David P. Barrows

“ Doubtless if we could see the whole character of Spanish rule in these decades, we should see that the actual condition of the Filipino had improved and his grade of culture had arisen. No one can estimate the actual good that comes to a people in being brought under the power of a government able to maintain peace and dispense justice. Taxation is sometimes grievous, corruption without excuse; but almost anything is better than anarchy. ”

“ Such in brief is the history of the American nation, so gifted with political intelligence, so driven by sleepless energy, so proud of its achievements, and inwardly so contemptuous of the more polished but less liberal life of the Old World. ”

“ Men began to inquire into causes and effects, to doubt [51] certain things, to seek themselves for the truth, and so the Renaissance came. With it came a greater love for the beautiful, a greater joy in life, a fresh zest for the good of this world, a new passion for discovery, a thirst for adventure, and, it must also be confessed a new laxity of living and a new greed for gold. ”

“ Patriotic Duty.—Patriotic duty, as regards the Philippines, means for the American a wholesome belief in the uprightness of the national purposes; a loyal appreciation of the men who have here worked wisely and without selfishness, and have borne the brunt of the toil; a loyalty to the government of the Philippines and of the United States, so long as these governments live honestly, rule justly, and increase liberty; and a frank and hearty recognition of every advance made by the Filipino people themselves. ”

“ If there are regrettable passages in our own lives, we cannot find either happiness or improvement in trying to deny to ourselves that we have done wrong, and so conceal and minimize our error. So if there are dark places in the history of our land and people, we must not obscure the truth in the mistaken belief that we are defending our people’s honor, for, by trying to conceal the fact and excuse the fault, we only add to the shame. ”

“ There is no longer fear of piratical ravage nor of foreign invasion, nor is there longer great danger of internal revolt; for the Philippines are at the present time under a government strong enough to defend them against other powers, to put down plunder and ravage, and one anxious and disposed to afford to the people such freedom of opportunity, such advantages of government and life, that the incentive to internal revolution will no longer exist. ”

“ The Netherlands Become an Independent Country.—Who were these Dutch, or Hollanders? How came they to wrest from Spain and Portugal a colonial empire, which they hold to-day without loss of prosperity or evidence of decline? In the north of Europe, facing the North Sea, is a low, rich land, intersected by rivers and washed far into its interior by the tides, known as Holland, the Low Countries, or the Netherlands. Its people have ever been famed for their industry and hardihood. ”

“ History has shown that liberty and enlightenment can not be taken from a race with one hand and protection given it with the other. All classes of Spain’s colonial government were frankly in pursuit of wealth. Greed filled them all, and was the mainspring of every discovery and every settlement. The king wanted revenue for his treasury; the noble and the soldier, booty for their private purse; the friar, wealth for his order; the bishop, power for his church. All this wealth had to come out of the native toiler on the lands which the Spanish conqueror had seized ”

“ During this last half-century the Spanish rulers had numerous plans for the development and better administration of the Philippines, and, in spite of a somewhat wavering policy and the continual sore of official peculation, this was a period of wonderful advancement. Revolution and separation from Spain came at last, as revolutions usually do, not because there was no effort nor movement for reform, but because progress was so discouragingly slow and so irritatingly blocked by established interests that desired no change. ”

“ Before the coming of the Spaniards, it seems unquestionable that the Filipinos suffered greatly under two terrible grievances that inflict barbarous society,—in the first place, warfare, with its murder, pillage, and destruction, not merely between tribe and tribe, but between town and town, such as even now prevails in the wild mountains of northern Luzon, among the primitive Malayan tribes; and in the second place, the weak and poor man was at the mercy of the strong and rich.
The establishment of Spanish sovereignty had certainly mitigated, if it did not wholly remedy, these conditions. ”

“ Thus, the history of the black, or negro, race begins only with the exploration of Africa by the white race, and the history of the American Indians, except perhaps of those of Peru and Mexico, begins only with the white man’s conquest of America. The white, or European, race is, above all others, the great historical race; but the yellow race, represented by the Chinese, has also a historical life and development, beginning many centuries before the birth of Christ. ”

“ Struggle with the wilderness and with the savage produced among them a society more democratic and more independent than Europe had ever known; while their profound religious convictions saved the colonists from barbarism and intellectual decline. It can truthfully be held, that in 1775, at the outbreak of the American Revolution, the colonists had abler men and greater political ability than the mother-country of England. It was these men who, at the close of the Revolution, framed the American Constitution, the greatest achievement in the history of public law. ”

“ Hebrewism and Christianity, together with the result of his own thought and prayers, led him to the belief in one God, the Almighty, the Compassionate, the Merciful, who as he believed would win all men to His knowledge through the teachings of Mohammed himself. Thus inspired, Mohammed became a teacher or prophet, and by the end of his life he had won his people to his faith and inaugurated one of the greatest eras of conquest the world has seen. ”

“ It is amazing what the Spaniards accomplished in the fifty years following Columbus’s first voyage.
Hispaniola was made the center from which the Spaniards extended their explorations to the continents of both North and South America. On these islands of the West Indies they found a great tribe of Indians,—the Caribs. They were fierce and cruel. The Spaniards waged a warfare of extermination against them, killing many, and enslaving others for work in the mines. The Indian proved unable to exist as a slave. ”

“ Thus it may be that there was a time when these little men and women had much of this island-world quite to themselves, and their race stretched unbrokenly from the Philippines across Malacca to the Indian Ocean. As it would have been impossible for so feeble a people to force their way from one island to another after the arrival of the stronger races, who have now confined them to the mountainous interiors, we are obliged to believe that the Negritos were on the ground first, and that at one time they were more numerous. The Indian archipelago was then a world of black pygmies. ”

“ The answer is, that history rests for its facts largely upon the written records made by people who either lived at the time these things took place, or so near to them that, by careful inquiry, they could learn accurately of these matters and write them down in some form, so that we to-day can read their accounts, and at least know how these events appeared to men of the time.
But not all that a man writes, or even puts in a book, of things he has seen and known, is infallibly accurate and free from error, partiality, and untruthfulness. ”

“ The savage and the hermit are not, in actual fact, types of human happiness and freedom. Ideal life for man is found only in governed society, where there is order and protection, and where also should be freedom of opportunity. But to the people of the eighteenth century, and especially to the scholars of France, where the government was monarchical and oppressive, and where the people were terribly burdened by the aristocracy, this teaching was welcomed as a new gospel. ”

“ Independence, while it may fascinate the popular leader, may not be most advantageous for this people. Independence, under present tendencies of international trade, means economic isolation. Independence, in the present age, compels preparedness for war; preparedness for war necessitates the maintenance of strong armies, the building of great navies, and the great economic burdens required to sustain these armaments. Especially would this be true of an archipelago so exposed to attack, so surrounded by ambitious powers, and so [319] near the center of coming struggle, as are the Philippines. ”

“ The power of a nation so strong and so terrible, when once aroused, that no country on the globe would think for a minute of wantonly molesting its territory, shields the Filipino from all outside interference and permits him to expend all his energy in the development of those abilities to which his temperament and endowment inspire him. ”

“ The great continents of America and Australia and the beautiful island-world of the Pacific and Indian oceans were scarcely dreamed of. This was the status of the white race in Europe a little more than five hundred years ago. How different is the position of this race to-day! It has now explored nearly the entire globe. The white people have crossed every continent and every sea. On every continent they have established colonies and over many countries their power. ”

“ It started in a sincere and conservative attempt to remedy the evils under which France was suffering, but the accumulation of injustice and misery was too great to be settled by slow and hesitating measures. The masses, ignorant, and bitter with their wrongs, broke from the control of statesman and reformer, threw themselves upon the established state and church, both equally detestable to them, and tore them to pieces. ”

“ American government means freedom of opportunity. There is no honorable pursuit, calling, or walk of life under heaven in which the Filipino may not now engage and in which he will not find his endeavors encouraged and his success met with generous appreciation. In politics, his progress may be slow, because progress here is not the development of the individual nor of the few, but of the whole. ”

“ The Meaning of History.—History, as it is written and understood, comprises many centuries of human life and achievement, and we must begin our study by discussing a little what history means. Men may live for thousands of years without having a life that may be called historical; for history is formed only where there are credible written records of events. Until we have these records, we have no ground for historical study, but leave the field to another study, which we call Archeology, or Prehistoric Culture. ”

“ Secure from external attack and rapidly progressing toward internal peace, the Philippines occupy a position most fortunate among the peoples of the Far East. They have representative government, freedom of religion, and public education, and, what is more than all else to the aspiring or ambitious race or individual, freedom of opportunity. ”

“ Then followed the two most romantic and surprising conquests of colonial history,—that of Mexico by Cortes in 1521, and of Peru by Pizarro in 1533–34. These great countries were inhabited by Indians, the most advanced and cultured on the American continents. And here the Spaniards found enormous treasures of gold and silver. Then, the discovery of the mines of Bogota opened the greatest source of the precious metal that Europe had ever known. Spaniards flocked to the New World, and in New Spain, as Mexico was called, was established a great vice-royalty. ”

“ Development of the United States of America.—The American nation is the type of the New World. Beginning in a group of colonies, planted half a century later than the settlement of the Philippines, it has had a development unparalleled in the history of states. Although peopled by emigrants from Europe, who rigidly preserved both their purity of race and pride of ancestry, the American colonists, at the end of a century, were far separated in spirit and institutions from the Old World. ”

“ No policy could ever be successful in the Philippines which did not depend for its strength upon giving a measure of satisfaction to the Filipino people. Legaspi did this. He [139] appears to have won the native datos, treating them with consideration, and holding out to them the expectations of a better and more prosperous era, which the sovereignty of the Spaniard would bring. Almost from the beginning, the natives of an island already reduced flocked to his standard to assist in the conquest of another. The small forces of the Spanish soldiers were augmented by hundreds of Filipino allies. ”