By a necessary and inevitable effect of certain causes, physical and
moral, which would take too long to explain here, the Spanish race in
the colonies--or the descendants of Europeans, and mestizos of these,
born and reared there--have from their birth political sentiments
which are entirely opposite to those of their ancestors and other
Europeans. They regard the Indian as an entirely passive being, the
European as a foreigner, and the land as exclusively their own. The
educational institutions which thus far have been founded in the
colonies, with the object of uniting their inhabitants, by means of
enlightening them, under the same principles of religion, morals,
and politics, have not been able to uproot those ideas; on the other
hand, recent events in the Americas have proved that the men who had
most education and acquaintance with the sciences were the party
leaders [corifeos] of revolution and independence. It ought to be
regarded as an incontestable truth that as soon as the Spanish race
in Filipinas reaches a greater number than that of the Europeans,
and with this increase acquires a certain degree of moral force,
a war for independence will be declared; and according to this idea
the educational institutions, when there is not sincerity in the
minds of the persons and in the laws that aim at encouraging this
class of population in the colonies, have a tendency hostile to the
preservation of the royal government in them. This class of Spanish
families is, for another reason, very unfortunate in Filipinas, and may
be regarded as condemned to perpetual slothfulness and misery. They
cannot devote themselves to agriculture, because in that burning
climate only the Indian resists labor so hard; nor to handicrafts,
because the wages which the Indian and the Sangley mestizo alike earn,
which is sufficient to meet their simple needs, is insufficient to
pay for another sort of food and clothing for the Spaniards. For these
same reasons, they cannot occupy themselves in the coasting trade; nor,
finally, in the commerce of the islands on a large scale, for lack of
sufficient capital, since by inheritance is divided among all the sons
the wealth which their European parents left to them; and the practice
of law is there a career to which resort is very unfortunate. All these
causes, added to the lassitude which the climate inspires, maintain
that class of people in such a condition of idleness and poverty,
especially the women, that it has been necessary to establish in
the capital alone six seminaries and beaterios in which to shelter
and educate Spanish girls; and that in the ordinance regarding the
Acapulco galleon his Majesty should grant to the Spanish widows of
merchants the special favor of a pension or widow's usufruct on the
boletas of that vessel, their only means of making a living.
[Bernaldez declares that these European Spaniards, "there abandoned,
as it were, to the mercy of charity, or to vices," are not only
useless but dangerous to the country; that among them revolutions
are born; that it is for the best interests of España to retain
her population at home, and, while furnishing means for Spaniards
to enrich themselves in the colonies or their trade, to attract to
the mother country all possible wealth and capital, not allowing her
children to remain abroad after acquiring wealth; and, finally, "to
remove from the colonies all cause of insurrection, than which there is
none greater and more terrible than the propagation [therein] of the
Spanish race." Moreover, the Europeans settled in the colonies "have
too much influence, through their exclusive wealth and connections,
for weakening governmental action there; and care nothing for any
political changes except as they can find therein opportunity for
speculations" (on which he instances the action of European Spaniards
in Mexico in Iturbide's short reign, and in other events of the
revolution there). "The Filipinas Islands need, to maintain them in
tranquillity, nothing more than a stable system of administration,
civil and spiritual, by means of religious, and an army trained and
commanded by competent European leaders, officers, sergeants, and
corporals, with the necessary number of civil officials." The creole
inhabitants should be diminished as much as possible, all Spaniards
being required to return with their families to their own country;
and "aid given to destitute widows and orphans of Spaniards who die
in Filipinas would be better employed in paying for their removal
to Europa." This matter should be considered in the residencia of
every governor. Convicts and exiles should no longer be sent to
the islands. No foreigner should be allowed to marry there except on
condition of leaving the country with his wife. No European adventurer
or idler should be allowed to remain in the islands unless he proffer
sufficient security for his good conduct and occupation; he may then
remain not longer than ten years; otherwise, he should be at once sent
back whence he came. Every ship should carry back to España as many
Spaniards as it brought to the islands; and European Spaniards should
not be allowed to remain in Filipinas more than ten years, after which
they should be compelled to return with their families to España.]