Note 17 — Chapter I · A PEOPLE’S WRONGS

It was a people capable by nature of much hating as of much loving upon whom fell this bitter inheritance. One can only suppose that the average Spaniard in the Philippines stood sentinel against himself lest he should understand the people he thought were under his boot-heel. In point of fact, they were not stupid and inferior, as he always described them, but of an excellent mentality, quick apprehension, reasoning powers at least equal to his own, of a certain inheritance of culture, different, cruder, but in its way not less. Particularly they were a people in whom resentment against injustice might smolder long but only in the end to blaze into perilous fires. Three centuries of Spanish domination had not extirpated the Malayan instinct for liberty, but, judging from the climax of all this, only intensified it. Spanish officers watching with intent eyes for the least sign of revolt took from these people every discoverable weapon, even to bolos (knives) of blades longer than so many inches. The better organization, discipline, equipment, and military skill that alone constituted Spanish supremacy was for ever being paraded in the eyes of the Indios. At every turn they were reminded in some way of their position, helpless, barehanded, and kept from one another by enmities the Spaniards knew well how to foster. In the face of all this sedulous care, behold in the story of their possession of the Philippines a serial of insurrection! Between 1573 and 1872, thirty-one revolts had been serious enough to leave enduring records in history.17