church,
will be adopted, and which is contrary to the prestige of the regular
clergy, but that, on the contrary, the Catholic institutions of this
archipelago will be once more affirmed and strengthened, as is imposed
by both religion and the fatherland.
In this confidence, and reiterating our traditional adhesion to the
throne, and to its institutions, we conclude, praying God for the
prosperity and new progress of the monarchy, for the health of his
Majesty, the king, and of her Majesty, the queen regent (whom may God
preserve), and for prudence of the Cortes and the government in their
resolutions, and very especially for your Excellency, whose life may
God preserve many years. [215]
Manila, April 21, 1898. Your Excellency.
Fray Manuel Gutierrez, provincial of the Augustinians.
Fray Gilberto Martin, commissary-provincial of the Franciscans.
Fray Francisco Ayarra, provincial of the Recollects.
Fray Cándido Garcia Valles, vice-provincial of the Dominicans.
Pio Pí, S.J., superior of the mission of the Society of Jesus.
Notice. Because of the impossibility, due to the length of this
exposition, of drawing up the copies necessary for the archives of
each corporation, it has been agreed by the respective superiors,
to print an edition of fifty copies, ten for each corporation, which
are destined for the purpose stated above.
Collated faithfully with its original, and to be considered throughout
as an authentic text. In affirmation of which, as secretary of my
corporation and by the order of my prelate, I sign and seal the
present copy in Manila, April 21, 1898.
Fray Francisco Sadaba Del Carmen, secretary-provincial of the
Recollects. [216]
There is a seal that says: "Provincialate of the Recollects."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL DATA
The documents in this volume are obtained from the following sources:
1. Internal condition of Philippines.--From a typewritten copy
furnished by Epifanio de los Santos from the rare printed original
(volume iii of Mas's Informe) in his possession.
2. Matta's report.--From an unpublished MS. in the possession of
T. H. Pardo de Tavera, who furnished to the Editors a typewritten
copy of it.
3. The Philippines, 1860-1898.--Written especially for this series
by James A. LeRoy, Durango, Mexico.
4. Events in Filipinas.--Summarized from volume iii of Montero y
Vidal's Historia de Filipinas.
5. Constitution of Liga Filipina.--From a copy, furnished by Epifanio
de los Santos, of Rizal's original MS.
6. Friar memorial.--From James A. LeRoy's copy of one of the printed
originals, revised by a printed copy belonging to the Madrid edition.
7. Appendix on agriculture.--The first section, from a printed copy
of Basco's decree (Sampaloc, 1784) belonging to Edward E. Ayer; the
second, from Jagor's Reisen (Berlin, 1873), pp. 303-306, from a copy
in the Mercantile Library, St. Louis; the third, from Fernandez and
Moreno's Manuel del viajero en Filipinas (Manila, 1875), pp. 172-178,
from a copy belonging to the Editors.
APPENDIX: AGRICULTURE IN FILIPINAS
By Joseph Basco y Vargas (Arayat, March 20, 1784), and others.
Sources: The first section of this document is obtained from a
printed copy of Basco's decree, in the possession of Edward E. Ayer;
the second part, from Jagor's Reisen, pp. 303-306; the third, from
Fernandez and Moreno's Manual del viajero en Filipinas, pp. 172-178.
Translations: All these are made by Emma Helen Blair.
APPENDIX: AGRICULTURE IN FILIPINAS
A decree by Basco in 1784
Don Joseph Basco y Vargas, Balderrama y Rivera, knight of the Order
of Santiago, commander of a division in the royal navy, governor and
captain-general of these Filipinas Islands and president of their
royal Audiencia and Chancilleria, commander-in-chief of the troops
of his Majesty in these dominions, general superintendent of the
royal treasury, and of the royal revenue from tobacco, and delegate
superintendent of that from the mail service, etc.
[The author begins by showing the importance, necessity, and advantage
of agriculture to both the state and the individual, with illustrations
drawn from history and observation in various countries of the world,
and continues:]
Since agriculture is so necessary for the subsistence of mankind, and
the maintenance of kingdoms, it is not wonderful that it should be so
cared for by the wise and by kings, and that the lawmakers of nations
should have ennobled this pursuit with special privileges. Especially
have been distinguished in this direction the Spanish monarchs, who,
besides other privileges granted in favor of the farmers, have thought
it well to decree that neither the implements for their labors, nor
their lands, should be taken from them for any civil debt; and also
they granted to these laborers the privilege that they could not be
imprisoned for any civil debt in the season for their harvesting and
field labors, authorizing the superior judges to grant them delay
in such cases. But besides these so useful and valuable benefits
the natives of Filipinas enjoy still others more extraordinary. For
their security, besides having ordained that their goods shall not be
seized for costs in lawsuits, nor shall they be punished with pecuniary
fines, conferring upon them other favors of the same kind, it has been
likewise commanded that no one may lend money to them above the sum
of five pesos, under the penalty of losing what is lent them beyond
that. In all these things the monarchs have sought to release the
farmers from many oppressions and injuries, and to prevent the losses
and deficits which otherwise, for most of the vassals, are caused
by caring for the interests and profits of a few individuals. But
it occasions the greatest sorrow that in Filipinas, contrary to the
pious and Christian intention of our kings--and especially that of
the wise monarch, who is now prosperously governing us, our lord Don
Carlos III (whom may God preserve)--Spaniards should have acted,
in regard to these exemptions, without any heed or consideration
for the injuries which have resulted here to the Indians and their
agriculture, and with notable loss of the wealth which the fertility
and valuable products of this country promise.