The Philippine Islands | Page 8

and the preservation of its unity to this inevitable means, and neither arbitration, moral persuasion, nor sentimental argument would ever have exchanged Philippine monastic oppression for freedom of thought and liberal institutions.
The right of conquest is admissible when it is exercised for the advancement of civilization, and the conqueror not only takes upon himself, but carries out, the moral obligation to improve the condition of the subjected peoples and render them happier. How far the Spaniards of each generation fulfilled that obligation may be judged from these pages, the works of Mr. W.?H. Prescott, the writings of Padre de las Casas, and other chroniclers of Spanish colonial achievements. The happiest colony is that which yearns for nothing at the hands of the mother country; the most durable bonds are those engendered by gratitude and contentment. Such bonds can never be created by religious teaching alone, unaccompanied by the twofold inseparable conditions of moral and material improvement. There are colonies wherein equal justice, moral example, and constant care for the welfare of the people have riveted European dominion without the dispensable adjunct of an enforced State religion. The reader will judge the merits of that civilization which the Spaniards engrafted on the races they subdued; for as mankind has no philosophical criterion of truth, it is a matter of opinion where the unpolluted fountain of the truest modern civilization is to be found. It is claimed by China and by Europe, and the whole universe is schismatic on the subject. When Japan was only known to the world as a nation of artists, Europe called her barbarous; when she had killed fifty thousand Russians in Manchuria, she was proclaimed to be highly civilized. There are even some who regard the adoption of European dress and the utterance of a few phrases in a foreign tongue as signs of civilization. And there is a Continental nation, proud of its culture, whose sense of military honour, dignity, and discipline involves inhuman brutality of the lowest degree.
Juan de la Concepcion, [1] who wrote in the eighteenth century, bases the Spaniards' right to conquest solely on the religious theory. He affirms that the Spanish kings inherited a divine right to these Islands, their dominion being directly prophesied in Isaiah xviii. He assures us that this title from Heaven was confirmed by apostolic authority, [2] and by "the many manifest miracles with which God, the Virgin, and the Saints, as auxiliaries of our arms, demonstrated its unquestionable justice." Saint Augustine, he states, considered it a sin to doubt the justice of war which God determines; but, let it be remembered, the same savant insisted that the world was flat, and that the sun hid every night behind a mountain!
An apology for conquest cannot be rightly based upon the sole desire to spread any particular religion, more especially when we treat of Christianity, the benign radiance of which was overshadowed by that debasing institution the Inquisition, which sought out the brightest intellects only to destroy them. But whether conversion by coercion be justifiable or not, one is bound to acknowledge that all the urbanity of the Filipinos of to-day is due to Spanish training, which has raised millions from obscurity to a relative condition of culture. The fatal defect in the Spanish system was the futile endeavour to stem the tide of modern methods and influences.
The government of the Archipelago alone was no mean task.
A group of islands inhabited by several heathen races--surrounded by a sea exposed to typhoons, pirates, and Christian-hating Mussulmans--had to be ruled by a handful of Europeans with inadequate funds, bad ships, and scant war material. For nearly two centuries the financial administration was a chaos, and military organization hardly existed. Local enterprise was disregarded and discouraged so long as abundance of silver dollars came from across the Pacific. Such a short-sighted, unstable dependence left the Colony resourceless when bold foreign traders stamped out monopoly and brought commerce to its natural level by competition. In the meantime the astute ecclesiastics quietly took possession of rich arable lands in many places, the most valuable being within easy reach of the Capital and the Arsenal of Cavite. Landed property was undefined. It all nominally belonged to the State, which, however, granted no titles; "squatters" took up land where they chose without determined limits, and the embroilment continues, in a measure, to the present day.
About the year 1885 the question was brought forward of granting Government titles to all who could establish claims to land. Indeed, for about a year, there was a certain enthusiasm displayed both by the applicants and the officials in the matter of "Titulos Reales." But the large majority of landholders--among whom the monastic element conspicuously figured--could only show their title by actual possession. [3] It might have been sufficient, but the