Note 74 — THE PHILIPPINES, 1860–1898—SOME COMMENT AND BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Note especially Rizal’s introduction to his novel El Filibusterismo, as showing Filipino opinion on the matter. A story circulated among the people to the effect that the friars brought from Sambales province a native who looked like Father Gomez and who impersonated the latter in order to implicate him in the mutiny at the Cavite arsenal, with similar details, is related in an “Appeal for Intervention” presented by certain Filipinos in Hongkong to the Consul-General of the United States at that place in Jan., 1897. This document, by the way, has never received notice in the United States so far as known to the writer, who has a manuscript copy of it.

Rizal dedicated his novel El filibusterismo to the three priests executed in consequence of the Cavite uprising of 1872. That dedication is as follows: “The Church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime that has been imputed to you; the Government, by surrounding your trials with mystery and shadows, causes the belief that there was some error, committed in fatal moments; and all the Philippines, by worshiping your memory and calling you martyrs, in no sense recognize your culpability. In so far, therefore, as your complicity in the Cavite mutiny is not clearly proved, as you may or may not have been patriots, and as you may or may not have cherished sentiments for justice and for liberty, I have the right to dedicate my work to you as victims of the evil which I undertake to combat. And while we wait expectantly upon Spain some day to restore your good name and cease to be answerable for your death, let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over your unknown tombs, and let it be understood that every one who without clear proofs attacks your memory stains his hands in your blood!” See J. A. LeRoy’s Philippine Life, pp. 149, 150.—Eds. ↑