orgotten nor forgiven. To me, as a
foreigner, scores of representative provincial natives did not hesitate
to open their hearts in private on the subject. The Government lost
considerably by its uncalled-for severity on this occasion. The natives
regarded it as a sign of apprehension, and a proof of the intention
to rule with an iron rod. The Government played into the hands of
the Spanish clergy, and all the friars gained by strengthening their
monopoly of the incumbencies they lost in moral prestige. Thinking men
really pitied the Government, which became more and more the instrument
of the ecclesiastics. Since then, serious ideas of a revolution to be
accomplished one day took root in the minds of influential Filipinos
throughout the provinces adjacent to Manila. _La Solidaridad_, a
Philippine organ, founded in Madrid by Marcelo Hilario del Pilar,
Mariano Ponce, Eduardo Leyte and Antonio Luna for the furtherance of
Philippine interests was proscribed, but copies entered the Islands
clandestinely. In the villages, secret societies were formed which the
priests chose to call "Freemasonry"; and on the ground that all vows
which could not be explained at the confessional were anti-christian,
the Archbishop gave strict injunctions to the friars to ferret out
the so-called Freemasons. Denunciations by hundreds quickly followed,
for the priests willingly availed themselves of this licence to get rid
of anti-clericals and others who had displeased them. In the town of
Malolos (which in 1898 became the seat of the Revolutionary Congress)
Father Moises Santos caused all the members of the Town Council to
be banished, and when I last dined with him in his convent, he told
me he had cleared out a few more and had his eye on others. From
other villages, notably in the provinces around the capital, the
priests had their victims escorted up to Manila and consigned to
the Gov.-General, who issued the deportation orders without trial
or sentence, the recommendation of the all-powerful _padre_ being
sufficient warrant. Thus hundreds of families were deprived of fathers
and brothers without warning or apparent justification;--but it takes
a great deal to rouse the patient native to action. Then in 1895 came
the Marahui campaign in Mindanao (_vide_ p. 144). In order to people
the territory around Lake Lanao, conquered from the _Moros_, it was
proposed to invite families to migrate there from the other islands,
and notifications to this e