putting these orders into effect usually they came to naught. Instruction was at first given only as a missionary enterprise by the parish priests and in the Church schools. The reform decrees of 1863 marked a new epoch. Shortly after that date, secondary instruction received an impetus by the establishment of a normal school for men; the foundation of the "Ateneo Municipal," now known as "Ateneo de Manila"; and the beginning of the famous observatory. There was also a nautical school of long standing, a school of arts and trades, a school of agriculture, a normal school for women, a school of painting, sculpture, and engraving, a military academy, and various private schools. Primary instruction for Filipinos also secured a real foothold, pursuant to the royal decrees of 1863, by the extension to the Philippines of a school system originally planned for Cuba, identical with that of Spain. There was to be at least one school for boys and one for girls in each municipality. The number of such public primary schools reached over two thousand, with two hundred thousand pupils. These figures are, however, largely superficial in their significance. The final system of public instruction, while not badly planned, was never put into full operation. 33. Public Order. — Public order was maintained by the army, the civil guard, and the local police. The army, under the Governor-General as captain-general, numbered about fifteen thousand men, of which the large majority were native troops. The civil guard, begun in 1869 and patterned after a similar body in Spain, was organized upon a military basis. Detachments scattered through the provinces acted as a force to maintain order and apprehend criminals. It numbered nearly four thousand. In Manila the local police force was known as the guardia veterana (veteran guard). 34. Filipino Participation. The Filipinos did not control any branch of the government. The Spaniard was the ruler, the Filipino the ruled. In the administration of their own country, the Filipinos served merely as useful adjuncts. The people of the Islands took no part whatsoever in the making of the laws; excepting justices of the peace and a few positions as fiscals and judges, they held no offices of importance in the judicial service; and in the executive department, excepting a few members of the consultative council, they filled only the lowest offices. In the long years of Spanish domination, a few abortive attempts to institute representative institutions stand out in bold relief. Thus, the Battle of Manila Bay induced one of the last acts of Spain to retain the loyalty of the people, the introduction of a Consultative Assembly into the scheme of government. This was announced in a decree by the Governor-General dated May 4, 1898, naming eighteen members representative of Filipino leadership in professional and commercial affairs as "counsellors." By June 13 of the same year, its futility as an active organization had been proved. Three times in their history, the Philippines had representation in the Spanish Cortes, namely, for the years 1810-1813, 1820-1823, and 1834-1837. These were the periods during which the Spanish constitution was effective in the Philippine Islands. In the first period, due to the great distance of the Philippines from Spain, and the impossibility of regularly appointed delegates reaching Spain in time for the opening of the session, two substitutes were designated for the Philippines from residents of the Islands then in the peninsula; meanwhile, a representative, Ventura de los Reyes, was duly chosen by the central board created for this purpose by the royal decree of May 6, 1810, and set out immediately for Spain. The two substitutes took but little part in affairs; Delegate Reyes, on the other hand, despite his seventy years, was on the whole an active representative. Nine of La Laguna, negotiator of the Pact of Biakna-bato, member of new deputies with three substitutes had been elected before notice of the suppression of the constitution reached Manila. In the session of the Cortes for 1820-1821, the colony was again represented by two substitutes. Later, at the first preliminary meeting of the special session, held on October 1, 1822, four regularly elected deputies from the Philippines were seated. In the last period, the election for the Philippine representatives resulted in the choice of General Andrés García Camba and the lawyer Juan Francisco Lecaroz― the first, a resident of Manila, and the latter, the Madrid agent for the Manila Ayuntamiento. On the 24th of November of the same year, Camba and Lecaroz took the oath, the former being placed on the committee on etiquette. On March 9, 1837, the elections at Manila resulted in the selection of Camba and Luis Prudencio Alvarez y Tejero, formerly of the Manila Audiencia, and a resident of Manila for thirteen years. The latter arrived in Spain after the passing of the law excluding the Philippine representatives from the Cortes. After 1837, the Philippines had no representation in the Cortes. But repeated attempts to revive the right were made. In 1869, parliamentary representation for the Philippines was proposed by Julián Pellón y Rodríguez. The Republican constitutions of Spain of 1872 and 1873 were favorably inclined to the privilege. Again, on March 3, 1890, the Deputy Francisco Calvo Muñoz submitted an amendment to the bill reforming the Electoral Law then under discussion in the Cortes, authorizing three deputies to the Cortes from the Islands, and establishing conservative conditions to guarantee the wealth and culture of the voters. Notwithstanding Ramos Calderón, the chairman of the committee on elections, and Manuel Becerra, the Minister of the Colonies, spoke in favor of the amendment, it was withdrawn without a vote. As a last effort, through the activities of the Filipino Association of Madrid and the review La Solidaridad, fifty-two petitions praying for the restoration of parliamentary representation for the Philippines were presented to the Cortes by the Deputy Emilio Junoy in its session of February 21, 1895. The same deputy shortly after submitted a bill providing for thirty-one deputies and eleven senators for the Archipelago, which received scant consideration from the government. The Filipino prayer eloquently stated by Del Pilar was: "In exchange for the loyalty of so many generations, in exchange for so much blood shed for Spain, the present generation does not ask for anything which will mean a sacrifice to the metropolis of its ideals, nothing which should impose any burden on its interests at all; it does not ask anything but a little consideration; it only asks to have its voice heard, that it be allowed to express its necessities by means of representatives freely elected by the vote of the interested parties."1 35. Judgment. There were grave defects in the Spanish administration. Spain stands charged in the first instance with gross negligence for not having adopted the progressive methods of other countries. Professor Keller of Yale University comes to the conclusion that "for decades before the end of Spanish domination, the government was plainly and sordidly mercenary, corrupt, and inefficient, and it takes an extremely benevolent observer to detect any more than ephemeral and accidental superiorities in its operations, from the period immediately succeeding the conquest up to 1898. It may have been relatively no worse at the outset than many of its contemporaries, but it showed no tendency to adapt itself to new conditions and thus incurred the reprehension and contempt of those nations which at least professed more modern ideals."2 A common indictment is that of corruption, particularly in the branch where integrity should be the 1 See a volume entitled Filipinas en las Cortes (Philippines in the Cortes), speeches delivered in the Congress of Deputies on the Parliamentary Representation of the Philippine Archipelago, with an excellent prologue by Marcelo H. del Pilar. 2 Kellar, Colonization, page 358. |