Note 27 — EVENTS IN FILIPINAS, 1764–1800

A royal decree of November 15, 1777, recommended the establishment of an institution in which vagrants and dissolute persons might be shut up. Accordingly, Manuel del Castillo y Negrete, minister of justice for the Philippines, drew up and printed (Sampaloc, 1779) a manual of ordinances for the management of a general refuge for poor persons, beggars, women of lewd life, abandoned children, and orphans. For this project he had obtained the opinions of learned persons, all of whom extolled it; and he sent this document to the king. Besides promoting all interests of morality, and the development of agriculture, industry, and commerce, Basco founded the noted “Economic Society of Friends of the Country.”27 A royal decree dated August 27, 1780, had ordered him to convene all the learned or competent persons in the colony, “in order to form an association of selected persons, capable of producing useful ideas;” but when this decree arrived, Basco had already founded the above society. On February 7, 1781, the active members of the general tribunal [junta] of commerce had assembled, and agreed upon the constitution of the society, a number of them signing their names as its members—among them the Marqués de Villamediana, the prior of the consulate of commerce. “The body of merchants endowed the society with a permanent fund of 960 pesos a year, the value of two toneladas which were assigned to it in the lading of the Acapulco galleon.” The society was formally inaugurated on May 6, 1781, under the presidency of Basco, who made an eloquent address. Its first president was the quartermaster-general of the islands, Ciríaco González Carvajal; according to its first regulations, it contained the following sections: natural history, agriculture and rural economy, factories and manufactures, internal and foreign commerce, industries, and popular education. “Stimulated by Basco, the society undertook with great ardor to promote the cultivation of indigo, cotton, cinnamon, and pepper, and the silk industry, according to the orders published by the superior authority. The parish priest of Tambóbong, Fray Matías Octavio, taught his parishioners to prepare the indigo, presenting to the society the first specimens, which were adjudged to be of superior quality. In 1784, the first shipment of this article to Europa was made in the royal fragata ‘Asunción.’ The society also recommended that effort be made to attain perfection in weaving and dyeing. (The society declined greatly after the departure of its founder; and Aguilar roughly opposed it. In 1809 it was extinguished; two years later, orders were received for its reëstablishment, but this was not accomplished until 1819. In the following year, its constitution was remodeled; and in 1821 it founded at its own cost a professorship of agriculture and an academy of design, and established special instruction in dyeing. In 1824 it resolved to bestow rewards on the most successful farmers; and it introduced from China martins, to fight the locusts that were desolating the fields. In 1828 its constitution experienced another revision; but during more than half a century it gave hardly any sign of its existence. It had a flash of vitality in 1882, but soon fell again into a decline. To-day [about 1893] there is hardly any indication that Manila remembers a society of this sort; and, as it is not in the Guía de forasteros [“Guide for strangers”], it may be said that it has ceased to exist.)