Note 5 — REFORMS NEEDED IN FILIPINAS

[The entrance of these persons causes trouble among the people of the islands: the Indians are easily influenced by white men, especially those who teach them to live in more freedom and insubordination to authority; foreigners of this sort are almost always of lax morals and dangerous political opinions, which are even more dangerous to “the Spaniards of the country, who, although more enlightened than the Indians, are more susceptible to such corruption.” The foreigner thus residing in the islands, “usually from the dregs of other nations,” makes light of all the institutions there, and tries to set the people against the mother country; and three times recently has occurred] the scandal, unheard-of in that colony, of foreigners who, abusing the innocence of the country, have, being already married in their own country, again married Philippine Spanish girls, leaving them abandoned and dishonored. Others, who feigned to be learned physicians and agriculturists, have deceived and defrauded proprietors in the islands. Others have clandestinely introduced impious, revolutionary, and obscene books printed in the Spanish language, but pirated in France, with which they have caused atrocious injury in the morals of families there. In fine, the settlement of foreigners in the islands would not be expedient, even for the sake of the advantages which their industry and arts would produce there; for works carried on always with foreign capital, on the account of foreigners, and by the agency of foreigners, would leave to the country very little benefit as compared to that from labor employed there by Spanish capital, and on the account and for the benefit of Spaniards. If we desire to preserve intact in Filipinas the religious ideas and the pure morals of our ancestors, and due submission to the government of his Majesty, it is necessary to keep the people away from every point of contact with foreigners. In China, Japan, and other nations, the revolutionary spirit has not been able to penetrate, because the laws of those kingdoms keep the gates closed to all strangers. In a colony still in its infancy in customs and enlightenment—which, like a school of education, needs to have for models men of sound morals—it has been very absurd to allow to remain and become citizens therein men who have served a term of exile, and polisones5 or vagabonds, sometimes followed by officers of justice from the Peninsula; and that the Indian people should see (as so many times I have seen) that this sort of men succeeded in obtaining positions as corporals, revenue officials, and even militia captains, solely from the circumstance of their being white men. It is necessary always to remove from the colonies this sort of people, who on account of their principles and their inclinations must be enemies of order and of government, permitting therein the settlement only of respectable Spanish artisans and merchants, whose upright conduct may serve as an example to that neophyte people, while at the same time they make fortunes for themselves. But even this point needs careful study, and in regard to it I will present the following reflections.