Note 18 — INTERNAL POLITICAL CONDITION OF THE PHILIPPINES, 1842

A tribute paid to the church by all Filipinos from the age of sixteen.

“Since 1852 the tribute amounts to 12 reals, and in some districts special rates are fixed. Not until 1841 was the payment of the tribute in cash made universal. There are, besides, three other taxes; the sanctorum, 3 reals; the comunidad, 1 real; and the recargo, ½ real. The total of imposts, then, is 16½ reals; or for each single person one dollar and ¼ real. The sanctorum is for [the expenses of] worship; but it is paid to the government, which pays the minister at the rate of 180 dollars for 500 tributes. The comunidad is a charge for the communal fund. The recargo is a charge introduced since the suppression of the brandy monopoly, to cover the deficit resulting therefrom. In Mindanao and the Bisayas no additional charge is collected. According to Agius (Memoria, doc. 5) each single tribute-payer now contributes 6.25 reals, plus 0.55 reals of recargo, in all 6.8 reals, not considering the sanctorum and comunidad. The inhabitants of Abra, Ilocos, and Union pay, besides, 1½ to 2¼ reals for the permission to buy their tobacco outside the monopoly dealers.” “Mestizos by a Chinese man and an Indian woman pay a tribute of $3.00 a year since 1852; earlier, it was less. The Indian woman married to a mestizo of this class pays the same tribute as he during their marriage; but when she becomes a widow she pays only as an Indian woman. Mestizos who, like the natives, cultivate the soil with their own hands, also pay only as the latter do. The mestizos form their own barangays when there are 25 to 30 tributes of them living together; otherwise they belong to the nearest barangay of natives. Every Chinaman—excepting tillers of the soil, from whom only 12 reals are collected—pays since 1852 a [capitation] head-tax of $6.00, and, besides this, an industrial tax of $100, $60, $30, or $12.”

“A law issued Nov. 3, 1863 (Legis. ultramar [compiled by Rodriguez S. Pedro, pub. at Madrid, 1865] iii), actually decided that every male inhabitant of the Philippines—European or native, Spanish or foreign—must render personal service for twenty-four days in the year, or else procure release from it by a money payment. But this law was not put into execution, and Europeans are free from all imposts. Mestizos by Spaniards and Indian women are similarly exempt, save that they pay 7 reals for the sanctorum, and ½ real as a tithe for the government; little care, however, is taken for exactness in the enumeration of the mestizos, especially of their women.” (Jagor, Reisen, pp. 293–295.) ↑