Many progressive Spaniards had become Freemasons, when that ancient
society, after its revival in England, had been reintroduced into
Spain. Now they found themselves suspected of sympathy with England
and therefore of treason to Spain. While this could not be proved,
it led to enforcing a papal bull against them, by which Pope Clement
XII placed their institution under the ban of excommunication.

At first it was intended to execute all the Spanish Freemasons, but
the Queen's favorite violinist secretly sympathized with them. He used
his influence with Her Majesty so well that through her intercession
the King commuted the sentences from death to banishment as minor
officials in the possessions overseas.

Thus Cuba, Mexico, South and Central America, and the Philippines were
provided with the ablest Spanish advocates of modern ideas. In no other
way could liberalism have been spread so widely or more effectively.

Besides these officeholders there had been from the earliest days
noblemen, temporarily out of favor at Court, in banishment in the
colonies. Cavite had some of these exiles, who were called "caja
abierta," or carte blanche, because their generous allowances, which
could be drawn whenever there were government funds, seemed without
limit to the Filipinos. The Spanish residents of the Philippines were
naturally glad to entertain, supply money to, and otherwise serve
these men of noble birth, who might at any time be restored to favor
and again be influential, and this gave them additional prestige in the
eyes of the Filipinos. One of these exiles, whose descendants yet live
in these Islands, passed from prisoner in Cavite to viceroy in Mexico.

Francisco Mercado lived near enough to hear of the "cajas abiertas"
(exiles) and their ways, if he did not actually meet some of them
and personally experience the charm of their courtesy. They were as
different from the ruder class of Spaniards who then were coming to
the Islands as the few banished officials were unlike the general run
of officeholders. The contrast naturally suggested that the majority of
the Spaniards in the Philippines, both in official and in private life,
were not creditable representatives of their country. This charge,
insisted on with greater vehemence as subsequent events furnished
further reasons for doing so, embittered the controversies of the
last century of Spanish rule. The very persons who realized that the
accusation was true of themselves, were those who most resented it,
and the opinion of them which they knew the Filipinos held but dared
not voice, rankled in their breasts. They welcomed every disparagement
of the Philippines and its people, and thus made profitable a
senseless and abusive campaign which was carried on by unscrupulous,
irresponsible writers of such defective education that vilification
was their sole argument. Their charges were easily disproved, but they
had enough cunning to invent new charges continually, and prejudice
gave ready credence to them.

Finally an unreasoning fury broke out and in blind passion innocent
persons were struck down; the taste for blood once aroused,
irresponsible writers like that Retana who has now become Rizal's
biographer, whetted the savage appetite for fresh victims. The
last fifty years of Spanish rule in the Philippines was a small
saturnalia of revenge with hardly a lucid interval for the governing
power to reflect or an opportunity for the reasonable element to
intervene. Somewhat similarly the Bourbons in France had hoped to
postpone the day of reckoning for their mistakes by misdeeds done
in fear to terrorize those who sought reforms. The aristocracy of
France paid back tenfold each drop of innocent blood that was shed,
but while the unreasoning world recalls the French Revolution with
horror, the student of history thinks more of the evils which made
it a natural result. Mirabeau in vain sought to restrain his aroused
countrymen, just as he had vainly pleaded with the aristocrats to end
their excesses. Rizal, who held Mirabeau for his hero among the men of
the French Revolution, knew the historical lesson and sought to sound
a warning, but he was unheeded by the Spaniards and misunderstood by
many of his countrymen.

At about the time of the arrival of the Spanish political exiles
we find in Manila a proof of the normal mildness of Spain in
the Philippines. The Inquisition, of dread name elsewhere, in the
Philippines affected only Europeans, had before it two English-speaking
persons, an Irish doctor and a county merchant accused of being
Freemasons. The kind-hearted Friar inquisitor dismissed the culprits
with warnings, and excepting some Spanish political matters in which
it took part, this was the nearest that the institution ever came to
exercising its functions here.

The sufferings of the Indians in the Spanish-American gold mines, too,
had no Philippine counterpart, for at the instance of the friars the
Church early forbade the enslaving of the people. Neither friars nor
government have any records in the Philippines which warrant belief
that they were responsible for the severe punishments of the period
from '72 to '98. Both were connected with opposition to reforms
which appeared likely to jeopardize their property or to threaten
their prerogatives, and in this they were only human, but here their
selfish interests and activities seem to cease.

For religious reasons the friar orders combatted modern ideas which
they feared might include atheistical teachings such as had made
trouble in France, and the Government was against the introduction of
latter-day thought of democratic tendency, but in both instances the
opposition may well have been believed to be for the best interest
of the Philippine people. However mistaken, their action can only be
deplored not censured. The black side of this matter was the rousing
of popular passion, and it was done by sheets subsidized to argue;
their editors, however, resorted to abuse in order to conceal the fact