by José Rizal
Produced by Jeroen Hellingman.
The Social Cancer
A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere from the Spanish of Jose Rizal
By
Charles Derbyshire
Manila Philippine Education Company New York: World Book Company 1912
THE NOVELS OF JOSE RIZAL
Translated from Spanish into English
BY CHARLES DERBYSHIRE
THE SOCIAL CANCER (NOLI ME TANGERE) THE REIGN OF GREED (EL FILIBUSTERISMO)
Copyright, 1912, by Philippine Education Company. Entered at Stationers' Hall. Registrado en las Islas Filipinas. All rights reserved.
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
I
"We travel rapidly in these historical sketches. The reader flies in his express train in a few minutes through a couple of centuries. The centuries pass more slowly to those to whom the years are doled out day by day. Institutions grow and beneficently develop themselves, making their way into the hearts of generations which are shorter-lived than they, attracting love and respect, and winning loyal obedience; and then as gradually forfeiting by their shortcomings the allegiance which had been honorably gained in worthier periods. We see wealth and greatness; we see corruption and vice; and one seems to follow so close upon the other, that we fancy they must have always co-existed. We look more steadily, and we perceive long periods of time, in which there is first a growth and then a decay, like what we perceive in a tree of the forest."
FROUDE, _Annals of an English Abbey_.
Monasticism's record in the Philippines presents no new general factto the eye of history. The attempt to eliminate the eternal femininefrom her natural and normal sphere in the scheme of things there metwith the same certain and signal disaster that awaits every perversionof human activity. Beginning with a band of zealous, earnest men,sincere in their convictions, to whom the cause was all and theirpersonalities nothing, it there, as elsewhere, passed through itsusual cycle of usefulness, stagnation, corruption, and degeneration.
To the unselfish and heroic efforts of the early friars Spainin large measure owed her dominion over the Philippine Islandsand the Filipinos a marked advance on the road to civilization andnationality. In fact, after the dreams of sudden wealth from gold andspices had faded, the islands were retained chiefly as a missionaryconquest and a stepping-stone to the broader fields of Asia, withManila as a depot for the Oriental trade. The records of those earlyyears are filled with tales of courage and heroism worthy of Spain'sproudest years, as the missionary fathers labored with unflaggingzeal in disinterested endeavor for the spread of the Faith and thebetterment of the condition of the Malays among whom they foundthemselves. They won the confidence of the native peoples, gatheredthem into settlements and villages, led them into the ways of peace,and became their protectors, guides, and counselors.
In those times the cross and the sword went hand in hand, but in thePhilippines the latter was rarely needed or used. The lightness andvivacity of the Spanish character, with its strain of Orientalism,its fertility of resource in meeting new conditions, its adaptabilityin dealing with the dwellers in warmer lands, all played their part inthis as in the other conquests. Only on occasions when some stubbornresistance was met with, as in Manila and the surrounding country,where the most advanced of the native peoples dwelt and where some ofthe forms and beliefs of Islam had been established, was it necessaryto resort to violence to destroy the native leaders and replace themwith the missionary fathers. A few sallies by young Salcedo, the Cortezof the Philippine conquest, with a company of the splendid infantry,which was at that time the admiration and despair of martial Europe,soon effectively exorcised any idea of resistance that even the boldestand most intransigent of the native leaders might have entertained.
For the most part, no great persuasion was needed to turn a simple,imaginative, fatalistic people from a few vague animistic deitiesto the systematic iconology and the elaborate ritual of the SpanishChurch. An obscure _Bathala_ or a dim _Malyari_ was easily supersededby or transformed into a clearly defined _Dios_, and in the case ofany especially tenacious "demon," he could without much difficultybe merged into a Christian saint or devil. There was no organizedpriesthood to be overcome, the primitive religious observancesconsisting almost entirely of occasional orgies presided over byan old woman, who filled the priestly offices of interpreter forthe unseen powers and chief eater at the sacrificial feast. Withtheir unflagging zeal, their organization, their elaborate formsand ceremonies, the missionaries were enabled to win the confidenceof the natives, especially as the greater part of them learned thelocal language and identified their lives with the communities undertheir care. Accordingly, the people took kindly to their new teachersand rulers, so that in less than a generation Spanish authority wasgenerally recognized in the settled portions of the Philippines,and in the succeeding years the missionaries gradually extended thisarea by forming settlements from among the wilder peoples, whom theypersuaded to abandon the more objectionable features of their oldroving, often predatory, life and to group themselves into towns andvillages "under the bell."
The tactics employed in the conquest and the subsequent behavior ofthe conquerors were true to the old Spanish nature, so succinctlycharacterized by a plain-spoken Englishman of Mary's reign, when thewar-cry of Castile encircled the globe and even hovered ominouslynear the "sceptered isle," when in the intoxication of power characterstands out so sharply defined: "They be verye wyse and politicke, andcan, thorowe ther wysdome, reform and brydell theyr owne natures fora tyme, and applye ther conditions to the manners of those men withwhom they meddell gladlye by friendshippe; whose mischievous manersa man shall never know untyll he come under ther subjection; but thenshall he parfectlye parceve and fele them: for in dissimulations untyllthey have ther purposes, and afterwards in oppression and tyrannye,when they can obtain them, they do exceed all other nations upon theearthe." [1]
In the working out of this spirit, with all the indomitable courageand fanatical ardor derived from the long contests with the Moors,they reduced the native peoples to submission, but still not to thegalling yoke which they fastened upon the aborigines of America, tomake one Las Casas shine amid the horde of Pizarros. There was somecompulsory labor in timber-cutting and ship-building, with enforcedmilitary service as rowers and soldiers for expeditions to the Moluccasand the coasts of Asia, but nowhere the unspeakable atrocities whichin Mexico, Hispaniola, and South America drove mothers to strangletheir babes at birth and whole tribes to prefer self-immolation to theliving death in the mines and slave-pens. Quite differently from thecase in America, where entire islands and districts were depopulated,to bring on later the curse of negro slavery, in the Philippinesthe fact appears that the native population really increased andthe standard of living was raised under the stern, yet beneficent,tutelage of the missionary fathers. The great distance and thehardships of the journey precluded the coming of many irresponsibleadventurers from Spain and, fortunately for the native population,no great mineral wealth was ever discovered in the Philippine Islands.
The system of government was, in its essential features, a simpleone. The missionary priests drew the inhabitants of the townsand villages about themselves or formed new settlements, and withprofuse use of symbol and symbolism taught the people the Fa
ith,laying particular stress upon "the fear of God," as administered bythem, reconciling the people to their subjection by inculcating theChristian virtues of patience and humility. When any recalcitrantsrefused to accept the new order, or later showed an inclination tobreak away from it, the military forces, acting usually under secretdirections from the padre, made raids in the disaffected parts withall the unpitying atrocity the Spanish soldiery were ever capable ofdisplaying in their dealings with a weaker people. After sufficientpunishment had been inflicted and a wholesome fear inspired, the padrevery opportunely interfered in the natives' behalf, by which meansthey were convinced that peace and security lay in submission to theauthorities, especially to the curate of their town or district. Asingle example will suffice to make the method clear: not an isolatedinstance but a typical case chosen from among the mass of recordsleft by the chief actors themselves.
Fray Domingo Perez, evidently a man of courage and conviction, for helater lost his life in the work of which he wrote, was the Dominicanvicar on the Zambales coast when that Order temporarily took over thedistrict from the Recollects. In a report written for his superior in1680 he outlines the method clearly: "In order that those whom we haveassembled in the three villages may persevere in their settlements,the most efficacious fear and the one most suited to their nature isthat the Spaniards of the fort and presidio of Paynaven [2] of whomthey have a very great fear, may come very often to the said villagesand overrun the land, and penetrate even into their old recesses wherethey formerly lived; and if perchance they should find anything plantedin the said recesses that they would destroy it and cut it down withoutleaving them anything. And so that they may see the father protectsthem, when the said Spaniards come to the village, the father opposesthem and takes the part of the Indians. But it is always necessaryin this matter for the soldiers to conquer, and the father is alwaysvery careful always to inform the Spaniards by whom and where anythingis planted which it may be necessary to destroy, and that the edictswhich his Lordship, the governor, sent them be carried out .... Butat all events said Spaniards are to make no trouble for the Indianswhom they find in the villages, but rather must treat them well." [3]
This in 1680: the Dominican transcriber of the record in 1906 hasadded a very illuminating note, revealing the immutability of thesystem and showing that the rulers possessed in a superlative degreethe Bourbonesque trait of learning nothing and forgetting nothing:"Even when I was a missionary to the heathens from 1882 to 1892,I had occasion to observe the said policy, to inform the chief ofthe fortress of the measures that he ought to take, and to make afalse show on the other side so that it might have no influence onthe fortress."
Thus it stands out in bold relief as a system built up and maintainedby fraud and force, bound in the course of nature to last only aslong as the deception could be carried on and the repressive forcekept up to sufficient strength. Its maintenance required that thedifferent sections be isolated from each other so that there couldbe no growth toward a common understanding and cooeperation, and itspermanence depended upon keeping the people ignorant and contented withtheir lot, held under strict control by religious and political fear.
Yet it was a vast improvement over their old mode of life and theircondition was bettered as they grew up to such a system. Only withthe passing of the years and the increase of wealth and influence,the ease and luxury invited by these, and the consequent corruption soinduced, with the insatiable longing ever for more wealth and greaterinfluence, did the poison of greed and grasping power enter the systemto work its insidious way into every part, slowly transforming thebeneficent institution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuriesinto an incubus weighing upon all the activities of the people inthe nineteenth, an unyielding bar to the development of the country,a hideous anachronism in these modern times.
It must be remembered also that Spain, in the years following herbrilliant conquests of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, loststrength and vigor through the corruption at home induced by theunearned wealth that flowed into the mother country from the colonies,and by the draining away of her best blood. Nor did her sons everdevelop that economic spirit which is the permanent foundation ofall empire, but they let the wealth of the Indies flow through theircountry, principally to London and Amsterdam, there to form in morepractical hands the basis of the British and Dutch colonial empires.
The priest and the soldier were supreme, so her best sons took upeither the cross or the sword to maintain her dominion in the distantcolonies, a movement which, long continued, spelled for her a form ofnational suicide. The soldier expended his strength and generally laiddown his life on alien soil, leaving no fit successor of his own stockto carry on the work according to his standards. The priest under thecelibate system, in its better days left no offspring at all and inthe days of its corruption none bred and reared under the influencesthat make for social and political progress. The dark chambers of theInquisition stifled all advance in thought, so the civilization andthe culture of Spain, as well as her political system, settled intorigid forms to await only the inevitable process of stagnation anddecay. In her proudest hour an old soldier, who had lost one of hishands fighting her battles against the Turk at Lepanto, employed theother in writing the masterpiece of her literature, which is reallya caricature of the nation.
There is much in the career of Spain that calls to mind the dazzlingbeauty of her "dark-glancing daughters," with its early bloom, itsstartling--almost morbid--brilliance, and its premature decay. Rapidand brilliant was her rise, gradual and inglorious her steady decline,from the bright morning when the banners of Castile and Aragon wereflung triumphantly from the battlements of the Alhambra, to the shortsummer, not so long gone, when at Cavite and Santiago with swift,decisive havoc the last ragged remnants of the once world-dominatingpower were blown into space and time, to hover disembodied there, alesson and a warning to future generations. Whatever her final place inthe records of mankind, whether as the pioneer of modern civilizationor the buccaneer of the nations or, as would seem most likely, agoodly mixture of both, she has at least--with the exception onlyof her great mother, Rome--furnished the most instructive lessons inpolitical pathology yet recorded, and the advice to students of worldprogress to familiarize themselves with her history is even more apttoday than when it first issued from the encyclopedic mind of Macaulaynearly a century ago. Hardly had she reached the zenith of her powerwhen the disintegration began, and one by one her brilliant conquestsdropped away, to leave her alone in her faded splendor, with naught buther vaunting pride left, another "Niobe of nations." In the countriesmore in contact with the trend of civilization and more susceptibleto revolutionary influences from the mother country this separationcame from within, while in the remoter parts the archaic and outgrownsystem dragged along until a stronger force from without destroyed it.
Nowhere was the crystallization of form and principle more pronouncedthan in religious life, which fastened upon the mother country adeadening weight that hampered all progress, and in the colonies,notably in the Philippines, virtually converted her government intoa hagiarchy that had its face toward the past and either could notor would not move with the current of the times. So, when "the shotheard round the world," the declaration of humanity's right to be andto become, in its all-encircling sweep, reached the lands controlledby her it was coldly received and blindly rejected by the governingpowers, and there was left only the slower, subtler, but none theless sure, process of working its way among the people to burst intime in rebellion and the destruction of the conservative forces thatwould repress it.
In the opening years of the nineteenth century the friar orders in thePhilippines had reached the apogee of their power and usefulness. Theirinfluence was everywhere felt and acknowledged, while the countrystill prospered under the effects of the vigorous and progressiveadministrations of Anda and Vargas in the preceding century. Nativelevies had fought loyally under Spanish leadership against Dutchand British invaders, or in suppressing lo
cal revolts among theirown people, which were always due to some specific grievance, neverdirected definitely against the Spanish sovereignty. The Philippineswere shut off from contact with any country but Spain, and even thiscommunication was restricted and carefully guarded. There was anelaborate central government which, however, hardly touched the lifeof the native peoples, who were guided and governed by the parishpriests, each town being in a way an independent entity.
Of this halcyon period, just before the process of disintegrationbegan, there has fortunately been left a record which may becharacterized as the most notable Spanish literary productionrelating to the Philippines, being the calm, sympathetic, judicialaccount of one who had spent his manhood in the work there and who,full of years and experience, sat down to tell the story of theirlife. [4] In it there are no puerile whinings, no querulous cursesthat tropical Malays do not order their lives as did the people ofthe Spanish village where he may have been reared, no selfish lamentsof ingratitude over blessings unasked and only imperfectly understoodby the natives, no fatuous self-deception as to the real conditions,but a patient consideration of the difficulties encountered, the goodaccomplished, and the unavoidable evils incident to any human work. Thecountry and the people, too, are described with the charming simplicityof the eyes that see clearly, the brain that ponders deeply, and theheart that beats sympathetically. Through all the pages of his accountruns the quiet strain of peace and contentment, of satisfaction withthe existing order, for he had looked upon the creation and saw thatit was good. There is "neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," but thedeliberate recital of the facts warmed and illumined by the genialityof a soul to whom age and experience had brought, not a sour cynicism,but the mellowing influence of a ripened philosophy. He was suchan old man as may fondly be imagined walking through the streets ofParanaque in stately benignity amid the fear and respect of the brownpeople over whom he watched.
But in all his chronicle there is no suggestion of anything more tohope for, anything beyond. Beautiful as the picture is, it is that ofa system which had reached maturity: a condition of stagnation, notof growth. In less than a decade, the terrific convulsions in Europeanpolitics made themselves felt even in the remote Philippines, and thenbegan the gradual drawing away of the people from their rulers--blindgropings and erratic wanderings at first, but nevertheless persistentand vigorous tendencies.
The first notable influence was the admission of representativesfor the Philippines into the Spanish Cortes under the revolutionarygovernments and the abolition of the trade monopoly with Mexico. Thelast galleon reached Manila in 1815, and soon foreign commercialinterests were permitted, in a restricted way, to enter thecountry. Then with the separation of Mexico and the other Americancolonies from Spain a more marked change was brought about in thatdirect communication was established with the mother country, andthe absolutism of the hagiarchy first questioned by the numbers ofPeninsular Spaniards who entered the islands to trade, some evento settle and rear families there. These also affected the nativepopulation in the larger centers by the spread of their ideas, whichwere not always in conformity with those that for several centuriesthe friars had been inculcating into their wards. Moreover, therewas a not-inconsiderable portion of the population, sprung from thefriars themselves, who were eager to adopt the customs and ideas ofthe Spanish immigrants.
The suppression of many of the monasteries in Spain in 1835 causeda large influx of the disestablished monks into the Philippines insearch for a haven, and a home, thus bringing about a conflict withthe native clergy, who were displaced from their best holdings toprovide berths for the newcomers. At the same time, the increase ofeducation among the native priests brought the natural demand formore equitable treatment by the Spanish friar, so insistent that iteven broke out into open rebellion in 1843 on the part of a youngTagalog who thought himself aggrieved in this respect.
Thus the struggle went on, with stagnation above and some growth below,so that the governors were ever getting further away from the governed,and for such a movement there is in the course of nature but oneinevitable result, especially when outside influences are actively atwork penetrating the social system and making for better things. Amongthese influences four cumulative ones may be noted: the spread ofjournalism, the introduction of steamships into the Philippines,the return of the Jesuits, and the opening of the Suez Canal.
The printing-press entered the islands with the conquest, but its usehad been strictly confined to religious works until about the middle ofthe past century, when there was a sudden awakening and within a fewyears five journals were being published. In 1848 appeared the firstregular newspaper of importance, _El Diario de Manila_, and about adecade later the principal organ of the Spanish-Filipino population,_El Comercio_, which, with varying vicissitudes, has continued downto the present. While rigorously censored, both politically andreligiously, and accessible to only an infinitesimal portion of thepeople, they still performed the service of letting a few rays oflight into the Cimmerian intellectual gloom of the time and place.
With the coming of steam navigation communication between thedifferent parts of the islands was facilitated and trade encouraged,with all that such a change meant in the way of breaking up the oldisolation and tending to a common understanding. Spanish power, too,was for the moment more firmly established, and Moro piracy in Luzonand the Bisayan Islands, which had been so great a drawback to thedevelopment of the country, was forever ended.
The return of the Jesuits produced two general results tending todissatisfaction with the existing order. To them was assigned themissionary field of Mindanao, which meant the displacement of theRecollect Fathers in the missions there, and for these other berthshad to be found. Again the native clergy were the losers in that theyhad to give up their best parishes in Luzon, especially around Manilaand Cavite, so the breach was further widened and the soil sown withdiscontent. But more far-reaching than this immediate result wasthe educational movement inaugurated by the Jesuits. The native,already feeling the vague impulses from without and stirred by thegrowing restlessness of the times, here saw a new world open beforehim. A considerable portion of the native population in the largercenters, who had shared in the economic progress of the colony, wereenabled to look beyond their daily needs and to afford their childrenan opportunity for study and advancement--a condition and a need metby the Jesuits for a time.
With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 communication with themother country became cheaper, quicker, surer, so that large numbersof Spaniards, many of them in sympathy with the republican movementsat home, came to the Philippines in search of fortunes and generallyleft half-caste families who had imbibed their ideas. Native boyswho had already felt the intoxication of such learning as the schoolsof Manila afforded them began to dream of greater wonders in Spain,now that the journey was possible for them. So began the definitemovements that led directly to the disintegration of the friar regime.
In the same year occurred the revolution in the mother country,which had tired of the old corrupt despotism. Isabella II was driveninto exile and the country left to waver about uncertainly for severalyears, passing through all the stages of government from red radicalismto absolute conservatism, finally adjusting itself to the middle courseof constitutional monarchism. During the effervescent and ephemeralrepublic there was sent to the Philippines a governor who set to workto modify the old system and establish a government more in harmonywith modern ideas and more democratic in form. His changes were hailedwith delight by the growing class of Filipinos who were striving formore consideration in their own country, and who, in their enthusiasmand the intoxication of the moment, perhaps became more radical thanwas safe under the conditions--surely too radical for their religiousguides watching and waiting behind the veil of the temple.
In January, 1872, an uprising occurred in the naval arsenal at Cavite,with a Spanish non-commissioned officer as one of the leaders. Fromthe meager evidence now obtainable, this would seem to have beenpure
ly a local mutiny over the service questions of pay and treatment,but in it the friars saw their opportunity. It was blazoned forth,with all the wild panic that was to characterize the actions of thegoverning powers from that time on, as the premature outbreak ofa general insurrection under the leadership of the native clergy,and rigorous repressive measures were demanded. Three nativepriests, notable for their popularity among their own people, one anoctogenarian and the other two young canons of the Manila Cathedral,were summarily garroted, along with the renegade Spanish officerwho had participated in the mutiny. No record of any trial of thesepriests has ever been brought to light. The Archbishop, himself asecular [5] clergyman, stoutly refused to degrade them from theirholy office, and they wore their sacerdotal robes at the execution,which was conducted in a hurried, fearful manner. At the same timea number of young Manilans who had taken conspicuous part in the"liberal" demonstrations were deported to the Ladrone Islands or toremote islands of the Philippine group itself.
This was the beginning of the end. Yet there immediately followedthe delusive calm which ever precedes the fatal outburst, lullingthose marked for destruction to a delusive security. The two decadesfollowing were years of quiet, unobtrusive growth, during whichthe Philippine Islands made the greatest economic progress in theirhistory. But this in itself was preparing the final catastrophe, forif there be any fact well established in human experience it is thatwith economic development the power of organized religion begins towane--the rise of the merchant spells the decline of the priest. Asordid change, from masses and mysteries to sugar and shoes, this isoften said to be, but it should be noted that the epochs of greatesteconomic activity have been those during which the generality ofmankind have lived fuller and freer lives, and above all that in sucheras the finest intellects and the grandest souls have been developed.
Nor does an institution that has been slowly growing for threecenturies, molding the very life and fiber of the people, disintegratewithout a violent struggle, either in its own constitution or in thelife of the people trained under it. Not only the ecclesiastical butalso the social and political system of the country was controlled bythe religious orders, often silently and secretly, but none the lesseffectively. This is evident from the ceaseless conflict that went onbetween the religious orders and the Spanish political administrators,who were at every turn thwarted in their efforts to keep the governmentabreast of the times.
The shock of the affair of 1872 had apparently stunned the Filipinos,but it had at the same time brought them to the parting of the ways andinduced a vague feeling that there was something radically wrong, whichcould only be righted by a closer union among themselves. They beganto consider that their interests and those of the governing powers werenot the same. In these feelings of distrust toward the friars they werestimulated by the great numbers of immigrant Spaniards who were thenentering the country, many of whom had taken part in the republicanmovements at home and who, upon the restoration of the monarchy,no doubt thought it safer for them to be at as great a distance aspossible from the throne. The young Filipinos studying in Spain camefrom different parts of the islands, and by their association therein a foreign land were learning to forget their narrow sectionalism;hence the way was being prepared for some concerted action. Thus,aided and encouraged by the anti-clerical Spaniards in the mothercountry, there was growing up a new generation of native leaders,who looked toward something better than the old system.
It is with this period in the history of the country--the author'sboyhood--that the story of _Noli Me Tangere_ deals. Typical scenes andcharacters are sketched from life with wonderful accuracy, and thepicture presented is that of a master-mind, who knew and loved hissubject. Terror and repression were the order of the day, with evera growing unrest in the higher circles, while the native populationat large seemed to be completely _cowed_--"brutalized" is the termrepeatedly used by Rizal in his political essays. Spanish writers ofthe period, observing only the superficial movements,--some of whichwere indeed fantastical enough, for
"they, Who in oppression's darkness caved have dwelt, They are not eagles, nourished with the day; What marvel, then, at times, if they mistake their way?"
--and not heeding the currents at work below, take great delight inridiculing the pretensions of the young men seeking advancement,while they indulge in coarse ribaldry over the wretched conditionof the great mass of the "Indians." The author, however, himself a"miserable Indian," vividly depicts the unnatural conditions anddominant characters produced under the outworn system of fraud andforce, at the same time presenting his people as living, feeling,struggling individuals, with all the frailties of human nature and allthe possibilities of mankind, either for good or evil; incidentallyhe throws into marked contrast the despicable depreciation used bythe Spanish writers in referring to the Filipinos, making clear theapplication of the self-evident proposition that no ordinary humanbeing in the presence of superior force can very well conduct himselfas a man unless he be treated as such.
The friar orders, deluded by their transient triumph and secure intheir pride of place, became more arrogant, more domineering thanever. In the general administration the political rulers were at everyturn thwarted, their best efforts frustrated, and if they venturedtoo far their own security threatened; for in the three-corneredwrangle which lasted throughout the whole of the Spanish domination,the friar orders had, in addition to the strength derived from theirorganization and their wealth, the Damoclean weapon of control over thenatives to hang above the heads of both governor and archbishop. Thecurates in the towns, always the real rulers, became veritable despots,so that no voice dared to raise itself against them, even in the midstof conditions which the humblest _indio_ was beginning to feel dumblyto be perverted and unnatural, and that, too, after three centuriesof training under the system that he had ever been taught to accept as"the will of God."
The friars seemed long since to have forgotten those noble aimsthat had meant so much to the founders and early workers of theirorders, if indeed the great majority of those of the later day hadever realized the meaning of their office, for the Spanish writers ofthe time delight in characterizing them as the meanest of the Spanishpeasantry, when not something worse, who had been "lassoed," taught afew ritualistic prayers, and shipped to the Philippines to be placedin isolated towns as lords and masters of the native population, withall the power and prestige over a docile people that the sacredness oftheir holy office gave them. These writers treat the matter lightly,seeing in it rather a huge joke on the "miserable Indians," andgive the friars great credit for "patriotism," a term which in thisconnection they dragged from depth to depth until it quite aptly fittedDr. Johnson's famous definition, "the last refuge of a scoundrel."
In their conduct the religious corporations, both as societies and asindividuals, must be estimated according to their own standards--theapplication of any other criterion would be palpably unfair. Theyundertook to hold the native in subjection, to regulate the essentialactivities of his life according to their ideas, so upon themmust fall the responsibility for the conditions finally attained:to destroy the freedom of the subject and then attempt to blame himfor his conduct is a paradox into which the learned men often fell,perhaps inadvertently through their deductive logic. They endeavoredto shape the lives of their Malay wards not only in this existencebut also in the next. Their vows were poverty, chastity, and obedience.
The vow of poverty was early relegated to the limbo of neglect. Only afew years after the founding of Manila royal decrees began to issue onthe subject of complaints received by the King over the usurpation oflands on the part of the priests. Using the same methods so familiar inthe heyday of the institution of monasticism in Europe--pious gifts,deathbed bequests, pilgrims' offerings--the friar orders graduallysecured the richest of the arable lands in the more thickly settledportions of the Philippines, notably the part of Luzon occupied bythe Tagalogs. Not always, however, it must in ju
stice be recorded,were such doubtful means resorted to, for there were instances wherethe missionary was the pioneer, gathering about himself a band ofdevoted natives and plunging into the unsettled parts to build upa town with its fields around it, which would later become a friarestate. With the accumulated incomes from these estates and the feesfor religious observances that poured into their treasuries, theorders in their nature of perpetual corporations became the masters ofthe situation, the lords of the country. But this condition was notaltogether objectionable; it was in the excess of their greed thatthey went astray, for the native peoples had been living under thissystem through generations and not until they began to feel that theywere not receiving fair treatment did they question the authority ofa power which not only secured them a peaceful existence in this lifebut also assured them eternal felicity in the next.
With only the shining exceptions that are produced in any system, nomatter how false its premises or how decadent it may become, to upholdfaith in the intrinsic soundness of human nature, the vow of chastitywas never much more than a myth. Through the tremendous influenceexerted over a fanatically religious people, who implicitly followedthe teachings of the reverend fathers, once their confidence hadbeen secured, the curate was seldom to be gainsaid in his desires. Bymeans of the secret influence in the confessional and the more openpolitical power wielded by him, the fairest was his to command,and the favored one and her people looked upon the choice more as anhonor than otherwise, for besides the social standing that it gave herthere was the proud prospect of becoming the mother of children whocould claim kinship with the dominant race. The curate's "companion"or the sacristan's wife was a power in the community, her family wasraised to a place of importance and influence among their own people,while she and her ecclesiastical offspring were well cared for. Onthe death or removal of the curate, it was almost invariably foundthat she had been provided with a husband or protector and a notinconsiderable amount of property--an arrangement rather appealingto a people among whom the means of living have ever been so insecure.
That this practise was not particularly offensive to the people amongwhom they dwelt may explain the situation, but to claim that it excusesthe friars approaches dangerously close to casuistry. Still, as long asthis arrangement was decently and moderately carried out, there seemsto have been no great objection, nor from a worldly point of view,with all the conditions considered, could there be much. But the oldstory of excess, of unbridled power turned toward bad ends, againrecurs, at the same time that the ideas brought in by the Spaniardswho came each year in increasing numbers and the principles observedby the young men studying in Europe cast doubt upon the fitness ofsuch a state of affairs. As they approached their downfall, like allmankind, the friars became more open, more insolent, more shameless,in their conduct.
The story of Maria Clara, as told in _Noli Me Tangere_, is by no meansan exaggerated instance, but rather one of the few clean enough tobear the light, and her fate, as depicted in the epilogue, is saidto be based upon an actual occurrence with which the author must havebeen familiar.
The vow of obedience--whether considered as to the Pope, theirhighest religious authority, or to the King of Spain, their politicalliege--might not always be so callously disregarded, but it could beevaded and defied. From the Vatican came bull after bull, from theEscorial decree after decree, only to be archived in Manila, sometimesafter a hollow pretense of compliance. A large part of the records ofSpanish domination is taken up with the wearisome quarrels that wenton between the Archbishop, representing the head of the Church, andthe friar orders, over the questions of the episcopal visitation andthe enforcement of the provisions of the Council of Trent relegatingthe monks to their original status of missionaries, with the friarsinvariably victorious in their contentions. Royal decrees orderinginquiries into the titles to the estates of the men of poverty andthose providing for the education of the natives in Spanish weremerely sneered at and left to molder in harmless quiet. Not withoutgood grounds for his contention, the friar claimed that the Spanishdominion over the Philippines depended upon him, and he thereforeconfidently set himself up as the best judge of how that dominionshould be maintained.
Thus there are presented in the Philippines of the closing quarter ofthe century just past the phenomena so frequently met with in modernsocieties, so disheartening to the people who must drag out their livesunder them, of an old system which has outworn its usefulness and isbeing called into question, with forces actively at work disintegratingit, yet with the unhappy folk bred and reared under it unprepared fora new order of things. The old faith was breaking down, its formsand beliefs, once so full of life and meaning, were being sharplyexamined, doubt and suspicion were the order of the day. Moreover,it must ever be borne in mind that in the Philippines this unrest,except in the parts where the friars were the landlords, was notgeneral among the people, the masses of whom were still sunk in their"loved Egyptian night," but affected only a very small proportion ofthe population--for the most part young men who were groping theirway toward something better, yet without any very clearly conceivedidea of what that better might be, and among whom was to be found theusual sprinkling of "sunshine patriots" and omnipresent opportunistsready for any kind of trouble that will afford them a chance to rise.
Add to the apathy of the masses dragging out their vacant lives amidthe shadows of religious superstition and to the unrest of the few,the fact that the orders were in absolute control of the politicalmachinery of the country, with the best part of the agrarian wealthamortized in their hands; add also the ever-present jealousies, pettyfeuds, and racial hatreds, for which Manila and the Philippines,with their medley of creeds and races, offer such a fertile field,all fostered by the governing class for the maintenance of the oldMachiavelian principle of "divide and rule," and the sum is aboutthe most miserable condition under which any portion of mankind evertried to fulfill nature's inexorable laws of growth.
