Note 115 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

The first proposition of the insurgents was for 3,000,000 pesos; Primo de Rivera acceded, under authority from Madrid, to 1,700,000 pesos; and the total sum named in the contract signed on December 14, 1897, is 800,000 pesos. When Aguinaldo and his twenty-seven companions reached Hongkong, they received 400,000 pesos and never any more. Though really looking at it as a bribe, the Spanish government had consented to the money payment ostensibly on the ground of indemnity to widows, orphans, and those who had suffered property losses by the war, and to provide support for the insurgent chiefs abroad. That it was the idea of at least some of the insurgent leaders that the money was to be divided between them is shown by a protest signed by eight of those who remained behind to secure the surrender of more arms than the paltry number of two hundred and twenty-five turned over at Biak-na-bató, appealing to Primo de Rivera for “their share.”115 The latter says he turned over to these men and Paterno the 200,000 pesos of the second payment (the actual disposition of which is unknown116); and that he turned over the remaining 200,000 pesos to Governor-General Augustín in April, 1898, when it was evident that peace had not been assured, after all. As to the remaining 900,000 pesos which Primo de Rivera had authority to pay, but which did not appear in the final contract, Primo de Rivera says (pp. 133, 134) that Paterno omitted them from the document because they were to be used to “indemnify those not in arms,” and that he did not “think it prudent to inquire further about them at the time.”117