Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
society, after its revival in England, had been reintroduced into
Spain. Now they found themselves suspected of sympathy with England
and therefore of treason to Spain. While this could not be proved,
it led to enforcing a papal bull against them, by which Pope Clement
XII placed their institution under the ban of excommunication.
At first it was intended to execute all the Spanish Freemasons, but
the Queen's favorite violinist secretly sympathized with them. He used
his influence with Her Majesty so well that through her intercession
the King commuted the sentences from death to banishment as minor
officials in the possessions overseas.
Thus Cuba, Mexico, South and Central America, and the Philippines were
provided with the ablest Spanish advocates of modern ideas. In no other
way could liberalism have been spread so widely or more effectively.
Besides these officeholders there had been from the earliest days
noblemen, temporarily out of favor at Court, in banishment in the
colonies. Cavite had some of these exiles, who were called "caja
abierta," or carte blanche, because their generous allowances, which
could be drawn whenever there were government funds, seemed without
limit to the Filipinos. The Spanish residents of the Philippines were
naturally glad to entertain, supply money to, and otherwise serve
these men of noble birth, who might at any time be restored to favor
and again be influential, and this gave them additional prestige in the
eyes of the Filipinos. One of these exiles, whose descendants yet live
in these Islands, passed from prisoner in Cavite to viceroy in Mexico.
Francisco Mercado lived near enough to hear of the "cajas abiertas"
(exiles) and their ways, if he did not actually meet some of them
and personally experience the charm of their courtesy. They were as
different from the ruder class of Spaniards who then were coming to
the Islands as the few banished officials were unlike the general run
of officeholders. The contrast naturally suggested that the majority of
the Spaniards in the Philippines, both in official and in private life,
were not creditable representatives of their country. This charge,
insisted on with greater vehemence as subsequent events furnished
further reasons for doing so, embittered the controversies of the
last century of Spanish rule. The very persons who realized that the
accusation was true of themselves, were those who most resented it,
and the opinion of them which they knew the Filipinos held but dared
not voice, rankled in their breasts. They welcomed every disparagement
of the Philippines and its people, and thus made profitable a
senseless and abusive campaign which was carried on by unscrupulous,
irresponsible writers of such defective education that vilification
was their sole argument. Their charges were easily disproved, but they
had enough cunning to invent new charges continually, and prejudice
gave ready credence to them.
Finally an unreasoning fury broke out and in blind passion innocent
persons were struck down; the taste for blood once aroused,
irresponsible writers like that Retana who has now become Rizal's
biographer, whetted the savage appetite for fresh victims. The
last fifty years of Spanish rule in the Philippines was a small
saturnalia of revenge with hardly a lucid interval for the governing
power to reflect or an opportunity for the reasonable element to
intervene. Somewhat similarly the Bourbons in France had hoped to
postpone the day of reckoning for their mistakes by misdeeds done
in fear to terrorize those who sought reforms. The aristocracy of
France paid back tenfold each drop of innocent blood that was shed,
but while the unreasoning world recalls the French Revolution with
horror, the student of history thinks more of the evils which made
it a natural result. Mirabeau in vain sought to restrain his aroused
countrymen, just as he had vainly pleaded with the aristocrats to end
their excesses. Rizal, who held Mirabeau for his hero among the men of
the French Revolution, knew the historical lesson and sought to sound
a warning, but he was unheeded by the Spaniards and misunderstood by
many of his countrymen.
At about the time of the arrival of the Spanish political exiles
we find in Manila a proof of the normal mildness of Spain in
the Philippines. The Inquisition, of dread name elsewhere, in the
Philippines affected only Europeans, had before it two English-speaking
persons, an Irish doctor and a county merchant accused of being
Freemasons. The kind-hearted Friar inquisitor dismissed the culprits
with warnings, and excepting some Spanish political matters in which
it took part, this was the nearest that the institution ever came to
exercising its functions here.
The sufferings of the Indians in the Spanish-American gold mines, too,
had no Philippine counterpart, for at the instance of the friars the
Church early forbade the enslaving of the people. Neither friars nor
government have any records in the Philippines which warrant belief
that they were responsible for the severe punishments of the period
from '72 to '98. Both were connected with opposition to reforms
which appeared likely to jeopardize their property or to threaten
their prerogatives, and in this they were only human, but here their
selfish interests and activities seem to cease.
For religious reasons the friar orders combatted modern ideas which
they feared might include atheistical teachings such as had made
trouble in France, and the Government was against the introduction of
latter-day thought of democratic tendency, but in both instances the
opposition may well have been believed to be for the best interest
of the Philippine people. However mistaken, their action can only be
deplored not censured. The black side of this matter was the rousing
of popular passion, and it was done by sheets subsidized to argue;
their editors, however, resorted to abuse in order to conceal the fact
that they had not the ability to perform the services for which they
were hired. While some individual members of both the religious orders
and of the Government were influenced by these inflaming attacks,
the interests concerned, as organizations, seem to have had a policy
of self-defense, and not of revenge.
The theory here advanced must wait for the judgment of the reader
till the later events have been submitted. However, Rizal himself
may be called in to prove that the record and policy is what has been
asserted, for otherwise he would hardly have disregarded, as he did,
the writings of Motley and Prescott, historians whom he could have
quoted with great advantage to support the attacks he would surely
have not failed to make had they seemed to him warranted, for he
never was wanting in knowledge, resourcefulness or courage where his
country was concerned.
No definite information is available as to what part Francisco
Mercado took during the disturbed two years when the English held
Manila and Judge Anda carried on a guerilla warfare. The Dominicans
were active in enlisting their tenants to fight against the invaders,
and probably he did his share toward the Spanish defense either with
contributions or personal service. The attitude of the region in
which he lived strengthens this surmise, for only after long-continued
wrongs and repeatedly broken promises of redress did Filipino loyalty
fail. This was a century too early for the country around Manila,
which had been better protected and less abused than the provinces
to the north where the Ilokanos revolted.
Binan, however, was within the sphere of English influence, for
Anda's campaign was not quite so formidable as the inscription on his
monument in Manila represents it to be, and he was far indeed from
being the great conqueror that the tablet on the Santa Cruz Church
describes him. Because of its nearness to Manila and Cavite and
its rich gardens, British soldiers and sailors often visited Binan,
but as the inhabitants never found occasion to abandon their homes,
they evidently suffered no serious inconvenience.
Commerce, a powerful factor, destroying the hermit character of
the Islands, gained by the short experience of freer trade under
England's rule, since the Filipinos obtained a taste for articles
before unused, which led them to be discontented and insistent, till
the Manila market finally came to be better supplied. The contrast
of the British judicial system with the Spanish tribunals was also a
revelation, for the foulest blot upon the colonial administration of
Spain was her iniquitous courts of justice, and this was especially
true of the Philippines.
Anda's triumphal entry into the capital was celebrated with a wholesale
hanging of Chinese, which must have made Francisco Mercado glad that
he was now so identified with the country as to escape the prejudice
against his race.
A few years later came the expulsion of the Jesuit fathers and the
confiscation of their property. It certainly weakened the government;
personal acquaintance counted largely with the Filipinos; whole
parishes knew Spain and the Church only through their parish priest,
and the parish priest was usually a Jesuit whose courtesy equalled that
of the most aristocratic officeholder or of any exiled "caja abierta."
Francisco Mercado did not live in a Jesuit parish but in the
neighboring hacienda of St. John the Baptist at Kalamba, where there
was a great dam and an extensive irrigation system which caused the
land to rival in fertility the rich soil of Binan. Everybody in his
neighborhood knew that the estate had been purchased with money left
in Mexico by pious Spaniards who wanted to see Christianity spread in
the Philippines, and it seemed to them sacrilege that the government
should take such property for its own secular uses.
The priests in Binan were Filipinos and were usually leaders among
the secular clergy, for the parish was desirable beyond most in the
archdiocese because of its nearness to Manila, its excellent climate,
its well-to-do parishioners and the great variety of its useful and
ornamental plants and trees. Many of the fruits and vegetables of
Binan were little known elsewhere, for they were of American origin,
brought by Dominicans on the voyages from Spain by way of Mexico. They
were introduced first into the great gardens at the hacienda house,
which was a comfortable and spacious building adjoining the church,
and the favorite resting place for members of the Order in Manila.
The attendance of the friars on Sundays and fete days gave to the
religious services on these occasions a dignity usually belonging to
city churches. Sometimes, too, some of the missionaries from China
and other Dominican notables would be seen in Binan. So the people
not only had more of the luxuries and the pomp of life than most
Filipinos, but they had a broader outlook upon it. Their opinion
of Spain was formed from acquaintance with many Spaniards and from
comparing them with people of other lands who often came to Manila and
investigated the region close to it, especially the show spots such
as Binan. Then they were on the road to the fashionable baths at Los
Banos, where the higher officials often resorted. Such opportunities
gave a sort of education, and Binan people were in this way more
cultured than the dwellers in remote places, whose only knowledge of
their sovereign state was derived from a single Spaniard, the friar
curate of their parish.
Monastic training consists in withdrawing from the world and living
isolated under strict rule, and this would scarcely seem to be
the best preparation for such responsibility as was placed upon the
Friars. Troubles were bound to come, and the people of Binan, knowing
the ways of the world, would soon be likely to complain and demand the