Note 28 — THE FRIAR MEMORIAL OF 1898

The thought of what may happen to this beautiful country at any moment terrifies us, for we do not know to what point sectarian fanaticism may go, exploiting the suggestibility of this race and their weak brain by the deeds that they are heralding, brought to a head by them, in regard to the army, whose increase in the proportion that would be necessary to establish a complete military situation, they know to be impossible; by the published exemption from the cédula28 and other tributes; by the supposed immunity of amulets, called anting-anting; by the illusion that none but Indians will hold office, and that the alcaldes and generals will be from their ranks; by the remembrance that money and confidence were given to the rebels of Cavité, Bulacan, and other points; by the news that their partisans were sending them from Madrid and Hong-kong; by the example of goodly numbers of peninsulars, who are not on their guard against showing their hostility to the religious, in order by that manner to procure the latter’s disregard by their parishioners, who even dare to lay hands on them; and by innumerable other methods, too many, in short, to enumerate, but terribly destructive, and of maddening and vigorous influence in these Malayan villages.