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.1 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 employÉs.” 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,2 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.