Note 4 — Chapter VII · AGAIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

This could not last long. To know what the submerged people were reading and thinking was one of the chief businesses of the bureau of spies and department of sleuthing. Soon the censor was hot upon the trail of this omen of unrest. A copy of the book was brought to him; he read it with a horror that seems to have shaken his soul. Now the attention of Government was called to the scandalous work. Government, ever responsive to such ill news, appointed a committee of solemn owls from the faculty of Santo Tomas, no less, to study and report upon a literary felony so momentous; Government being apparently impressed with the notion that a crisis was near and revolution was to be crushed as usual in the serpent’s egg. For this nothing could be so effective as the weight of an awe-inspiring authority from the university. No great deliberation was needed to enable the committee to reach its findings. In what was plainly intended to be a blasting fire of ecclesiastical wrath, book and author were condemned, and Government was austerely warned that here was a most insidious and perilous attack upon all the safeguards of society, upon law and order, civilization, monarchy, the supremacy of Spain, business, holy church, and religion itself.4