THE REBELS AND THEIR GRIEVANCES.
We cannot view without grave misgivings the unexpected turn that
affairs have taken since the war, and the second war which has broken
out between the rebels and the Americans. It is now plain that
it was entire independence from all control that the promoters of
the rebellion were looking for from the very beginning; this being
well known to the Friars all along, and clearly indicated in their
memorial to the Spanish Government. Aguinaldo and his companions have
unlimited confidence in themselves, and aspire to form a civilized
republic. The character of this pure-souled patriot may be judged
from a transaction he had with the Spanish Government. After the
armistice of Biac-na-Bato, he was bought out by them, and took
thousands of dollars as his price for leaving the country for aye,
never to return. He pocketed the money, and went off to Hongkong; but
when the Americans came to Manila, and destroyed the Spanish fleet,
this worthy returned to the Philippines, and once more raised the
standard of rebellion. As a result the Americans are apt to find
themselves burdened with a war expenditure, even heavier than that
borne by Spain in her effort to prevent a repetition in the Philippines
of the gruesome story of San Domingo and Hayti. All colored and
tropical races have a tendency to revert to their original type and
the barbarous customs of their ancestors. The blacks got possession
of Hayti nearly a century ago, at which time they were at least
domesticated, and partially civilized, having been in contact with
the white man for the two previous centuries. They have gone back,
and not forward, ever since. The history of the black republic is a
bloody revolution every two or three years, distinguished by acts
of barbarous ferocity. Life there at the present day is a hideous
caricature of civilization and Christianity. Incredible as it may
seem, there has been a revival in the remote villages of the old
African serpent-worship, and child sacrifices, followed by cannibalism.
Ten Spanish Augustinian Friars recently came to San Francisco from the
Philippines (see Appendix IV.). In an interview with the representative
of the San Francisco Monitor they stated that it was not through fear
of the Americans that they had left Manila, but, on the contrary, they
believed that the Church would prosper under American rule. They said
that the respectable element in the Philippines, though they had been
quite content with the Spanish rule, and deeming it all that could
be expected under the circumstances, are yet welcoming the Americans
as a relief from insurgent atrocities. "The insurgents," they said,
"are an undisciplined mob of rioters, led by a demagogue. They are
the riff-raff of the islands, men without principle or property in
most instances. Aguinaldo has them pretty well in hand to-day, but
to-morrow they may disintegrate into fifty gangs. Aguinaldo is an
ungrateful renegade, who was fed, clothed, and educated by Catholic
priests. He is a mere puppet in the hands of the Freemasons. [4]
It is to these worthies and organized anarchy in Europe that we may
trace the origin of the trouble in the Philippines. Soon after the
destruction of the Spanish fleet, the insurgents wrecked our schools,
robbed and despoiled our missions and churches, and drove us into
Manila. About fifty priests were brutally killed by them. As our field
of work was thus laid bare, we decided to leave the Philippines. What
made us depart was the discouragement of seeing the work of years
destroyed by the men we had gone to teach, and the improbability of
being able to build up the work again immediately."
The Filipinos have already shown proof how far removed they are
from civilized ideals, and how dangerous it would be to leave
them to themselves, by their inhuman treatment of their Spanish
prisoners. Besides ordinary Spanish civilians, they have kept in
captivity for several months hundreds of Friars, including one
hundred Dominicans, and the Dominican Bishop of Neuva Segovia,
Mgr. Joseph Hevia, whose portrait we give. Numbers of the Friars
have lately died of the hardships to which they were subjected. A
letter, received some time ago from one of them by a friend in Manila,
describes the ferocious and satanic hatred shown towards them by the
rebel chiefs. They were stripped of their clothes, hats, and shoes,
robbed of their money, spat upon, tied to trees, and flogged several
times. Daily they were forced to work on the public roads from morning
to evening, under a broiling sun, receiving food and drink barely
sufficient to support life. The leaders mocked at and jested over
their sufferings. Though violent threats were held out against all
who succored them, their parishioners seized opportunities of coming
to visit them, and alleviate their miseries. From other sources
we learn that the noses of some of the prisoners were slit, and a
cord passed through the aperture, to be used as a leading-string
by their guards. The venerable Bishop was subjected to the grossest
indignities. One aged Friar was placed on a saddle, and jumped upon
till blood flowed from his mouth and nose. Another, it is said, clothed
only in a rain-coat, was carried in triumph for two hundred yards,
and then cudgelled to death amid savage cries. Some were crushed to
death between boards. Nuns in the convents were subjected to shameful
treatment. In the name of common sense, we ask if men who encourage
or permit such atrocities are fit to control and guide the destinies
of eight millions of people. (See Appendix V.)
Of course the policy of the Press in general has been to keep these
atrocities from the eyes of the public. As it did not suit political
purposes to publish them, they have been kept concealed. Owing to this
careful management, the sympathies of the world have been enlisted on
the side of the "poor downtrodden Filipinos." An impartial examination
of the grievances of the latter, and of the catch-cries by which the
leaders have seduced a considerable portion of the simple natives, will
not reveal very much against either the civil or the ecclesiastical
rule of the Spaniard. As in everything human, we may suppose that
neither was absolute perfection; but, all things considered, there
was less to justify rebellion in the Philippines than in most parts
of the world where the black is ruled by the white man.
One of the grievances of the rebels is that nearly all the
ecclesiastics in the Archipelago have been Spaniards, and they
demand an entirely native clergy. Now, the Catholic Church has been
always most anxious to form a native clergy in missionary countries,
but insuperable difficulties have often prevented the realization of
this idea. Among colored races there is a paucity of real vocations;
it is hard enough to get the people to live up to the Christian
ideal without adding thereto the grave responsibilities and life of
self-sacrifice of the priesthood. An example in point is the Black
Republic of Hayti. It is a Catholic country, nominally at least. The
people have retained the Faith taught them by the white man, though
preserving such a dislike to him that no white man can own a yard of
land in the country. Yet such is their inability to provide themselves
with priests of their own blood that they are forced to fall back on
the services of a French Bishop and French missionary priests, who do
all the spiritual work of the island. Another case in point is that
of Cuba, an island containing a million and a half of inhabitants,
Cubans and Spaniards, of which only forty-three of the former are
to be found in the ranks of the priesthood. There has never been any
distinction made between Cubans and Spaniards in the two Seminaries of
Havana and Santiago de Cuba; all are received alike, and treated alike
if they have a vocation; of the forty-three priests, twenty-eight hold
parishes, and the rest have other positions of trust, which shows that
it is simply owing to lack of vocations and not to any other cause
that we must ascribe their fewness in number. In the Philippines, as
far back as two centuries ago, the experiment was made of forming a
native priesthood, with doubtful success, however, as Dampier informs
us that the natives generally held the native priests in contempt,
while holding the Spanish clergy in the greatest esteem. We must,
perforce, conclude that in the Philippines, as in other countries,
it is simply lack of vocations that keeps the number of the native
clergy at such a low ebb.
Another grievance, brought well to the front by those who have written
on behalf of the Filipinos, is the taxation, which is alleged to have
been excessive. The writer is informed by one who lived many years
there that it was not. However this may be, all taxation is odious
to primitive and half-civilized communities, who are inclined to look
upon the most necessary taxes, without which no stable government could
be carried on, in the light of oppression. The Americans will have the
same difficulties to face with regard to taxation as the Spaniards had,
though not in the same degree maybe, as the country will be opened
to trade in a freer way than formerly. In the interests of order,
and also to protect the people from unjust imposts, the Friars were
in the habit of acting as their counsellors in these matters, and
used to exhort their parishioners publicly and privately to pay the
necessary taxes. A passage from Blumentritt, whom we have quoted more
than once in our previous chapters, will go to show that all this was
done in the interests of the people: "In the following centuries the
Friars continued to extend their protecting hand over the natives,
preventing, as far as possible, any oppression on the part of the
Government employes." Yet this action of the Friars, good, charitable,
and necessary under the circumstances, has been used by the promoters
of the rebellion as a fulcrum to raise the Friars, in the eyes of the
poorer classes, into the invidious position of tax-gatherers, tyrants,
and abettors of oppression. Without doubt, cruel methods, for which,
however, the Friars were not responsible, were in vogue in dealing with
defaulters, as we may see in Dean Worcester's lately published work
on the Philippines; but it is nothing less than downright hypocrisy
to raise a chorus of condemnation against the Spaniard on this score,
when it is well known that no other nation, in trying to solve the
eternal difficulty about the taxation of colored and subject races,
has emerged from the conflict with clean hands. We remember reading
some years ago of very cruel methods employed in the gathering of
the taxes in British India, in some of the up-country districts;
and within the present year of grace, 1899, two books have appeared
dealing with the English and the Dutch in South Africa, [5] both of
which, in describing the punishment inflicted on those refusing to pay
taxes to the ruling powers, could easily give points to the colonial
Spaniard for cruelty. What is very remarkable about the Protestant
missionary is that, instead of condemning the barbarities described in
his book, of which he was an eye-witness, he approves of them, even to
the extent of giving his sanction to the inhuman crime of blowing up
with dynamite the caves in which four hundred men, women, and children
had taken refuge. The Rev. Mr. Rae's opinion of the campaign against
Malaboch for his refusal to pay taxes, a campaign in which women and
children, and men bearing flags of truce were fired upon recklessly,
is that "the Transvaal Government was doing a much better work than
any Christian missionary has yet accomplished." God help the Filipinos
if Protestant missionaries of this description are going to overrun
the field of labor left vacant by the deaths and expulsion of the
Spanish Friars. One great test of the mild rule of the Spaniard in
that country is that the native population has increased since the
conquest, instead of being almost exterminated, as is the case in
North America and in many of the colonies of European States. We
hope that the American rule will be characterized by clemency and
justice. A hypocritical cry has been raised in the States about
the tyranny and oppression under which the natives are said to be
groaning. The rule of the Spaniard has indeed been imperfect enough;
but America should approach the question of reform with becoming
modesty, seeing that her own record in dealing with the Indians has
been stained by many a crime against human rights. They have been
robbed of the country which once was their own, and driven back from
reservation to reservation, while even the rights guaranteed to them by
Government as compensation for what they lost have been often filched
from them by unscrupulous officials. The light recently thrown on the
case of the Pillager Indians has disclosed cruelty, open robbery, and
a disregard of solemn obligations. In the Philippines the Americans
will find the natives still in possession of their country; a people,
once wild and nomadic like the Indians, brought into settled habits of
life by three centuries of missionary effort; a people, in fine, who,
whatever is said to the contrary by noisy declaimers and demagogues,
have been on the whole well pleased with their lot.
It is quite evident from the words and acts of the rebels that they
have been casting envious eyes on the large landed estates of the
Friars, hoping, on their expulsion, to have a division of the spoils
among themselves. Already, before the war, an iniquitous plan of
confiscation was boldly advocated in Spain itself. We now learn to
our surprise, from the Church News (Washington, D.C.), that this cry
has found an echo across the Atlantic from Protestant pulpits in the
States. Besides the fact that confiscation would be robbery pure and
simple, as the estates are not national property, and have not been
given by the Government, but have been acquired in the usual way by
purchase, and in the course of three centuries have naturally grown
large, confiscation of the estates would mean a great calamity to
the country, even if the Friars were allowed to go back quietly to
their parishes, and resume their spiritual ministrations among the
people. For it was by means of the estates that the Friars introduced
agriculture and settled habits of life among tribes originally nomadic;
it was by means of the estates that they got them to live in villages,
and introduced amongst them the arts of civilized life; it was by
means of the estates that they acquired the power of inducing them
to labor with a certain amount of regularity and method, the great
safeguard against a relapse into a state of savagery. Giraudier,
who was director of the "Diario" of Manila, and spent thirty years in
the Archipelago, says something very much to the point: "The natives,
with some rare exceptions, are in need of tutelage, without which they
would fall back to the customs of their ancestors, a tutelage that
no one can exercise better than the Friars." The latter, in truth,
made themselves all in all to the people. Within the precincts of the
monasteries were to be found workshops for teaching carpentry, forges
for teaching the natives the working of iron, brick and tileyards,--in
fact, most of the mechanical arts were fostered and encouraged by
the Friars. The villages they formed around them presented a pleasing
picture of happiness and content, in startling contrast to the homes
of those who were still pagan and uncivilized.
A former British consul thus describes them: "Orderly children,
respected parents, women subject but not oppressed, men ruling but not
despotic, reverence with kindness, obedience with affection--these
form a lovable picture by no means rare in the villages of the
Eastern Isles." Will such a happy state of things exist under new
conditions? We are very much inclined to doubt it. The experiment tried
in some of the islands of the West Indies of making the blacks small
freeholders, and planting them on the bankrupt planters' estates,
has not been attended by such beneficial results to the land as
to justify our hoping that a similar experiment in the Philippines
will prove a success. The natives of the tropics in general are like
overgrown children, blessed with the virtues and cursed with the
faults of children, rejoicing in present abundance, and destitute
of that measure of forethought for the morrow, without which there
can be no human progress. What a contrast at the present day do
the civilized villages under the paternal care, and, if you will,
government, of Friars present to the wild nomadic life still led by
the natives of Mindanao, whom the Jesuit fathers are trying to bring
under civilizing influences. We find, from letters written lately by
some of the fathers there, that human sacrifice is still in vogue,
and murder, pillage, and slave-catching extremely common. We fear that
self-government, bringing in internal conflicts between the various
parts of the Archipelago, would gradually reduce most of it to this
deplorable state of things, and that the Philippine Republic would
be as great a travesty on civilization as Hayti.