Note 2 — Chapter IV · The Rebels and Their Grievances.

Another grievance, brought well to the front by those who have written on behalf of the Filipinos, is the taxation, which is alleged to have been excessive. The writer is informed by one who lived many years there that it was not. However this may be, all taxation is odious to primitive and half-civilized communities, who are inclined to look upon the most necessary taxes, without which no stable government could be carried on, in the light of oppression. The Americans will have the same difficulties to face with regard to taxation as the Spaniards had, though not in the same degree maybe, as the country will be opened to trade in a freer way than formerly. In the interests of order, and also to protect the people from unjust imposts, the Friars were in the habit of acting as their counsellors in these matters, and used to exhort their parishioners publicly and privately to pay the necessary taxes. A passage from Blumentritt, whom we have quoted more than once in our previous chapters, will go to show that all this was done in the interests of the people: “In the following centuries the Friars continued to extend their protecting hand over the natives, preventing, as far as possible, any oppression on the part of the Government employés.” Yet this action of the Friars, good, charitable, and necessary under the circumstances, has been used by the promoters of the rebellion as a fulcrum to raise the Friars, in the eyes of the poorer classes, into the invidious position of tax-gatherers, tyrants, and abettors of oppression. Without doubt, cruel methods, for which, however, the Friars were not responsible, were in vogue in dealing with defaulters, as we may see in Dean Worcester’s lately published work on the Philippines; but it is nothing less than downright hypocrisy to raise a chorus of condemnation against the Spaniard on this score, when it is well known that no other nation, in trying to solve the eternal difficulty about the taxation of colored and subject races, has emerged from the conflict with clean hands. We remember reading some years ago of very cruel methods employed in the gathering of the taxes in British India, in some of the up-country districts; and within the present year of grace, 1899, two books have appeared dealing with the English and the Dutch in South Africa,2 both of which, in describing the punishment inflicted on those refusing to pay taxes to the ruling powers, could easily give points to the colonial Spaniard for cruelty. What is very remarkable about the Protestant missionary is that, instead of condemning the barbarities described in his book, of which he was an eye-witness, he approves of them, even to the extent of giving his sanction to the inhuman crime of blowing up with dynamite the caves in which four hundred men, women, and children had taken refuge. The Rev. Mr. Rae’s opinion of the campaign against Malaboch for his refusal to pay taxes, a campaign in which women and children, and men bearing flags of truce were fired upon recklessly, is that “the Transvaal Government was doing a much better work than any Christian missionary has yet accomplished.” God help the Filipinos if Protestant missionaries of this description are going to overrun the field of labor left vacant by the deaths and expulsion of the Spanish Friars. One great test of the mild rule of the Spaniard in that country is that the native population has increased since the conquest, instead of being almost exterminated, as is the case in North America and in many of the colonies of European States. We hope that the American rule will be characterized by clemency and justice. A hypocritical cry has been raised in the States about the tyranny and oppression under which the natives are said to be groaning. The rule of the Spaniard has indeed been imperfect enough; but America should approach the question of reform with becoming modesty, seeing that her own record in dealing with the Indians has been stained by many a crime against human rights. They have been robbed of the country which once was their own, and driven back from reservation to reservation, while even the rights guaranteed to them by Government as compensation for what they lost have been often filched from them by unscrupulous officials. The light recently thrown on the case of the Pillager Indians has disclosed cruelty, open robbery, and a disregard of solemn obligations. In the Philippines the Americans will find the natives still in possession of their country; a people, once wild and nomadic like the Indians, brought into settled habits of life by three centuries of missionary effort; a people, in fine, who, whatever is said to the contrary by noisy declaimers and demagogues, have been on the whole well pleased with their lot.