Although the laws of the Indias endeavor to establish firmly the peace
and good government, both temporal and spiritual, of the villages by
placing limits to their extent and the number of their residents,
the inattention of the governors of Filipinas in regard to this so
important subject, on the one hand, and on the other the interested
motives of the parish curas and the ministers of the doctrinas,
have given rise to the abuse of the villages of excessive size which
are now found established in Filipinas. These, as they cannot be
properly governed by their respective local authorities, maintain
within themselves a source of internal civil discord, and from time
to time they have broken out in disturbances which have placed the
islands in a very critical situation.
If the reports of their population be examined, it will be found
that in a great number of villages it does not fall below 10,000,
11,000, or 12,000 souls; and it is impossible that so many can be
well directed spiritually by the one parish cura alone which each
village has, or in secular matters by only one gobernadorcillo or
alcalde. In this class of towns the most notable are the following:
Tondo, with 13,424 souls; Binondoc, 22,570; Tambobo, 21,378; Pasig,
14,465; Malolos, 19,655; Vigan, 17,320; Pavay, 14,840; Lavag [Laoag],
25,242; Bacarra, 13,064; Balayan, 18,631; Taal, 23,526; Banan, 17,438;
Batangas, 19,566; Cabatuan, 17,359; Xaro, 14,911. In these populations
which do not conform to the rule there has always been recognized more
or less instability, for the class of the plebeians, or caylianes,
is immense, and out of proportion to that of the timauas, or nobles;
and likewise because the unarmed authority of a gobernadorcillo must
necessarily be vacillating, at the mercy of that great mass of people,
who are easily set in motion by a seditious person, a few drunkards,
or the superstitious tale of some old man.
The successive revolts of various towns in the province of Ilocos
in the years 1810, 1812, and 1816 had no other source. The cause
of this last uprising was decided by me, in my official character
as fiscal of the royal Audiencia of Manila. In my reply I explained
the origin of those repeated insurrections, analyzed the degree of
perverseness which progressively in each of them had been revealed
in the purpose of the conspirators, and deduced the necessity of
dividing the province of Ilocos into two, to the end that its large
towns should each have a ruler closer at hand who might keep them
in check. The Audiencia made a report, with my opinion as fiscal
thereon to the king our sovereign; and, his Majesty having deigned
to command that immediately the said province should be divided into
two, it has been maintained on that footing, up to the present time,
in the greatest order and tranquillity.
[Even more surprising is the neglect of the governors to enforce
the law that no houses shall be erected close to the castles
and fortresses.] Within cannon-shot of the walls of Manila, and
even no farther away than the breadth of the river, one hundred
thousand souls--Indians, mestizos, and Chinese--have been allowed
to establish themselves; a people of foreign origin, in great part,
without passports, classification, settled occupation, or any other
requisite of a well-ordered social condition, and whose formidable
number is threatening Manila with an inevitable blow. The sudden
movements of that great mob of people, ignorant and swayed by blind
passion, reached the point of approaching close to the defenses of
the city, in the year of 1820, even before this was known to the
government and the military council (which for this object had been
called together, and of which I was a member)--notwithstanding that
the object of their revenge was in the outer suburbs, and that their
aim was not, at least for the time, directed against the city. [These
facts ought to make the authorities of the colony realize that no
other considerations ought to interfere with their prime obligation,
which is to preserve peace and order in the towns and maintain the
military posts in security. Bernaldez recommends that new regulations
be formed regarding the settlements of the islands; that no town be
allowed to contain over five thousand souls and one thousand houses
(except the capitals of the provinces, which might have ten thousand
souls and two thousand houses); that the large towns be divided
into villages on the above basis, which should be kept separate from
one another; and that in the suburbs of Manila there should be more
rigorous police control of the people. The Indians there should be
classified by occupations, to each being appointed a chief or leader
who should be responsible for the conduct of those in his class; the
use of all dangerous weapons should be forbidden; passports should be
required for all persons coming from the provinces; and vigilant watch
should be kept over the occupations and mode of life of every family.]
Of the titles to landed property belonging to the Indians and the
villages
The lack of clear and exact laws for properly authenticating the
documents regarding the ownership of the lands of the Indians, and
the uncertain and unlimited possession which the villages have of
lands under the pretext, of their being communal, have been and always
will be in Filipinas the origin of a multitude of ruinous lawsuits and
contentions--sometimes those of Indians and villages among themselves,
sometimes between these and the Spanish and mestizo proprietors. The
Indians, as a rule, have no title of ownership in the lands which they
possess, and if any one has such it is a private document, signed
by other Indians--who with the greatest readiness deny, change,
and forge their signatures--or it will be simply a writing signed
by the alcalde-mayor, a copy of which, if it remains in the court,
will disappear or be mutilated, with equal readiness, by the Indian
clerks of the alcalde, in whose charge the archives are--if indeed
these are not entirely destroyed in the frequent fires which occur in
the villages. The most common method which the Indians of the villages
have for proving their territorial property is by tradition, and the
depositions of witnesses; and with that powerful weapon they undertake
and maintain the most contentious lawsuits, aided by the fiscals of
the Audiencia--who often forget that their office of defenders of the
Indians is bona fide, and for the sake and protection of the natives
in the tribunals to which the laws commend them. But any person who may
have exercised the duties of magistrate for any time in Filipinas will
know that in the decisions of judges there is nothing more discredited
than the evidence presented by Indian and mestizo witnesses, who
are not restrained from perjury by either an intimate acquaintance
with the obligations of religion or by sentiments of conscience,
honor, and reputation. It is very common to see, in court cases,
that witnesses of that sort will swear, and then contradict their
own testimony, according as the witnesses [are affected by] either
their own interests or the influence of the litigant who presents them.
These causes, besides rendering the lawsuits of this kind eternal, have
very frequently produced scandalous disobedience of the villagers to
the enactments of the Audiencia of the islands, and uprisings of armed
men in order to prevent effectually even the judicial possession of
the crown lands which had been sold, with all the formalities of the
laws, by the government there; and, finally, they withhold the Spanish
families and persons of wealth from purchasing rural establishments in
order to undertake on a large scale the cultivation of the products
of the country, which is perhaps the only means of promoting the
agriculture of the islands.
It is therefore expedient, in order to cut short these noisy
controversies, which have so mischievous consequences for the internal
peace of the communities in the islands, that his Majesty be pleased
to command that the government there shall oblige all the villages
and private land-owners in them to have authenticated before the
respective alcaldes-mayor of the provinces the documents for their
ownership, both private and communal. Strict obligation should be
imposed on them to surround their lands with trees--achiote, [144]
mulberry, cotton, cinnamon, cacao--under penalty of losing their title
to the land. The documents should be registered in the tribunals of
the respective alcaldes, who at the end of every year should send to
the capital the original books of record, in order that these may
be kept there securely in the archives, for which provision shall
be made by the government, not admitting in the courts or declaring
lawful any other titles of ownership to lands than those which are
supported by those necessary conditions.
Of the ecclesiastical orders which are conferred on Indians and
mestizos
The irregular procedure of the reverend archbishops and bishops of the
islands in conferring ecclesiastical orders on the Indians and mestizos
there, will be in that colony, as it has already been in America,
one of the causes which most incite revolutions. The Indians receive
through the priesthood a standing which they cannot worthily sustain,
because they never lay aside the affections, passions, and usages of
Indians. Educated by the religious, they afterward come to be their
decided enemies; they divide with the religious the opinions of the
villagers, who finally, even though they know the deficient morals
of the native priests, always respect the sacred functions which
these exercise. The least political evil which the latter occasion
is [through] their neglect of their obligations as parish priests,
the irregularity of their mode of life, and their carelessness in
everything pertaining to divine worship. The inhabitants of the
villages administered by Indian curas are very different from those
of the religious from Europa, whose people are distinguished by their
simplicity, docility, and religious training. He who knows the active
and leading part played by this class of persons in accomplishing
the independence of America will not be surprised that in the
establishment of the constitution in Filipinas Indian curas have
almost all been the directors of the elections in their villages,
the electors, and the deputies in Cortes and for the province--in
all these functions distinguishing themselves by their officiousness,
and their pretensions against the legitimate government of the islands.
This class of persons, dominating the consciences of the ignorant
and unfortunate, can easily drag them into error. As simple farmers
and artisans, they would have been useful to their families and to
the government; but mistakenly raised to the dignity of priests,
other interests now move them, and they form a commonwealth apart in
the safe retreat of the provinces. A consideration of justice wrongly
understood by the prelates of the islands, and a vehement desire in the
Indian or mestizo heads of families to ennoble these by placing their
sons in the priesthood, have caused there an excessive ordination
of Indians--which I cannot avoid characterizing as such, since,
besides the many clerics who are actually administering villages,
there is a considerable surplus of others who are scattered through
the provinces. These evils were foreseen in the laws of the Indias
(ley iv, tit. vii, lib. i), which cautions and exhorts the reverend
prelates of the Indias not to ordain so many clerics as they were
doing; but this has not sufficed, and it is necessary that the
government, recognizing the unfortunate experience that it has already
had with this abuse, should take the most efficacious measures for
the purpose of limiting the authority of the prelates in Filipinas,
in conferring ecclesiastical orders on Indians and mestizos, strictly
to the number of clerics which the religious orders of those islands
agree upon and propose as necessary to have for their coadjutors,
and for Indian villages not now occupied, or which in the future the
religious shall fail to occupy--ordering the governor of Filipinas
to secure, by mild and discreet means, that the vacant curacies of
clerics be conferred on European religious.