The Social Cancer | Page 6

of the
Recollect Fathers in the missions there, and for these other berths had
to be found. Again the native clergy were the losers in that they had to
give up their best parishes in Luzon, especially around Manila and
Cavite, so the breach was further widened and the soil sown with
discontent. But more far-reaching than this immediate result was the
educational movement inaugurated by the Jesuits. The native, already

feeling the vague impulses from without and stirred by the growing
restlessness of the times, here saw a new world open before him. A
considerable portion of the native population in the larger centers, who
had shared in the economic progress of the colony, were enabled to
look beyond their daily needs and to afford their children an
opportunity for study and advancement--a condition and a need met by
the Jesuits for a time.
With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 communication with the
mother country became cheaper, quicker, surer, so that large numbers
of Spaniards, many of them in sympathy with the republican
movements at home, came to the Philippines in search of fortunes and
generally left half-caste families who had imbibed their ideas. Native
boys who had already felt the intoxication of such learning as the
schools of Manila afforded them began to dream of greater wonders in
Spain, now that the journey was possible for them. So began the
definite movements that led directly to the disintegration of the friar
régime.
In the same year occurred the revolution in the mother country, which
had tired of the old corrupt despotism. Isabella II was driven into exile
and the country left to waver about uncertainly for several years,
passing through all the stages of government from red radicalism to
absolute conservatism, finally adjusting itself to the middle course of
constitutional monarchism. During the effervescent and ephemeral
republic there was sent to the Philippines a governor who set to work to
modify the old system and establish a government more in harmony
with modern ideas and more democratic in form. His changes were
hailed with delight by the growing class of Filipinos who were striving
for more consideration in their own country, and who, in their
enthusiasm and the intoxication of the moment, perhaps became more
radical than was safe under the conditions-- surely too radical for their
religious guides 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. From
the meager evidence now obtainable, this would seem to have been
purely 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 the governing

powers from that time on, as the premature outbreak of a general
insurrection under the leadership of the native clergy, and rigorous
repressive measures were demanded. Three native priests, notable for
their popularity among their own people, one an octogenarian and the
other two young canons of the Manila Cathedral, were summarily
garroted, along with the renegade Spanish officer who had participated
in the mutiny. No record of any trial of these priests has ever been
brought to light. The Archbishop, himself a secular[5] clergyman,
stoutly refused to degrade them from their holy office, and they wore
their sacerdotal robes at the execution, which was conducted in a
hurried, fearful manner. At the same time a number of young Manilans
who had taken conspicuous part in the "liberal" demonstrations were
deported to the Ladrone Islands or to remote islands of the Philippine
group itself.
This was the beginning of the end. Yet there immediately followed the
delusive calm which ever precedes the fatal outburst, lulling those
marked for destruction to a delusive security. The two decades
following were years of quiet, unobtrusive growth, during which the
Philippine Islands made the greatest economic progress in their history.
But this in itself was preparing the final catastrophe, for if there be any
fact well established in human experience it is that with economic
development the power of organized religion begins to wane--the rise
of the merchant spells the decline of the priest. A sordid change, from
masses and mysteries to sugar and shoes, this is often said to be, but it
should be noted that the epochs of greatest economic activity have been
those during which the generality of mankind have lived fuller and
freer lives, and above all that in such eras the finest intellects and the
grandest souls have been developed.
Nor does an institution that has been slowly growing for three centuries,
molding the very life and fiber of the people, disintegrate without a
violent struggle,