Note 47 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Pedro A. Paterno’s Regimen municipal de las islas Filipinas (Madrid, 1893), reproducing Minister Maura’s decree in its original form, with notes, was therefore premature. Except in some of its comments, however, this work is at least not merely ridiculous, as are this author’s writings on an imaginary primitive religion and civilization of the Filipinos. Don Pedro has a lively imagination, too lively for politics and history, but capable of providing good entertainment when he exercises it as a dramatist. One finds him much more pleasing in this rôle than as a Filipino reform propagandist, though in the latter capacity he seems to have been taken very seriously by Doctor Schurman and Mr. Foreman, and by various Spanish officials before them, including, for a time, Governor-Generals Primo de Rivera and Augustín. ↑