LITMIR.BIZ

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the orders in their nature of perpetual corporations became the masters of the situation, the lords of the country. But this condition was not altogether objectionable; it was in the excess of their greed that they went astray, for the native peoples had been living under this system through generations and not until they began to feel that they were not receiving fair treatment did they question the authority of a power which not only secured them a peaceful existence in this life but also assured them eternal felicity in the next.

       With only the shining exceptions that are produced in any system, no matter how false its premises or how decadent it may be-come, to uphold faith in the intrinsic soundness of human nature, the vow of chastity was never much more than a myth. Through the tremendous influence exerted over a fanatically religious people, who implicitly followed the teachings of the reverend fathers, once their confidence had been secured, the curate was seldom to be gainsaid in his desires. By means of the secret influence in

       the confessional and the more open political power wielded by him, the fairest was his to command, and the favored one and her

       people looked upon the choice more as an honor than otherwise, for besides the social standing that it gave her there was the proud prospect of becoming the mother of children who could claim kinship with the dominant race. The curate's "companion" or the sacristan's wife was a power in the community, her family was raised to a place of importance and influence among their own people, while she and her ecclesiastical [xxi]offspring were well cared for. On the death or removal of the curate, it was almost invariably found that she had been provided with a husband or protector and a not inconsiderable amount of property--an arrangement rather appealing to a people among whom the means of living have ever been so insecure.

       That this practise was not particularly offensive to the people among whom they dwelt may explain the situation, but to claim that

       it excuses the friars approaches dangerously close to casuistry. Still, as long as this arrangement was decently and moderately carried out, there seems to have been no great objection, nor from a worldly point of view, with all the conditions considered, could there be much. But the old story of excess, of unbridled power turned toward bad ends, again recurs, at the same time that the ideas brought in by the Spaniards who came each year in increasing numbers and the principles observed by the young men studying in Europe

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       cast doubt upon the fitness of such a state of affairs. As they approached their downfall, like all mankind, 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 means an exaggerated instance, but rather one of the few clean enough to bear the light, and her fate, as depicted in the epilogue, is said to be based upon an actual occurrence with which the author must have been familiar.

       The vow of obedience--whether considered as to the Pope, their highest religious authority, or to the King of Spain, their political liege--might not always be so callously disregarded, but it could be evaded and defied. From the Vatican came bull after bull, from the Escorial decree after decree, only to be archived in Manila, sometimes after a hollow pretense of compliance. A large part of

       the records of Spanish domination is taken up with the wearisome quarrels that went on between the Archbishop, representing the head of the Church, and the friar orders, over the questions of the episcopal visitation and the enforcement of the provisions of the Council of Trent relegating the monks to their original status of missionaries, with the friars invariably victorious in their conten-tions. Royal decrees ordering inquiries into the titles to the estates of the men of poverty and those providing for the education of [xxii]the natives in Spanish were merely sneered at and left to molder in harmless quiet. Not without good grounds for his contention, the friar claimed that the Spanish dominion over the Philippines depended upon him, and he therefore confidently set himself up as the best judge of how that dominion should be maintained.

       Thus there are presented in the Philippines of the closing quarter of the century just past the phenomena so frequently met with in modern societies, so disheartening to the people who must drag out their lives under them, of an old system which has outworn its usefulness and is being called into question, with forces actively at work disintegrating it, yet with the unhappy folk bred and reared under it unprepared for a new order of things. The old faith was breaking down, its forms and beliefs, once so full of life and meaning, were being sharply examined, 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 not general among the people, the masses of

       whom were still sunk in their "loved Egyptian night," but affected only a very small proportion of the population--for the most

       part young men who were groping their way toward something better, yet without any very clearly conceived idea of what that better might be, and among whom was to be found the usual sprinkling of "sunshine patriots" and omnipresent opportunists ready 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 amid the shadows of religious superstition and to the unrest of the few, the fact that the orders were in absolute control of the political machinery of the country, with the best part of the agrarian wealth amortized in their hands; add also the ever-present jealousies, petty feuds, 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 old Machiavelian principle of "divide and rule," and the sum is about the most miserable condition under which any portion of mankind ever tried to fulfill nature's inexorable laws of growth. [xxiii]

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       And third came she who gives dark creeds their power, Silabbat-paramasa, sorceress,

       Draped fair in many lands as lowly Faith,

       But ever juggling souls with rites and prayers; The keeper of those keys which lock up Hells And open Heavens. "Wilt thou dare," she said, "Put by our sacred books, dethrone our gods, Unpeople all the temples, shaking down

       That law which feeds the priests and props the realm?" But Buddha answered, "What thou bidd'st me keep

       Is form which passes, but the free Truth stands; Get thee unto thy darkness."

       SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, The Light of Asia.

       "Ah, simple people, how little do you know the blessing that you enjoy! Neither hunger, nor nakedness, nor inclemency of the weather troubles you. With the payment of seven reals per year, you remain free of contributions. You do not have to close your houses with bolts. You do not fear that the district troopers will come in to lay waste your fields, and trample you under foot at your own firesides. You call 'father' the one who is in command over you. Perhaps there will come a time when you will be more civilized, and you will break out in revolution; and you will wake terrified, at the tumult of the riots, and will see blood flowing through these quiet fields, and gallows and guillotines erected in these squares, which never yet have seen an execution."6 Thus moralized a Spanish traveler in 1842, just as that dolce far niente was drawing to its close. Already far-seeing men had begun to raise in the Spanish parlia-

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       ment the question of the future of the Philippines, looking toward some definite program for their care under modern conditions and for the adjustment of their [xxiv]relations with the mother country. But these were mere Cassandra-voices--the horologe of time was striking for Rome's successor, as it did for Rome herself.

       Just where will come the outbreak after three centuries of mind-repression and soul-distortion, of forcing a growing subject into the strait-jacket of medieval thought and action, of natural selection reversed by the constant elimination of native initiative and leadership, is indeed a curious study. That there will be an outbreak somewhere is as certain as that the plant will grow toward the light, even under the most unfavorable conditions, for man's nature is but the resultant of eternal forces that ceaselessly and irresistibly interplay about and upon him, and somewhere this resultant will express itself in thought or deed.

       After three centuries of Spanish ecclesiastical domination in

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