Note 49 — Chapter III · THE JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE AUDIENCIA

Nevertheless the presence of a tribunal had the effect of encouraging the inhabitants of the Islands to litigation. It has been said that there have been more lawsuits in the Philippines than in any other country of the same size and population, which remark probably would apply to any country where the Spanish judicial system had lately obtained. This condition was no doubt due to the fact that adequate facilities existed whereby the natives could go to law. Lawyers and judges were ever unduly ready to encourage and hear any suits which might arise if there were any way in which profit might be derived therefrom. Pardo de Tavera, in discussing these phases of the legal history of the Islands, states that the laws protected the native, but at the same time they kept him in a state of perpetual tutelage. Judgments were passed by native magistrates in suits between natives in the later days of Spanish rule, but in general throughout the period of Spain’s domination suits were prosecuted under the direction of a protector of the Indians in case one party to a suit was a Spaniard, or when the rights of the natives were in any way jeopardized or injured by a Spaniard. “In this manner Spanish prestige was preserved, inasmuch as it was no longer an Indian who asked for the punishment of one belonging to a superior race, but a Spaniard who took up the Indian’s cause and conducted the suit against another Spaniard.”49 Thus it may be seen that in Spain’s judicial system the means were provided, in theory at least, whereby the meanest native could obtain justice, not only among his fellows, but in cases to which members of the superior Spanish race were parties.