The laws do not appear to be bad in themselves, but the dilatoriness with which they are administered has the effect of rendering them as baneful to those living under them as if they were radically bad; the delays and accidents inseparable from the mode of conducting legal business are very vexatious, and frequently from its cost it is quite inefficient for its purposes of justice. However, Spain and its colonies are not singular in that respect, as there is one great and flourishing country which I could name, where the same defects exist, although, thank God, in a less degree than they do either in the colony of Spain, or in that country itself; so the less said about the mote in our brother’s eye, the better for those who have at this moment a beam in the organ of their own judicial executive.

In conducting a pleito at Manilla, all is done by writing; first, the charge is made out and filed; then comes an answer to the charge; then a counter-answer is put in, and that again is replied to; and so on they go for any length of time, determined by the weight of the purses of the respective contending parties, till, if no more is to be said, or if one or both of them gets tired of the expense, and the case is decided, the other, if he be a rich man, can refer the whole affair to Spain, where the same pleadings have to be again gone through, and all the vexation and expense re-incurred, besides that the decision of the case may with a little management be protracted for any indefinite length of time. This is not worse than what happens at home, and is similar to some of our Scotch cases in former times, when for a century or more one case would be agitated to gratify family dislike or prejudice. That no one may think I exaggerate, it may be as well to mention a case which is still undecided at this moment, and which originated about 1731, between the lairds of Kilantringan and Miltonise in Galloway, although near kinsmen, namesakes, and neighbours.

There are few things more dreaded by the Spaniards themselves than a lawsuit with one another. Many of them, however, are glad of the chance it gives them to be revenged on people with whom they are not upon good terms. So vile is the whole law and practice relating to the testamentary disposal of property, and to such lengths have the abuses in this particular branch of it gone, that it has become a proverb among Spaniards to say that a wise man would prefer being a trustee on an estate, to being heir to it; and several people at Manilla are well known to be living on their gains from executorships, &c., having no other means of support. These persons, although their incomes are almost universally known to be so derived, are not in the least shunned as dishonest people, but are looked upon as being perfectly entitled to feather their own nests in place of performing their duty, as we should understand it to be in Britain.

The police laws and regulations are also badly administered, being very shameful to the Government which permits things to go on under the same loose system as before. Were there a more numerous and efficient police force scattered over the country, none of the Spaniards would be afraid, as many of them now actually are, to live out of town, or to make distant excursions to the country, from fear of the tulisanes, or robber-bands, which are scattered about in various places, and are found pursuing their avocations in the neighbourhood of the capital, although not so boldly as they did a few years since. These robbers plunder the country in bands perfectly organized, and bodies of them are generally existing within a few miles of Manilla,—the wilds and forests of the Laguna being favourite haunts, as well as the shores of the Bay of Manilla, from which they can come by night, without leaving a trace of the direction they have taken, in bodies of ten and twenty men at a time, in a large banca. They have apparently some friends in Manilla, who plan out their enterprises, send them intelligence, and direct their attacks; so that every now and then they are heard of as having gutted some rich native or Mestizo’s house in the suburbs of Manilla, after which they generally manage to get away clear before the alguacils come up.

The houses of Europeans are also occasionally attacked, although much less boldly within the last year or two; yet it is the custom for people to retire to bed, even in the heart of the town without the walls, with pistols, a sword, or some other weapon within reach. That these people do immense damage there is no doubt, as they not only plunder the country people of buffaloes and horses, but rifle their houses, if no better prey is to be had, to such an extent, that the natives are afraid to live at any distance from each other in many parts of the country, solely through fear of them. From this cause, patches of fine paddy land in out-of-the-way districts are left uncultivated, or are hurriedly ploughed and sown by adventurous persons, who after doing so retire into the nearest village to live, till the time comes to reap as much of the paddy as the deer and numerous wild pigs have left untouched.

The punishments of these bad characters are severe enough when justice chances to get hold of them; and, should their crimes be atrocious, they occasionally suffer death. Sometimes they are garroted, which is done in this way. After being seated at the place of execution, with the back towards a high post of wood, the culprit’s neck is encircled by an iron collar attached to the post, and capable of compression by a powerful screw passing through the post, which, on the signal being made, the executioner turns, and the victim is choked in a second. The practice is much less disgusting than hanging, as no effects are visible to an on-looker beyond the convulsive movement of a frame loaded with heavy irons to prevent a severe and disgusting struggle with departing life.

A good many of the tulisanes are soldiers who, after committing some peccadillo, feared its discovery and punishment, and flying to the wilds have joined or organised a troop from among the bad characters in the neighbourhood of their hiding-place.

These executions are not unfrequent at Manilla. One morning, when riding near the usual place of execution on the sea-beach, I saw six deserters, who had composed a band of atrocious robbers, suffer death from the muskets of their former comrades; those who were not killed at once, having an end put to their existence by the pistols of a serjeant, who stepped close up to them before discharging the piece.

Truly it was a sad sight to see their former comrades degraded into executioners. The number of women who had collected to witness the last act of this tragedy was very great, very much outnumbering the men present. But they were principally composed of the most worthless class of females; yet on many of them the example appeared to make a considerable impression.

I have no doubt, whatever the present popular mawkish sentimental-mongers may write to the contrary, that these exhibitions, when happening rarely, tend, in a great measure, to restrain the passions of the evil-disposed, although some of them may think it bold, among their hardened associates, to turn the spectacle into a farce. I firmly believe that no human being can in cold blood look upon another’s death by violent means without being forced to think about it for some time, greater or less, according to his or her temperament.

For minor offences criminals are sometimes flogged through the town. They are mounted on horseback, with their legs manacled or bound under the horse’s belly, and a portion of their punishment is administered at several of the most public places in the town, by an executioner dressed in red, and with a veil over his face. Thus, supposing a thief sentenced to receive a hundred lashes or blows, they would most probably be administered by twenty at a time, in five different places throughout the capital, proclamation being made at each place, previous to the punishment, of the offence and of the name of the offender, who is dressed in the ordinary mode, with a shirt and pair of trousers, and exposed to the full view of the attending crowd.

Confinement in the jail at night, with labour in irons on the public roads during the day, is also a usual punishment; criminals being generally linked in pairs by a chain round the leg of each, and taken out, under a guard, to work on the streets or roads at Manilla, Cavite, or Zamboanga, at sunrise, and led back to jail at sunset. But as they are not forced by the soldiers to work much harder than they like, they take care not to injure themselves by overtasking their powers of labour, and are not apparently much discontented with their condition, from which I have seldom or never heard of their attempting to escape, although neither their food nor their lodgings in jail are very enticing; the former being bad black-looking rice and water, and the jail generally swarming with vermin.

They appear to prefer the partial liberty of getting out of jail, and of working in the streets in chains, to the monotony of a residence within the walls of the prison, and the sedentary labour they might be forced to pursue there.