ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE.
The supreme court of justice in the Philippines is the Audiencia
established in Manila, which is the tribunal of appeal from the
subordinate jurisdiction, and the consultative council of the
Governor-General in cases of gravity.
The court is composed of seven oidores, or judges. The president takes
the title of Regent. There are two government advocates, one for
criminal, the other for civil causes, and a variety of subordinate
officers. There are no less than eighty barristers, matriculated to
practise in the Audiencia.
A Tribunal de Comercio, presided over by a judge nominated by the
authorities, and assisted, under the title of Consules, by gentlemen
selected from the principal mercantile establishments of the capital,
is charged with the settlement of commercial disputes. There is a
right of appeal to the Audiencia, but scarcely any instance of its
being exercised.
There is a censorship called the Comercia permanente de censura. It
consists of four ecclesiastics and four civilians, presided over by
the civil fiscal, and its authority extends to all books imported
into or printed in the islands.
There are fourscore lawyers (abogados) in Manila. As far as my
experience goes, lawyers are the curse of colonies. I remember one
of the most intelligent of the Chinese merchants who had settled at
Singapore, after having been long established at Hong Kong, telling
me that all the disadvantages of Singapore were more than compensated
by the absence of "the profession," and all the recommendations of
Hong Kong more than counterbalanced by the presence of gentlemen
occupied in fomenting, and recompensed for fomenting, litigations and
quarrels. Many of them make large fortunes, not unfrequently at the
expense of substantial justice. A sound observer says, that in the
Philippines truth is swamped by the superfluity of law documents. The
doors opened for the protection of innocence are made entrances
for chicanery, and discussions are carried on without any regard to
the decorum which prevails in European courts. Violent invectives,
recriminations, personalities, and calumnies, are ventured upon
under the protection of professional privilege. When I compare the
equitable, prompt, sensible and inexpensive judgments of the consular
courts in China with the results of the costly, tardy, unsatisfactory
technicalities of judicial proceedings in many colonies, I would desire
a general proviso that no tribunal should be accessible in civil cases
until after an examination by a court of conciliation. The extortions
to which the Chinese are subjected, in Hong Kong, for example--and
I speak from personal knowledge--make one blush for "the squeezing"
to which, indeed, the corruption of their own mandarins have but too
much accustomed them. In the Philippines there is a great mass of
unwritten, or at least unprinted, law, emanating from different and
independent sources, often contradictory, introduced traditionally,
quoted erroneously; a farrago, in which the "Leyes de Indias," the
"Siete partidas," the "Novisima recompilacion," the Roman code,
the ancient and the royal fueros--to say nothing of proclamations,
decrees, notifications, orders, bandos--produce all the "toil and
trouble" of the witches' cauldron, stirred by the evil genii of
discord and disputation.
Games of chance (juegos de azar) are strictly prohibited in the
Philippines, but the prohibition is utterly inefficient; and, as I
have mentioned before, the Manila papers are crowded with lists of
persons fined or imprisoned for violation of the law; sometimes forty
or fifty are cited in a single newspaper. More than one captain-general
has informed me that the severity of the penalty has not checked the
universality of the offence, connived at and participated in by both
ecclesiastics and civilians.
The fines are fifty dollars for the first, and one hundred dollars
for the second, offence, and for the third, the punishment which
attaches to vagabondage--imprisonment and the chain-gang.
Billiard-tables pay a tax of six dollars per month. There is an
inferior wooden table which pays half that sum.
The criminal statistics of five years, from 1851 to 1855 present the
following total number of convictions for the graver offences. They
comprise the returns from all the provinces. Of the whole number of
criminals, more than one-half are from 20 to 29 years old; one-third
from 30 to 39; one-ninth from 40 to 49; one-twentieth from 15 to 19;
and one-forty-fifth above 50.
They consist of 467 married, 81 widowers, and 690 unmarried men.
During the said period 236 had completed the terms of their sentences,
217 had died, and 785 remained at the date of the returns.
Adultery 1 Brought forward 259
Adultery, with homicide 1 Murder, with wounding and
Prohibited arms 7 robbery 314
Abandonment of post 6 Robberies 390
Bigamy 1 Robberies, with violence 120
Drunkenness 2 Robberies of Tobacco 6
Horse and cattle stealing 21 Robberies on bodies (Dacoits) 36
Conspiracy 17 Wounding in quarrels 44
Smuggling 1 Wounding (causing death) 7
Deserters 126 Incendiarism 4
Rape 14 Incendiarism, with robbery 16
Rape and incest 4 Incest 6
Rape and robbery 6 Mutiny 7
Poisoning 2 Nonpayment of fines 3
Forging passports 13 False name 1
Fraudulent distilling 1 Parricide 2
Vagabonds 35 Resistance to military 18
Coining 1 Escape from prison 5
Carried forward 259 Total 1,238
In the city of Manila there was only one conviction for murder in
five years. The proportion of the graver offences in the different
provinces is nearly the same, except in the island of Negros, where
of forty-four criminals, twenty-eight were convicted of murder.