Note 11 — EVENTS IN FILIPINAS, 1801–1840

The command ad interim was again assumed by Folgueras, who held it during nearly six years. On December 17, 1819, he reëstablished the “Royal Economic Society of Filipinas,” as a result of royal orders to that effect issued in 1811 and 1813; and five days later its first session was held, the governor presiding, only two members of the original society being still alive.11 A month later, it met again, with sixty new members, and Manuel Bernáldez was chosen director of the association; and its new ordinances were approved by the governor on July 24 following. Folgueras, learning that certain immunities and advantages had been granted to Cuba and Puerto Rico for the encouragement of agriculture, requested from the home government similar help for Filipinas; the crown decreed an investigation of the subject, but the fulfilment of this was delayed from time to time, so that not until 1848 was even a definite statement and proposal for action in this direction made.12 (This was done by Rafael Díaz Arenas, one of the four members of the Economic Society—to which the investigation had been referred—who had been appointed to prepare the data for a report to the crown; “but we do not know whether the Society accepted his proposal, or whether it reached any definite conclusion on the subject.”) In October of the year 1820, Manila was ravaged by a terrible epidemic of smallpox, which was especially fatal in the villages along the Pasig River; the corregidor of Tondo therefore issued an edict prohibiting the use of the river water. A public relief committee was organized to give the sick medical treatment and to furnish food to the poor; and the friars and the private citizens vied with the authorities in ministering to the victims of the pest. The medical men belonging to the ships anchored in the bay came to the city, and did all in their power to aid these benevolent efforts; but all these things only confirmed in the ignorant natives the fatal idea, already spread among them, that the disease was caused by the foreigners having poisoned the waters and used to this end the specimens of insects and other creatures which they had collected for scientific purposes. A crowd of armed Indians therefore gathered in the square of Binondo on October 9, attacked the houses of the foreigners, and murdered twenty-seven persons—among whom was not one Spaniard; nor did they, in plundering the houses, rob any Spaniard. The governor sent out some troops, but they accomplished nothing in checking the riot, which ended only at nightfall; and he did nothing to prevent further crimes of this sort, so that the mob renewed their acts of violence the next day,13 plundering and killing many Chinese of the suburbs. This aroused Folgueras to activity, and he sent out a large force of soldiers to pursue the assassins; but the latter at once dispersed. A council of the authorities was called, but there were discordant opinions among them, and they seem to have taken no definite action. The municipal council of Manila called upon the governor for the proper legal proceedings in regard to this scandalous and lawless uprising; and for this purpose he appointed a commission.14