Note 73 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Revolt of 1872.—That the chief victims of this episode were prominent Filipino priests connects it rather with religio-political than with purely political matters. The civilians who were arrested for too great activity in agitating for political privileges were deported to Guam, whence their escape to foreign ports was perhaps winked at, while after a time some of them returned to the Philippines.73 But the three most prominent priests who were tried for complicity in the mutiny at Cavite (Burgos, a Spanish-Filipino, Zamora, a Chinese-Filipino, and Gomez, a pure-blooded Filipino) were condemned to death by a very speedily summoned court-martial and were promptly executed. If we had the record of the proofs submitted before this court-martial (which acted very summarily and under pressure of official and other demonstrations of indignation, not to say vindictiveness), and the statement of its conclusions, we should be in better position to judge whether or not a great injustice was done. But neither officially nor semi-officially was the guilt of the condemned ever shown, and we have either to accept very vehement and intemperate assertions about it having been proved, or to incline to the belief that these men were struck down by a power which stretched out its hand in the dark, and that their death was a punishment for having ventured under the preceding Liberal administrations to advocate the withdrawal of the friars as curates of parishes. Certainly this became the belief of the Filipino people, propagated from year to year by word of mouth (acquiring thus exaggerated and distorted details as being of sober truth), and occasionally finding expression in print.74 The usually sober and colorless Montero y Vidal becomes very rabid in his recital of this episode in Philippine history and is very positive not only in denouncing the priests who were executed and the deportees as guilty but in proclaiming their movement as actually separatist in character. He ridicules at length the account of the Frenchman Plauchut in the Revue des deux mondes for 1877; but Plauchut, as well as Montero y Vidal himself, was resident in or near Manila at the time of these occurrences. Finally, Dr. Pardo de Tavera, a nephew of one of the prominent Philippine Spaniards who were deported, supports Plauchut’s version and impeaches Montero y Vidal’s.75