Lineage_ Life and Labors of José Rizal_ Philippine Patriot Austin Craig 25031 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lineage, Life and
Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it
away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg
License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United
States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine
Patriot
Author: Austin Craig

Commentator: James Alexander Robertson

Release date: June 1, 2004 [eBook #6867]
Most recently updated: December 30, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats:
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6867
Credits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the PG
Distributed Proofreaders Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
LINEAGE, LIFE AND LABORS OF JOSÉ RIZAL,
PHILIPPINE PATRIOT ***
José Rizal
Philippine Patriot
Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Morir Page i
In the Philippine Islands the American Government has
tried, and is trying, to carry out exactly what the greatest
genius and most revered patriot ever known in the
Philippines, José Rizal, steadfastly advocated,
—Theodore Roosevelt, then President of the United States,
in a public address at Fargo, N. D., April 7, 1903.

Philippine Money and Postage Stamps, with the Rizal
Portrait
Page ii

The Portrait of Rizal in 1883 Painted in Oil by Felix
Resurreccion Hidalgo.

Page iii

Lineage Life and Labors

of

José Rizal

Philippine Patriot

A Study of the Growth of Free Ideas in the
Trans-Pacific American Territory

By
Austin Craig
Assistant Professor Oriental History
University of the Philippines
Author of “The Study of José Rizal,” “El Lineaje del
Doctor Rizal,” Etc.
Introduction by
James Alexander Robertson, L.H.D.

Manila
Philippine Education Company
1913
Page ivPage v

Dedication

To the Philippine Youth
The subject of Doctor Rizal’s first prize-winning poem was
The Philippine Youth, and its theme was “Growth.” The
study of the growth of free ideas, as illustrated in this book
of his lineage, life and labors, may therefore fittingly be
dedicated to the “fair hope of the fatherland.”
Except in the case of some few men of great genius, those
who are accustomed to absolutism cannot comprehend
democracy. Therefore our nation is relying on its young
men and young women; on the rising, instructed generation,
for the secure establishment of popular self-government in
the Philippines. This was Rizal’s own idea, for he said,
through the old philosopher in “Noli me Tangere,” that he
was not writing for his own generation but for a coming,
instructed generation that would understand his hidden
meaning.

Your public school education gives you the democratic
view-point, which the genius of Rizal gave him; in the fifty-
five volumes of the Blair-Robertson translation of
Philippine historical material there is available today more
about your country’s past than the entire contents of the
British Museum afforded him; and you have the guidance in
the new paths that Rizal struck out, of the life of a hero
who, farsightedly or providentially, as you may later decide,
was the forerunner of the present régime.
But you will do as he would have done, neither accept
anything because it is written, nor reject it because it does
not fall in with your prejudices—study out the truth for
yourselves. Page vi

Introduction

In writing a biography, the author, if he be discriminating,
selects, with great care, the salient features of the life story
of the one whom he deems worthy of being portrayed as a
person possessed of preëminent qualities that make for a
character and greatness. Indeed to write biography at all,
one should have that nice sense of proportion that makes
him instinctively seize upon only those points that do
advance his theme. Boswell has given the world an example
of biography that is often wearisome in the extreme,
although he wrote about a man who occupied in his time a
commanding position. Because Johnson was Johnson the

world accepts Boswell, and loves to talk of the minuteness
of Boswell’s portrayal, yet how many read him, or if they
do read him, have the patience to read him to the end?
In writing the life of the greatest of the Filipinos, Mr. Craig
has displayed judgment. Saturated as he is with endless
details of Rizal’s life, he has had the good taste to select
those incidents or those phases of Rizal’s life that exhibit
his greatness of soul and that show the factors that were the
most potent in shaping his character and in controlling his
purposes and actions.
A biography written with this chastening of wealth cannot
fail to be instructive and worthy of study. If one were to
point out but a single benefit that can accrue from a study of
biography written as Mr. Craig has done that of Rizal, he
would mention, I believe, that to the character of the
student, for one cannot study seriously about men of
character without being affected by that study. As leading to
an understanding of the character of Rizal, Mr. Craig has
described his ancestry with considerable fulness and has
shown how the selective Page viiprinciple has worked
through successive generations. But he has also realized the
value of the outside influences and shows how the accidents
of birth and nation affected by environment plus mental
vigor and will produced José Rizal. With a strikingly
meager setting of detail, Rizal has been portrayed from
every side and the reader must leave the biography with a
knowledge of the elements that entered into and made his
life. As a study for the youth of the Philippines, I believe

this life of Rizal will be productive of good results.
Stimulation and purpose are presented (yet not didactically)
throughout its pages. One object of the author, I should say,
has been to show how both Philippine history and world
history helped shape Rizal’s character. Accordingly, he has
mentioned many historical matters both of Philippine and
world-wide interest. One cannot read the book without a
desire to know more of these matters. Thus the book is not
only a biography, it is a history as well. It must give a larger
outlook to the youth of the Philippines. The only drawback
that one might find in it, and it seems paradoxical to say it,
is the lack of more detail, for one leaves it wishing that he
knew more of the actual intimate happenings, and this, I
take it, is the best effect a biography can have on the reader
outside of the instructive and moral value of the biography.
James A. Robertson.
Manila, P. I. Page viii

Contents

Dedication. To the Philippine Youth
Introduction
I. America’s Forerunner
II. Rizal’s Chinese Ancestry
III. Liberalizing Hereditary Influences
IV. Rizal’s Early Childhood

V. Jagor’s Prophecy
VI. The Period of Preparation
VII. The Period of Propaganda
VIII. Despujol’s Duplicity
IX. The Deportation to Dapitan
X. Consummatum Est
XI. The After Life In Memory
Appendix. The Monkey and the Tortoise

From Rizal’s sketch book.
Page ix

List of Illustrations

Portrait of Rizal Frontispiece Painted in oils by Felix
Resurrection Hidalgo (in color).
Philippine Money and Postage Stamps

Portrait of Rizal Painted in oils by Juan Luna in Paris.
Facsimile (in color).
Columbus at Barcelona From a print in Rizal’s scrapbook.
Portrait Group Rizal at thirteen. Rizal at eighteen. Rizal in
London. The portrait on the postage stamp.
The Baptismal Record of Domingo Lam-co Facsimile.
Portrait Group 1. In Luna’s home. 2. In 1890. 3. The portrait
on the paper money. 4. In 1891. 5. In 1892.
Pacific Ocean Spheres of Influence Made by Rizal during
President Harrison’s administration.
Father of Rizal Portrait.
Mother of Rizal Portrait.
Rizal’s Family-Tree Made by Rizal when in Dapitan.
Birthplace of José Rizal From a photograph.
Sketches by Rizal A group made during his travels.
Bust of Rizal’s Father Carved in wood by Rizal.
The Church and Convento at Kalamba From a photograph.
Father Leoncio Lopez From a photograph.
The Lake District of Central Luzon Sketch made by Rizal.
Page x

Rizal’s Uncle, José Alberto From a photograph.
Sir John Bowring, K.C.B. From an old print.
José Del Pan of Manila From a photograph.
Governor De La Torre From an old print.
Archbishop Martinez From an old print.
The Very Rev. James Burgos, D.D. From a photograph.
Gen. F. T. Ward From a photograph.
Monument to the “Ever-Victorious” Army, Shanghai From
a photograph.
Mrs. Rizal and Her Two Daughters From a photograph.
Bilibid Prison From an old print.
Model of a Head of a Dapitan Girl From a photograph.
Memorial to José Alberto in the Church at Biñan From a
photograph.
Books from Rizal’s Library From a photograph.
Rizal’s Carving of the Sacred Heart From a photograph.
Bust of Father Guerrico, S. J. From a photograph.
Two Views of a Composite Statuette by Rizal From
photographs.

Model in Clay of a Dapitan Woman From a photograph.
Sketch of Himself in the Training Class Photograph from
the original.
Oil Painting of Rizal’s Sister, Saturnina Photograph from
the painting. Page xi
Rizal’s Parting View of Manila Pencil sketch by himself.
Sketches: 1. Singapore Lighthouse. 2. Along the Suez
Canal. 3. Castle of St. Elmo From Rizal’s sketch book.
Studies of Passengers on the French Mail Steamer From
Rizal’s sketch book.
Aden, May 28, 1882 From Rizal’s sketch book.
Don Pablo Ortigas y Reyes From a photograph.
First Lines of a Poem by Rizal to Miss Reyes Facsimile.
Rizal in Juan Luna’s Studio in Paris From a photograph.
The Ruined Castle at Heidelberg From a photograph.
Dr. Rudolf Virchow From a photograph.
The House where Rizal Completed “Noli Me Tangere”
From a photograph.
Manuscript of “Noli Me Tangere” Facsimile.
Portrait of Dr. F. Blumentritt Pencil sketch by Rizal.

The Victory of Death over Life and of Science over Death
Statuettes by Rizal from photographs.
José T. De Andrade, Rizal’s Bodyguard From an old print.
José Maria Basa of Hongkong From a photograph.
Imitations of Japanese Art From Rizal’s sketch book.
Dr. Antonio Maria Regidor From a photograph.
A “Wheel of Fortune” Answer Book Facsimile. Page xii
Dr. Reinhold Rost From a photograph.
A Page from Andersen’s Fairy Tales Translated by Rizal
Facsimile.
Dedication of Rizal’s Translation of Andersen’s Fairy Tales
Facsimile.
A Trilingual Letter by Rizal Facsimile.
Morga’s History in the British Museum From a photograph
of the original.
Application, Recommendation and Admission to the British
Museum From photographs of the originals.
“La Solidaridad” From photograph of the original.
Staff of “La Solidaridad” From a photograph.
Rizal Fencing with Luna in Paris From a photograph.

General Weyler Known as “Butcher” Weyler From a
photograph.
Rizal’s Parents during the Land Troubles From
photographs.
The Writ of Eviction against Rizal’s Father Facsimile of the
original.
Room in which “El Filibusterismo” was Begun Pencil
sketch by Rizal.
First Page of the Manuscript of “El Filibusterismo”
Facsimile from the original.
Cover of the Manuscript of “El Filibusterismo” Facsimile of
the original.
Rizal’s Professional Card when in Hongkong Facsimile of
the original.
Statuette Modeled by Rizal From a photograph.
Don Eulogio Despujol From an old print.
Proposed Settlement in Borneo Facsimile of original sketch.
Page xiii

Rizal’s Passport or “Safe Conduct” Photograph of the
original.
Part of Despujol’s Private Inquiry Facsimile of the original.

Case Secretly Filed against Rizal Facsimile of the original.
Luis De La Torre, Secretary to Despujol From an old print.
Regulations of La Liga Filipina Facsimile in Rizal’s
handwriting.
The Calle Ilaya Monument to Rizal and La Liga Filipina
From a photograph.
Three New Species Discovered by Rizal and Named After
Him From an engraving.
Specimens Collected by Rizal and Father Sanchez From
photographs.
Statuette by Rizal, The Mother’s Revenge From a
photograph.
Father Sanchez, S. J. From a photograph.
Drawings of Fishes Caught at Dapitan Twelve facsimiles of
Rizal’s originals.
Plan of the Water Works for Dapitan Facsimile of Rizal’s
sketch.
Jewelry of Earliest Moro Converts From a photograph.
Hill and Excavations where the Jewelry was Found
Facsimile of a sketch by Rizal.
List of Ethnographical Material Facsimile.

The Blind Mr. Taufer From a photograph.
Rizal’s Father-in-Law From a photograph.
Carved Portrait of Josefina Bracken From a photograph.
Josefina Bracken’s Baptismal Certificate Facsimile of the
original. Page xiv
Josefina Bracken, Afterwards Mrs. José Rizal From a
photograph.
Leonora Rivera Pencil sketch by Rizal.
Leonora Rivera at the Age of Fifteen From a photograph.
Letter to His Nephew by Rizal Facsimile.
Ethnographical Material Collected by Rizal From a print.
Cell in which Rizal was Imprisoned From a photograph.
Cuartel De España From a photograph.
Luis T. De Andrade From an old print.
Interior of Cell From a photograph.
Rizal’s Wedding Gift to His Wife Facsimile of original.
Rizal’s Symbolic Name in Masonry Facsimile of original.
The Wife of José Rizal From a photograph.

Execution of Rizal From a photograph.
Burial Record of Rizal Facsimile from the Paco register.
Grave of Rizal in Paco Cemetery, Manila From a
photograph.
The Alcohol Lamp in which the “Farewell” Poem was
Hidden From a photograph.
The Opening Lines of Rizal’s Last Verses Facsimile of
original.
Rizal’s Farewell to His Mother Facsimile.
Monument at the Corner of Rizal Avenue From a
photograph. Page xv
Float in a Rizal Day Parade From a photograph.
W. J. Bryan as a Rizal Day Orator From a photograph.
Governor-General Forbes and Delegate Mariano Ponce
From a photograph.
The Last Portrait of José Rizal’s Mother From a
photograph.
Accepted Model for the Rizal Monument From a
photograph.
The Rizal Monument in Front of the New Capital From a
sketch.

The Story of the Monkey and the Tortoise Six facsimiles
from Rizal’s originals.

From Rizal’s sketch book.
Page xvi

Page 1

Chapter I

America’s Forerunner

The lineage of a hero who made the history of his country
during its most critical period, and whose labors constitute
its hope for the future, must be more than a simple list of an
ascending line. The blood which flowed in his veins must
be traced generation by generation, the better to understand
the man, but at the same time the causes leading to the
conditions of his times must be noted, step by step, in order
to give a better understanding of the environment in which
he lived and labored.
The study of the growth of free ideas is now in the days of
our democracy the most important feature of Philippine
history; hitherto this history has consisted of little more than
lists of governors, their term of office, and of the recital of
such incidents as were considered to redound to the glory of
Spain, or could be so twisted and misrepresented as to make
them appear to do so. It rarely occurred to former historians
that the lamp of experience might prove a light for the feet
of future generations, and the mistakes of the past were
usually ignored or passed over, thus leaving the way open
for repeating the old errors. But profit, not pride, should be
the object of the study of the past, and our historians of

today very largely concern themselves with mistakes in
policy and defects of system; fortunately for them such
critical investigation under our changed conditions does not
involve the discomfort and danger that attended it in the
days of Doctor Rizal.
Page 2In the opinion of the martyred Doctor, criticism of the
right sort—even the very best things may be abused till they
become intolerable evils—serves much the same useful
warning purpose for governments that the symptoms of
sickness do for persons. Thus government and individual
alike, when advised in time of something wrong with the
system, can seek out and correct the cause before serious
consequences ensue. But the nation that represses honest
criticism with severity, like the individual who deadens his
symptoms with dangerous drugs, is likely to be lulled into a
false security that may prove fatal. Patriot toward Spain and
the Philippines alike, Rizal tried to impress this view upon
the government of his day, with fatal results to himself, and
the disastrous effects of not heeding him have since justified
his position.
The very defenses of Old Manila illustrate how the
Philippines have suffered from lack of such devoted, honest
and courageous critics as José Rizal. The city wall was built
some years later than the first Spanish occupation to keep
out Chinese pirates after Li Ma-hong destroyed the city. The
Spaniards sheltered themselves in the old Tagalog fort till
reënforcements could come from the country. No one had
ever dared to quote the proverb about locking the door after

the horse was stolen. The need for the moat, so recently
filled in, was not seen until after the bitter experience of the
easy occupation of Manila by the English, but if public
opinion had been allowed free expression this experience
might have been avoided. And the free space about the
walls was cleared of buildings only after these same
buildings had helped to make the same occupation of the
city easier, yet there were many in Manila who foresaw the
danger but feared to foretell it.
Had the people of Spain been free to criticise the Spaniards’
way of waiting to do things until it is too late, Page 3that
nation, at one time the largest and richest empire in the
world, would probably have been saved from its loss of
territory and its present impoverished condition. And had
the early Filipinos, to whom splendid professions and
sweeping promises were made, dared to complain of the
Peninsular policy of procrastination—the “mañana” habit,
as it has been called—Spain might have been spared Doctor
Rizal’s terrible but true indictment that she retarded
Philippine progress, kept the Islands miserably ruled for
333 years and in the last days of the nineteenth century was
still permitting mediæval malpractices. Rizal did not believe
that his country was able to stand alone as a separate
government. He therefore desired to preserve the Spanish
sovereignty in the Philippines, but he desired also to bring
about reforms and conditions conducive to advancement. To
this end he carefully pointed out those colonial
shortcomings that caused friction, kept up discontent, and
prevented safe progress, and that would have been perfectly

easy to correct. Directly as well as indirectly, the changes he
proposed were calculated to benefit the homeland quite as
much as the Philippines, but his well-meaning efforts
brought him hatred and an undeserved death, thus proving
once more how thankless is the task of telling unpleasant
truths, no matter how necessary it may be to do so. Because
Rizal spoke out boldly, while realizing what would
probably be his fate, history holds him a hero and calls his
death a martyrdom. He was not one of those popularity-
seeking, self-styled patriots who are ever mouthing “My
country, right or wrong;” his devotion was deeper and more
disinterested. When he found his country wrong he
willingly sacrificed himself to set her right. Such unselfish
spirits are rare; in life they are often misunderstood, but
when time does them justice, they come into a fame which
endures.
Page 4Doctor Rizal knew that the real Spain had generous
though sluggish intentions, and noble though erratic
impulses, but it awoke too late; too late for Doctor Rizal
and too late to save the Philippines for Spain; tardy reforms
after his death were useless and the loss of her overseas
possessions was the result. Doctor Rizal lost when he staked
his life on his trust in the innate sense of honor of Spain, for
that sense of honor became temporarily blinded by a sudden
but fatal gust of passion; and it took the shock of the
separation to rouse the dormant Spanish chivalry.
Still in the main Rizal’s judgment was correct, and he was
the victim of mistimed, rather than of misplaced,

confidence, for as soon as the knowledge of the real Rizal
became known to the Spanish people, belated justice began
to be done his memory, and then, repentant and remorseful,
as is characteristically Castilian, there was little delay and
no half-heartedness. Another name may now be grouped
with Columbus and Cervantes among those to whom Spain
has given imprisonment in life and monuments after death
—chains for the man and chaplets for his memory. In 1896,
during the few days before he could be returned to Manila,
Doctor Rizal occupied a dungeon in Montjuich Castle in
Barcelona; while on his way to assist the Spanish soldiers in
Cuba who were stricken with yellow fever, he was shipped
and sent back to a prejudged trial and an unjust execution.
Fifteen years later the Catalan city authorities
commemorated the semi-centennial of this prisoner’s birth
by changing, in his honor, the name of a street in the
shadow of the infamous prison of Montjuich Castle to
“Calle del Doctor Rizal.”
More instances of this nature are not cited since they are not
essential to the proper understanding of Rizal’s story, but let
it be made clear once for all that whatever Page 5harshness
may be found in the following pages is directed solely to
those who betrayed the trust of the mother country and
selfishly abused the ample and unrestrained powers with
which Spain invested them.
And what may seem the exaltation of the Anglo-Saxons at
the expense of the Latins in these pages is intended only to
point out the superiority of their ordered system of

government, with its checks and balances, its individual
rights and individual duties, under which men are “free to
live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law.” No human
being can be safely trusted with unlimited power, and no
man, no matter what his nationality, could have withstood
the temptations offered by the chaotic conditions in the
Philippines in past times any better than did the Spaniards.
There is nothing written in this book that should convey the
opinion that in similar circumstances men of any nationality
would not have acted as the Spaniards did. The easiest
recognized characteristic of absolutism, and all the abuses
and corruption it brings in its train, is fear of criticism, and
Spain drew her own indictment in the Philippines when she
executed Rizal.
When any nation sets out to enroll all its scholarly critics
among the martyrs in the cause of Liberty, it makes an open
confession of guilt to all the world. For a quarter of a
century Spain had been ruling in the Philippines by
terrorizing its subjects there, and Rizal’s execution, with
utter disregard of the most elementary rules of judicial
procedure, was the culmination that drove the Filipinos to
desperation and arrested the attention of the whole civilized
world. It was evident that Rizal’s fate might have been that
of any of his countrymen, and the thinking world saw that
events had taken such a course in the Philippines that it had
become justifiable for the Filipinos to attempt to dissolve
the political Page 6bands which had connected them with
Spain for over three centuries.

Such action by the Filipinos would not have been warranted
by a solitary instance of unjust execution under stress of
political excitement that did not indicate the existence of a
settled policy. Such instances are rather to be classed among
the mistakes to which governments as well as individuals
are liable. Yet even such a mistake may be avoided by
certain precautions which experience has suggested, and the
nation that disregards these precautions is justly open to
criticism.
Our present Philippine government guarantees to its citizens
as fundamental rights, that no person shall be held to
answer for a capital crime unless on an indictment, nor may
he be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against
himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without
due process of law. The accused must have a speedy, public
and impartial trial, be informed of the nature and cause of
the accusation, be confronted with the witnesses against
him, have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his
favor, and have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Not one of these safeguards protected Doctor Rizal except
that he had an “open trial,” if that name may be given to a
courtroom filled with his enemies openly clamoring for his
death without rebuke from the court. Even the presumption
of innocence till guilt was established was denied him.
These precautions have been considered necessary for every
criminal trial, but the framers of the American Constitution,
fearful lest popular prejudice some day might cause
injustice to those advocating unpopular ideals, prohibited
the irremediable penalty of death upon a charge of treason

except where the testimony of two reliable witnesses
established some overt act, inference not being admissible
as evidence.

The Portrait of Rizal, Painted in Oil by Juan Luna in Paris.

Page 7Such protection was not given the subjects of Spain,
but still, with all the laxity of the Spanish law, and even if
all the charges had been true, which they were far from
being, no case was made out against Doctor Rizal at his
trial. According to the laws then in effect, he was unfairly
convicted and he should be considered innocent; for this
reason his life will be studied to see what kind of hero he
was, and no attempt need be made to plead good character
and honest intentions in extenuation of illegal acts. Rizal
was ever the advocate of law, and it will be found, too, that
he was always consistently law-abiding.
Though they are in the Orient, the Filipinos are not of it.
Rizal once said, upon hearing of plans for a Philippine
exhibit at a European World’s Fair, that the people of
Europe would have a chance to see themselves as they were
in the Middle Ages. With allowances for the changes due to
climate and for the character of the country, this statement
can hardly be called exaggerated. The Filipinos in the last
half of the nineteenth century were not Orientals but
mediæval Europeans—to the credit of the early Castilians
but to the discredit of the later Spaniards.
The Filipinos of the remoter Christian barrios, whom Rizal
had in mind particularly, were in customs, beliefs and
advancement substantially what the descendants of
Legaspi’s followers might have been had these been
shipwrecked on the sparsely inhabited islands of the
Archipelago and had their settlement remained shut off
from the rest of the world.

Except where foreign influence had accidentally crept in at
the ports, it could truthfully be said that scarcely perceptible
advance had been made in three hundred years. Succeeding
Spaniards by their misrule not only added little to the
glorious achievement of their ancestors, but seemed Page 8to
have prevented the natural progress which the land would
have made.
In one form or another, this contention was the basis of
Rizal’s campaign. By careful search, it is true, isolated
instances of improvement could be found, but the showing
at its very best was so pitifully poor that the system stood
discredited. And it was the system to which Rizal was
opposed.
The Spaniards who engaged in public argument with Rizal
were continually discovering, too late to avoid tumbling
into them, logical pitfalls which had been carefully prepared
to trap them. Rizal argued much as he played chess, and
was ever ready to sacrifice a pawn to be enabled to say
“check.” Many an unwary opponent realized after he had
published what he had considered a clever answer that the
same reasoning which scored a point against Rizal
incontrovertibly established the Kalamban’s major premise.
Superficial antagonists, to the detriment of their own
reputations, have made much of what they chose to consider
Rizal’s historical errors. But history is not merely
chronology, and his representation of its trend, disregarding
details, was a masterly tracing of current evils to their

remote causes. He may have erred in some of his minor
statements; this will happen to anyone who writes much,
but attempts to discredit Rizal on the score of historical
inaccuracy really reflect upon the captious critics, just as a
draftsman would expose himself to ridicule were he to
complain of some famous historical painting that it had not
been drawn to exact scale. Rizal’s writings were intended to
bring out in relief the evils of the Spanish system of the
government of the Filipino people, just as a map of the
world may put the inhabited portions of the earth in greater
prominence than those portions that are not inhabited.
Neither is exact in its representation, but Page 9each serves
its purpose the better because it magnifies the important and
minimizes the unimportant.
In his disunited and abased countrymen, Rizal’s writings
aroused, as he intended they should, the spirit of nationality,
of a Fatherland which was not Spain, and put their feet on
the road to progress. What matters it, then, if his historical
references are not always exhaustive, and if to make himself
intelligible in the Philippines he had to write in a style
possibly not always sanctioned by the Spanish Academy?
Spain herself had denied to the Filipinos a system of
education that might have made a creditable Castilian the
common language of the Archipelago. A display of
erudition alone does not make an historian, nor is purity,
propriety and precision in choosing words all there is to
literature.

Rizal charged Spain unceasingly with unprogressiveness in
the Philippines, just as he labored and planned
unwearyingly to bring the Filipinos abreast of modern
European civilization. But in his appeals to the Spanish
conscience and in his endeavors to educate his countrymen
he showed himself as practical as he was in his arguments,
ever ready to concede nonessentials in name and means if
by doing so progress could be made.
Because of his unceasing efforts for a wiser, better governed
and more prosperous Philippines, and because of his frank
admission that he hoped thus in time there might come a
freer Philippines, Rizal was called traitor to Spain and
ingrate. Now honest, open criticism is not treason, and the
sincerest gratitude to those who first brought Christian
civilization to the Philippines should not shut the eyes to the
wrongs which Filipinos suffered from their successors. But
until the latest moment of Spanish rule, the apologists of
Spain seemed to think that they ought to be able to turn
away the wrath evoked by the cruelty and incompetence
that ran riot during centuries, by dwelling Page 10upon the
benefits of the early days of the Spanish dominion.
Wearisome was the eternal harping on gratitude which at
one time was the only safe tone for pulpit, press and public
speech; it irritating because it ignored questions of current
policy, and it was discouraging to the Filipinos who were
reminded by it of the hopeless future for their country to
which time had brought no progress. But with all the faults
and unworthiness of the later rulers, and the inane attempts

of their parasites to distract attention from these failings,
there remains undimmed the luster of Spain’s early fame.
The Christianizing which accompanied her flag upon the
mainland and islands of the New World is its imperishable
glory, and the transformation of the Filipino people from
Orientals into mediæval Europeans through the colonizing
genius of the early Castilians, remains a marvel unmatched
in colonial history and merits the lasting gratitude of the
Filipino.
Doctor Rizal satirized the degenerate descendants and
scored the unworthy successors, but his writings may be
searched in vain for wholesale charges against the Spanish
nation such as Spanish scribblers were forever directing
against all Filipinos, past, present and future, with an
alleged fault of a single one as a pretext. It will be found
that he invariably recognized that the faithful first
administrators and the devoted pioneer missionaries had a
valid claim upon the continuing gratitude of the people of
Tupa’s and Lakandola’s land.
Rizal’s insight discerned, and experience has demonstrated,
that Legaspi, Urdaneta and those who were like them, laid
broad and firm foundations for a modern social and political
organization which could be safely and speedily established
by reforms from above. The early Christianizing civilizers
deserve no part of the blame for the fact that Philippine
ports were not earlier opened Page 11to progress, but much
credit is due them that there is succeeding here an orderly

democracy such as now would be impossible in any
neighboring country.
The Philippine patriot would be the first to recognize the
justice of the selection of portraits which appear with that of
Rizal upon the present Philippine postage stamps, where
they serve as daily reminders of how free government came
here.
The constancy and courage of a Portuguese sailor put these
Islands into touch with the New World with which their
future progress was to be identified. The tact and honesty of
a civil official from Mexico made possible the almost
bloodless conquest which brought the Filipinos under the
then helpful rule of Spain. The bequest of a far-sighted early
philanthropist was the beginning of the water system of
Manila, which was a recognition of the importance of
efforts toward improving the public health and remains a
reminder of how, even in the darkest days of miseries and
misgovernment, there have not been wanting Spaniards
whose ideal of Spanish patriotism was to devote heart, brain
and wealth to the welfare of the Filipinos. These were the
heroes of the period of preparation.
The life of the one whose story is told in these pages was
devoted and finally sacrificed to dignify their common
country in the eyes of his countrymen, and to unite them in
a common patriotism; he inculcated that self-respect which,
by leading to self-restraint and self-control, makes self-
government possible; and sought to inspire in all a love of

ordered freedom, so that, whether under the flag of Spain or
any other, or by themselves, neither tyrants (caciques) nor
slaves (those led by caciques) would be possible among
them.
And the change itself came through an American President
who believed, and practiced the belief, that nations Page
12owed obligations to other nations just as men had duties
toward their fellow-men. He established here Liberty
through Law, and provided for progress in general
education, which should be a safeguard to good government
as well, for an enlightened people cannot be an oppressed
people. Then he went to war against the Philippines rather
than deceive them, because the Filipinos, who repeatedly
had been tricked by Spain with unfulfilled promises,
insisted on pledges which he had not the power to give.
They knew nothing of what was meant by the rule of the
people, and could not conceive of a government whose head
was the servant and not the master. Nor did they realize that
even the voters might not promise for the future, since
republicanism requires that the government of any period
shall rule only during the period that it is in the majority. In
that war military glory and quick conquest were sacrificed
to consideration for the misled enemy, and every effort was
made to minimize the evils of warfare and to gain the
confidence of the people. Retaliation for violations of the
usages of civilized warfare, of which Filipinos at first were
guilty through their Spanish training, could not be entirely
prevented, but this retaliation contrasted strikingly with the
Filipinos’ unhappy past experiences with Spanish soldiers.

The few who had been educated out of Spain and therefore
understood the American position were daily reënforced by
those persons who became convinced from what they saw,
until a majority of the Philippine people sought peace. Then
the President of the United States outlined a policy, and the
history and constitution of his government was an assurance
that this policy would be followed; the American
government then began to do what it had not been able to
promise.
The forerunner and the founder of the present regime in
these Islands, by a strange coincidence, were as alike Page
13in being cruelly misunderstood in their lifetimes by those
whom they sought to benefit as they were in the tragedy of
their deaths, and both were unjustly judged by many,
probably well-meaning, countrymen.
Magellan, Legaspi, Carriedo, Rizal and McKinley, heroes
of the free Philippines, belonged to different times and were
of different types, but their work combined to make
possible the growing democracy of to-day. The diversity of
nationalities among these heroes is an added advantage, for
it recalls that mingling of blood which has developed the
Filipinos into a strong people.
England, the United States and the Philippines are each
composed of widely diverse elements. They have each been
developed by adversity. They have each honored their
severest critics while yet those critics lived. Their common
literature, which tells the story of human liberty in its own

tongue, is the richest, most practical and most accessible of
all literature, and the popular education upon which rests
the freedom of all three is in the same democratic tongue,
which is the most widely known of civilized languages and
the only unsycophantic speech, for it stands alone in not
distinguishing by its use of pronouns in the second person
the social grade of the individual addressed.
The future may well realize Rizal’s dream that his country
should be to Asia what England has been to Europe and the
United States is in America, a hope the more likely to be
fulfilled since the events of 1898 restored only associations
of the earlier and happier days of the history of the
Philippines. The very name now used is nearer the spelling
of the original Philipinas than the Filipinas of nineteenth
century Spanish usage. The first form was used until nearly
a century ago, when it was corrupted along with so many
things of greater importance. Page 14

Columbus at Barcelona. From a print in Rizal’s scrap-book.
The Philippines at first were called “The Islands of the
West,” as they are considered to be occidental and not
oriental. They were made known to Europe as a sequel to
the discoveries of Columbus. Conquered and colonized
from Mexico, most of their pious and charitable
endowments, churches, hospitals, asylums and colleges,
were endowed by philanthropic Mexicans. Almost as long
as Mexico remained Spanish the commerce of the
Philippines was confined to Mexico, and the Philippines
were a part of the postal system of Mexico and dependent
Page 15upon the government of Mexico exactly as long as
Mexico remained Spanish. They even kept the new world
day, one day behind Europe, for a third of a century longer.

The Mexican dollars continued to be their chief coins till
supplanted, recently, by the present peso, and the
highbuttoned white coat, the “americana,” by that name was
in general use long years ago. The name America is
frequently to be found in the old baptismal registers, for a
century or more ago many a Filipino child was so
christened, and in the ’70’s Rizal’s carving instructor,
because so many of the best-made articles he used were of
American manufacture, gave the name “Americano” to a
godchild. As Americans, Filipinos were joined with the
Mexicans when King Ferdinand VII thanked his subjects in
both countries for their loyalty during the Napoleonic wars.
Filipino students abroad found, too, books about the
Philippines listed in libraries and in booksellers’ catalogues
as a branch of “Americana.”
Nor was their acquaintance confined to Spanish Americans.
The name “English” was early known. Perhaps no other
was more familiar in the beginning, for it was constantly
execrated by the Spaniards, and in consequence secretly
cherished by those who suffered wrongs at their hands.
Magellan had lost his life in his attempted circumnavigation
of the globe and Elcano completed the disastrous voyage in
a shattered ship, minus most of its crew. But Drake, an
Englishman, undertook the same voyage, passed the Straits
in less time than Magellan, and was the first commander in
his own ship to put a belt around the earth. These facts were
known in the Philippines, and from them the Filipinos drew
comparisons unfavorable to the boastful Spaniards.

When the rich Philippine galleon Santa Ana was captured
off the California coast by Thomas Candish, “three Page
16boys born in Manila” were taken on board the English
ships. Afterwards Candish sailed into the straits south of
“Luçon” and made friends with the people of the country.
There the Filipinos promised “both themselves, and all the
islands thereabouts, to aid him whensoever he should come
again to overcome the Spaniards.”
Dampier, another English sea captain, passed through the
Archipelago but little later, and one of his men, John
Fitzgerald by name, remained in the Islands, marrying here.
He pretended to be a physician, and practiced as a doctor in
Manila. There was no doubt room for him, because when
Spain expelled the Moors she reduced medicine in her
country to a very low state, for the Moors had been her
most skilled physicians. Many of these Moors who were
Christians, though not orthodox according to the Spanish
standard, settled in London, and the English thus profited
by the persecution, just as she profited when the cutlery
industry was in like manner transplanted from Toledo to
Sheffield.
The great Armada against England in Queen Elizabeth’s
time was an attempt to stop once for all the depredations of
her subjects on Spain’s commerce in the Orient. As the
early Spanish historian, Morga, wrote of it: “Then only the
English nation disturbed the Spanish dominion in that
Orient. Consequently King Philip desired not only to forbid
it with arms near at hand, but also to furnish an example, by

their punishment, to all the northern nations, so that they
should not undertake the invasions that we see. A beginning
was made in this work in the year one thousand five
hundred and eighty-eight.”
This ingeniously worded statement omits to tell how
ignominiously the pretentious expedition ended, but the fact
of failure remained and did not help the prestige of Spain,
especially among her subjects in the Far East. After all the
boastings of what was going to happen, and Page 17all the
claims of what had been accomplished, the enemies of
Spain not only were unchecked but appeared to be bolder
than ever. Some of the more thoughtful Filipinos then began
to lose confidence in Spanish claims. They were only a few,
but their numbers were to increase as the years went by. The
Spanish Armada was one of the earliest of those influences
which, reënforced by later events, culminated in the life
work of José Rizal and the loss of the Philippines by Spain.
At that time the commerce of Manila was restricted to the
galleon trade with Mexico, and the prosperity of the
Filipino merchants—in large measure the prosperity of the
entire Archipelago—depended upon the yearly ventures the
hazard of which was not so much the ordinary uncertainty
of the sea as the risk of capture by English freebooters.
Everybody in the Philippines had heard of these daring
English mariners, who were emboldened by an almost
unbroken series of successes which had correspondingly
discouraged the Spaniards. They carried on unceasing war
despite occasional proclamation of peace between England

and Spain, for the Spanish treasure ships were tempting
prizes, and though at times policy made their government
desire friendly relations with Spain, the English people
regarded all Spaniards as their natural enemies and all
Spanish property as their legitimate spoil.
The Filipinos realized earlier than the Spaniards did that
torturing to death shipwrecked English sailors was bad
policy. The result was always to make other English sailors
fight more desperately to avoid a similar fate. Revenge
made them more and more aggressive, and treaties made
with Spain were disregarded because, as they said, Spain’s
inhumanity had forfeited her right to be considered a
civilized country.
It was less publicly discussed, but equally well known, that
the English freebooters, besides committing countless Page
18depredations on commerce, were always ready to lend
their assistance to any discontented Spanish subjects whom
they could encourage into open rebellion.
The English word Filibuster was changed into
“Filibusteros” by the Spanish, and in later years it came to
be applied especially to those charged with stirring up
discontent and rebellion. For three centuries, in its early
application to the losses of commerce, and in its later use as
denoting political agitation, possibly no other word in the
Philippines, outside of the ordinary expressions of daily life,
was so widely known, and certainly none had such sinister
signification.

In contrast to this lawless association is a similarity of laws.
The followers of Cortez, it will be remembered, were
welcomed in Mexico as the long-expected “Fair Gods”
because of their blond complexions derived from a Gothic
ancestry. Far back in history their forbears had been
neighbors of the Anglo-Saxons in the forests of Germany,
so that the customs of Anglo-Saxon England and of the
Gothic kingdom of Castile had much in common. The
“Laws of the Indies,” the disregard of which was the ground
of most Filipino complaints up to the very last days of the
rule of Spain, was a compilation of such of these Anglo-
Saxon-Castilian laws and customs as it was thought could
be extended to the Americas, originally called the New
Kingdom of Castile, which included the Philippine
Archipelago. Thus the New England township and the
Mexican, and consequently the early Philippine pueblo, as
units of local government are nearly related.
These American associations, English influences, and
Anglo-Saxon ideals also culminated in the life work of José
Rizal, the heir of all the past ages in Philippine history. But
other causes operating in his own day—the stories of his
elders, the incidents of his childhood, the Page 19books he
read, the men he met, the travels he made—as later pages
will show—contributed further to make him the man he
was.
It was fortunate for the Philippines that after the war of
misunderstanding with the United States there existed a
character that commanded the admiration of both sides.

Rizal’s writings revealed to the Americans aspirations that
appealed to them and conditions that called forth their
sympathy, while the Filipinos felt confidence, for that
reason, in the otherwise incomprehensible new government
which honored their hero.
Rizal was already, and had been for years, without rival as
the idol of his countrymen when there came, after
deliberation and delay, his official recognition in the
Philippines. Necessarily there had to be careful study of his
life and scrutiny of his writings before the head of our
nation could indorse as the corner stone of the new
government which succeeded Spain’s misrule, the very
ideas which Spain had considered a sufficient warrant for
shooting their author as a traitor.
Finally the President of the United States in a public address
at Fargo, North Dakota, on April 7, 1903—five years after
American scholars had begun to study Philippine affairs as
they had never been studied before—declared: ”In the
Philippine Islands the American government has tried, and
is trying, to carry out exactly what the greatest genius and
most revered patriot ever known in the Philippines, José
Rizal, steadfastly advocated,” a formal, emphatic and clear-
cut expression of national policy upon a question then of
paramount interest.
In the light of the facts of Philippine history already set
forth there is no cause for wonder at this sweeping
indorsement, even though the views so indorsed were those

of a man who lived in conditions widely different from
those about to be introduced by the new government. Page
20Rizal had not allowed bias to influence him in studying
the past history of the Philippines, he had been equally
honest with himself in judging the conditions of his own
time, and he knew and applied with the same fairness the
teaching which holds true in history as in every other
branch of science that like causes under like conditions
must produce like results, He had been careful in his
reasoning, and it stood the test, first of President
Roosevelt’s advisers, or otherwise that Fargo speech would
never have been made, and then of all the President’s
critics, or there would have been heard more of the
statement quoted above which passed unchallenged, but
not, one may be sure, uninvestigated.
The American system is in reality not foreign to the
Philippines, but it is the highest development, perfected by
experience, of the original plan under which the Philippines
had prospered and progressed until its benefits were
wrongfully withheld from them. Filipino leaders had been
vainly asking Spain for the restoration of their rights and the
return to the system of the Laws of the Indies. At the time
when America came to the Islands there was among them
no Rizal, with a knowledge of history that would enable
him to recognize that they were getting what they had been
wanting, who could rise superior to the unimportant detail
of under what name or how the good came as long as it
arrived, and whose prestige would have led his countrymen
to accept his decision. Some leaders had one qualification,

some another, a few combined two, but none had the three,
for a country is seldom favored with more than one
surpassingly great man at one time. Page 21Page 22

Rizal at Thirteen.

Rizal at Eighteen.

The Portrait on the Philippine Postage Stamp.

Rizal in London.
Page 23

Chapter II

Rizal’s Chinese Ancestry

Clustered around the walls of Manila in the latter half of the
seventeenth century were little villages the names of which,
in some instances slightly changed, are the names of present
districts. A fashionable drive then was through the
settlement of Filipinos in Bagumbayan—the “new town” to
which Lakandola’s subjects had migrated when Legaspi
dispossessed them of their own “Maynila.” With the
building of the moat this village disappeared, but the name
remained, and it is often used to denote the older Luneta, as
well as the drive leading to it.
Within the walls lived the Spanish rulers and the few other
persons that the fear and jealousy of the Spaniard allowed to
come in. Some were Filipinos who ministered to the needs
of the Spaniards, but the greater number were Sangleyes, or
Chinese, “the mechanics in all trades and excellent
workmen,” as an old Spanish chronicle says, continuing: “It
is true that the city could not be maintained or preserved
without the Sangleyes.”
The Chinese conditions of these early days are worth
recalling, for influences strikingly similar to those which
affected the life of José Rizal in his native land were then at

work. There were troubled times in the ancient “Middle
Kingdom,” the earlier name of the corruption of the Malay
Tchina (China) by which we know it. The conquering
Manchus had placed their emperor on the throne so long
occupied by the native dynasty whose adherents had
boastingly called themselves “The Sons of Light.” The
former liberal and progressive government, under which the
people prospered, had grown corrupt and Page 24helpless,
and the country had yielded to the invaders and passed
under the terrible tyranny of the Tartars.
Yet there were true patriots among the Chinese who were
neither discouraged by these conditions nor blind to the real
cause of their misfortunes. They realized that the easy
conquest of their country and the utter disregard by their
people of the bad government which had preceded it,
showed that something was wrong with themselves.
Too wise to exhaust their land by carrying on a hopeless
war, they sought rather to get a better government by
deserving it, and worked for the general enlightenment,
believing that it would offer the most effective opposition to
oppression, for they knew well that an intelligent people
could not be kept enslaved. Furthermore, they understood
that, even if they were freed from foreign rule, the change
would be merely to another tyranny unless the darkness of
the whole people were dispelled. The few educated men
among them would inevitably tyrannize over the ignorant
many sooner or later, and it would be less easy to escape
from the evils of such misrule, for the opposition to it would

be divided, while the strength of union would oppose any
foreign despotism. These true patriots were more concerned
about the welfare of their country than ambitious for
themselves, and they worked to prepare their countrymen
for self-government by teaching self-control and respect for
the rights of others.
No public effort toward popular education can be made
under a bad government. Those opposed to Manchu rule
knew of a secret society that had long existed in spite of the
laws against it, and they used it as their model in organizing
a new society to carry out their purposes. Some of them
were members of this Ke-Ming-Tong or Chinese
Freemasonry as it is called, and it was difficult Page 25for
outsiders to find out the differences between it and the new
Heaven-Earth-Man Brotherhood. The three parts to their
name led the new brotherhood later to be called the Triad
Society, and they used a triangle for their seal.
The initiates of the Triad were pledged to one another in a
blood compact to “depose the Tsing [Tartar] and restore the
Ming [native Chinese] dynasty.” But really the society
wanted only gradual reform and was against any violent
changes. It was at first evolutionary, but later a section
became dissatisfied and started another society. The original
brotherhood, however, kept on trying to educate its
members. It wanted them to realize that the dignity of
manhood is above that of rank or riches, and seeking to
break down the barriers of different languages and local

prejudice, hoped to create an united China efficient in its
home government and respected in its foreign relations.
*****
It was the policy of Spain to rule by keeping the different
elements among her subjects embittered against one
another. Consequently the entire Chinese population of the
Philippines had several times been almost wiped out by the
Spaniards assisted by the Filipinos and resident Japanese.
Although overcrowding was mainly the cause of the
Chinese immigration, the considerations already described
seem to have influenced the better class of emigrants who
incorporated themselves with the Filipinos from 1642 on
through the eighteenth century. Apparently these emigrants
left their Chinese homes to avoid the shaven crown and
long braided queue that the Manchu conquerors were
imposing as a sign of submission—a practice recalled by
the recent wholesale cutting off of queues which marked the
fall of this same Manchu dynasty upon the establishment of
the present republic. The patriot Chinese in Manila retained
the ancient style, which somewhat Page 26resembled the way
Koreans arrange their hair. Those who became Christians
cut the hair short and wore European hats, otherwise using
the clothing—blue cotton for the poor, silk for the richer—
and felt-soled shoes, still considered characteristically
Chinese.
The reasons for the brutal treatment of the unhappy exiles
and the causes of the frequent accusation against them that

they were intending rebellion may be found in the fear that
had been inspired by the Chinese pirates, and the
apprehension that the Chinese traders and workmen would
take away from the Filipinos their means of gaining a
livelihood. At times unjust suspicions drove some of the
less patient to take up arms in self-defense. Then many
entirely innocent persons would be massacred, while those
who had not bought protection from some powerful
Spaniard would have their property pillaged by mobs that
protested excessive devotion to Spain and found their
patriotism so profitable that they were always eager to stir
up trouble.
One of the last native Chinese emperors, not wishing that
any of his subjects should live outside his dominions,
informed the Spanish authorities that he considered the
emigrants evil persons unworthy of his interest. His
Manchu successors had still more reason to be careless of
the fate of the Manila Chinese. They were consequently ill
treated with impunity, while the Japanese were “treated
very cordially, as they are a race that demand good
treatment, and it is advisable to do so for the friendly
relations between the Islands and Japan,” to quote the
ancient history once more.
Pagan or Christian, a Chinaman’s life in Manila then was
not an enviable one, though the Christians were slightly
more secure. The Chinese quarter was at first inside the city,
but before long it became a considerable district of several
streets along Arroceros near the present Page 27Botanical

Garden. Thus the Chinese were under the guns of the
Bastion San Gabriel, which also commanded two other
Chinese settlements across the river in Tondo—Minondoc,
or Binondo, and Baybay. They had their own headmen,
their own magistrates and their own prison, and no outsiders
were permitted among them. The Dominican Friars, who
also had a number of missionary stations in China,
maintained a church and a hospital for these Manila
Chinese and established a settlement where those who
became Christians might live with their families. Writers of
that day suggest that sometimes conversions were prompted
by the desire to get married—which until 1898 could not be
done outside the Church—or to help the convert’s business
or to secure the protection of an influential Spanish
godfather, rather than by any changed belief.
Certainly two of these reasons did not influence the
conversion of Doctor Rizal’s paternal ancestor, Lam-co
(that is, “Lam, Esq.”), for this Chinese had a Chinese
godfather and was not married till many years later.
He was a native of the Chinchew district, where the Jesuits
first, and later the Dominicans, had had missions, and he
perhaps knew something of Christianity before leaving
China. One of his church records indicates his home more
definitely, for it specifies Siongque, near the great city, an
agricultural community, and in China cultivation of the soil
is considered the most honorable employment. Curiously
enough, without conversion, the people of that region even
to-day consider themselves akin to the Christians. They

believe in one god and have characteristics distinguishing
them from the Pagan Chinese, possibly derived from some
remote Mohammedan ancestors.
Lam-co’s prestige among his own people, as shown by his
leadership of those who later settled with him in Page
28Biñan, as well as the fact that even after his residence in
the country he was called to Manila to act as godfather,
suggests that he was above the ordinary standing, and
certainly not of the coolie class. This is borne out by his
marrying the daughter of an educated Chinese, an alliance
that was not likely to have been made unless he was a
person of some education, and education is the Chinese test
of social degree.
He was baptized in the Parian church of San Gabriel on a
Sunday in June of 1697. Lam-co’s age was given in the
record as thirty-five years, and the names of his parents
were given as Siang-co and Zun-nio. The second syllables
of these names are titles of a little more respect than the
ordinary “Mr.” and “Mrs.,” something like the Spanish Don
and Doña, but possibly the Dominican priest who kept the
register was not so careful in his use of Chinese words as a
Chinese would have been. Following the custom of the
other converts on the same occasion, Lam-co took the name
Domingo, the Spanish for Sunday, in honor of the day. The
record of this baptism is still to be seen in the records of the
Parian church of San Gabriel, which are preserved with the
Binondo records, in Manila.

Chinchew, the capital of the district from which he came,
was a literary center and a town famed in Chinese history
for its loyalty; it was probably the great port Zeitung which
so strongly impressed the Venetian traveler Marco Polo, the
first European to see China.
The city was said by later writers to be large and beautiful
and to contain half a million inhabitants, “candid, open and
friendly people, especially friendly and polite to
foreigners.” It was situated forty miles from the sea, in the
province of Fokien, the rocky coast of which has been
described as resembling Scotland, and its sturdy inhabitants
seem to have borne some resemblance to the Page 29Scotch
in their love of liberty. The district now is better known by
its present port of Amoy.

Facsimile of the baptisimal record of Domingo Lam-co.

Altogether, in wealth, culture and comfort, Lam-co’s home
city far surpassed the Manila of that day, which was,
however, patterned after it. The walls of Manila, its paved
streets, stone bridges, and large houses with spacious courts
are admitted by Spanish writers to be due Page 30to the
industry and skill of Chinese workmen. They were but
slightly changed from their Chinese models, differing
mainly in ornamentation, so that to a Chinese the city by the
Pasig, to which he gave the name of “the city of horses,”
did not seem strange, but reminded him rather of his own
country.
Famine in his native district, or the plague which followed
it, may have been the cause of Lam-co’s leaving home, but
it was more probably political troubles which transferred to
the Philippines that intelligent and industrious stock whose
descendants have proved such loyal and creditable sons of
their adopted country. Chinese had come to the Islands
centuries before the Spaniards arrived and they are still
coming, but no other period has brought such a remarkable
contribution to the strong race which the mixture of many
peoples has built up in the Philippines. Few are the
Filipinos notable in recent history who cannot trace descent
from a Chinese baptized in San Gabriel church during the
century following 1642; until recently many have felt
ashamed of these really creditable ancestors.
Soon after Lam-co came to Manila he made the
acquaintance of two well-known Dominicans and thus
made friendships that changed his career and materially

affected the fortunes of his descendants. These powerful
friends were the learned Friar Francisco Marquez, author of
a Chinese grammar, and Friar Juan Caballero, a former
missionary in China, who, because of his own work and
because his brother held high office there, was influential in
the business affairs of the Order. Through them Lam-co
settled in Biñan, on the Dominican estate named after “St.
Isidore the Laborer.” There, near where the Pasig river
flows out of the Laguna de Bay, Lam-co’s descendants were
to be tenants until another government, not yet born, and a
system unknown in his day, should Page 31end a long series
of inevitable and vexatious disputes by buying the estate
and selling it again, on terms practicable for them, to those
who worked the land.
The Filipinos were at law over boundaries and were
claiming the property that had been early and cheaply
acquired by the Order as endowment for its university and
other charities. The Friars of the Parian quarter thought to
take those of their parishioners in whom they had most
confidence out of harm’s way, and by the same act secure
more satisfactory tenants, for prejudice was then threatening
another indiscriminate massacre. So they settled many
industrious Chinese converts upon these farms, and flattered
themselves that their tenant troubles were ended, for these
foreigners could have no possible claim to the land. The
Chinese were equally pleased to have safer homes and an
occupation which in China placed them in a social position
superior to that of a tradesman.

Domingo Lam-co was influential in building up Tubigan
barrio, one of the richest parts of the great estate. In name
and appearance it recalled the fertile plains that surrounded
his native Chinchew, “the city of springs.” His neighbors
were mainly Chinchew men, and what is of more
importance to this narrative, the wife whom he married just
before removing to the farm was of a good Chinchew
family. She was Inez de la Rosa and but half Domingo’s
age; they were married in the Parian church by the same
priest who over thirty years before had baptized her
husband.
Her father was Agustin Chinco, also of Chinchew, a rice
merchant, who had been baptized five years earlier than
Lam-co. His baptismal record suggests that he was an
educated man, as already indicated, for the name of his
town proved a puzzle till a present-day Dominican
missionary from Amoy explained that it appeared to be the
combined names for Chinchew in both the common Page
32and literary Chinese, in each case with the syllable
denoting the town left off. Apparently when questioned
from what town he came, Chinco was careful not to repeat
the word town, but gave its name only in the literary
language, and when that was not understood, he would
repeat it in the local dialect. The priest, not understanding
the significance of either in that form, wrote down the two
together as a single word. Knowledge of the literary
Chinese, or Mandarin, as it is generally called, marked the
educated man, and, as we have already pointed out,
education in China meant social position. To such minute

deductions is it necessary to resort when records are scarce,
and to be of value the explanation must be in harmony with
the conditions of the period; subsequent research has
verified the foregoing conclusions.
Agustin Chinco had also a Chinese godfather and his
parents were Chin-co and Zun-nio. He was married to
Jacinta Rafaela, a Chinese mestiza of the Parian, as soon
after his baptism as the banns could be published. She
apparently was the daughter of a Christian Chinese and a
Chinese mestiza; there were too many of the name Jacinta
in that day to identify which of the several Jacintas she was
and so enable us to determine the names of her parents. The
Rafaela part of her name was probably added after she was
grown up, in honor of the patron of the Parian settlement,
San Rafael, just as Domingo, at his marriage, added
Antonio in honor of the Chinese. How difficult guides
names then were may be seen from this list of the six
children of Agustin Chinco and Jacinta Rafaela: Magdalena
Vergara, Josepha, Cristoval de la Trinidad, Juan Batista,
Francisco Hong-Sun and Inez de la Rosa.
The father-in-law and the son-in-law, Agustin and
Domingo, seem to have been old friends, and apparently of
the same class. Lam-co must have seen his future wife, Page
33the youngest in Chinco’s numerous family, grow up from
babyhood, and probably was attracted by the idea that she
would make a good housekeeper like her thrifty mother,
rather than by any romantic feelings, for sentiment entered
very little into matrimony in those days when the parents

made the matches. Possibly, however, their married life was
just as happy, for divorces then were not even thought of,
and as this couple prospered they apparently worked well
together in a financial way.
The next recorded event in the life of Domingo Lam-co and
his wife occurred in 1741 when, after years of apparently
happy existence in Biñan, came a great grief in the loss of
their baby daughter, Josepha Didnio, probably named for
her aunt. She had lived only five days, but payments to the
priest for a funeral such as was not given to many grown
persons who died that year in Biñan show how keenly the
parents felt the loss of their little girl. They had at the time
but one other child, a boy of ten, Francisco Mercado, whose
Christian name was given partly because he had an uncle of
the same name, and partly as a tribute of gratitude to the
friendly Friar scholar in Manila. His new surname suggests
that the family possessed the commendable trait of taking
pride in its ancestry.
Among the Chinese the significance of a name counts for
much and it is always safe to seek a reason for the choice of
a name. The Lam-co family were not given to the practice
of taking the names of their god-parents. Mercado recalls
both an honest Spanish encomendero of the region, also
named Francisco, and a worthy mestizo Friar, now
remembered for his botanical studies, but it is not likely that
these influenced Domingo Lam-co in choosing this name
for his son. He gave his boy a name which in the careless
Castilian of the country was but a Spanish translation of the

Chinese name by which his Page 34ancestors had been called.
Sangley, Mercado and Merchant mean much the same;
Francisco therefore set out in life with a surname that would
free him from the prejudice that followed those with
Chinese names, and yet would remind him of his Chinese
ancestry. This was wisdom, for seldom are men who are
ashamed of their ancestry any credit to it.
The family history has to be gleaned from partially
preserved parochial registers of births, marriages and
deaths, incomplete court records, the scanty papers of the
estates, a few land transfers, and some stray writings that
accidentally have been preserved with the latter. The next
event in Domingo’s life which is revealed by them is a visit
to Manila where in the old Parian church he acted as
sponsor, or godfather, at the baptism of a countryman, and a
new convert, Siong-co, whose granddaughter was, we shall
see, to marry a grandson of Lam-co’s, the couple becoming
Rizal’s grandparents.
Francisco was a grown man when his mother died and was
buried with the elaborate ceremonies which her husband’s
wealth permitted. There was a coffin, a niche in which to
put it, chanting of the service and special prayers. All these
involved extra cost, and the items noted in the margin of her
funeral record make a total which in those days was a
considerable sum. Domingo outlived Mrs. Lam-co by but a
few years, and he also had, for the time, an expensive
funeral. Page 35Page 36

Portrait Group.

Rizal in Luna’s Home.
Rizal in 1890.
The Portrait on the Paper Money.
Rizal in 1891.
Rizal in 1892.
Page 37

Chapter III

Liberalizing Hereditary Influences

The hope of the Biñan landlords that by changing from
Filipino to Chinese tenantry they could avoid further
litigation seems to have been disappointed. A family
tradition of Francisco Mercado tells of a tedious and costly
lawsuit with the Order. Its details and merits are no longer
remembered, and they are not important.
History has recorded enough agrarian trouble, in all ages
and in all countries, to prove the economic mistake of large
holdings of land by those who do not cultivate it. Human
nature is alike the world over, it does not change with the
centuries, and just as the Filipinos had done, the Chinese at
last objected to paying increased rent for improvements
which they made themselves.
A Spanish judge required the landlords to produce their
deeds, and, after measuring the land, he decided that they
were then taking rent for considerably more than they had
originally bought or had been given. But the tenants lost on
the appeal, and, as they thought it was because they were
weak and their opponents powerful, a grievance grew up
which was still remembered in Rizal’s day and was well
known and understood by him.

Another cause of discontent, which was a liberalizing
influence, was making itself felt in the Philippines about the
time of Domingo’s death. A number of Spaniards had been
claiming for their own countrymen such safeguards of
personal liberty as were enjoyed by Englishmen, for no
other government in Europe then paid any attention to the
rights of the individual. Learned men had devoted much
study to the laws and rights of nations, but these Spanish
Liberals insisted that it was the guarantees given to the
citizens, and not the political independence Page 38of the
State, that made a country really free. Unfortunately, just as
their proposals began to gain followers, Spain became
involved in war with England, because the Spanish King,
then as now a Bourbon and so related to a number of other
reactionary rulers, had united in the family compact by
which the royal relatives were to stamp out liberal ideas in
their own dominions, and as allies to crush England, the
source of the dissatisfaction which threatened their thrones.
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 Page 39money 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 Page 40savage
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 Page 41that 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 that they had not the
ability to perform the services for which they were hired.
While some individual members of both the religious orders
and of the Government were influenced by these inflaming
attacks, the interests concerned, as organizations, seem to
have had a policy of self-defense, and not of revenge.
The theory here advanced must wait for the judgment of the
reader till the later events have been submitted. However,
Rizal himself may be called in to prove that the record and
policy is what has been asserted, for otherwise he would
hardly have disregarded, as he did, the writings of Motley
and Prescott, historians whom he could have quoted with
great advantage to support the attacks he would surely have

not failed to make had they seemed to him warranted, for he
never was wanting in knowledge, resourcefulness or
courage where his country was concerned.
No definite information is available as to what part Page
42Francisco Mercado took during the disturbed two years
when the English held Manila and Judge Anda carried on a
guerilla warfare. The Dominicans were active in enlisting
their tenants to fight against the invaders, and probably he
did his share toward the Spanish defense either with
contributions or personal service. The attitude of the region
in which he lived strengthens this surmise, for only after
long-continued wrongs and repeatedly broken promises of
redress did Filipino loyalty fail. This was a century too early
for the country around Manila, which had been better
protected and less abused than the provinces to the north
where the Ilokanos revolted.
Biñan, however, was within the sphere of English influence,
for Anda’s campaign was not quite so formidable as the
inscription on his monument in Manila represents it to be,
and he was far indeed from being the great conqueror that
the tablet on the Santa Cruz Church describes him. Because
of its nearness to Manila and Cavite and its rich gardens,
British soldiers and sailors often visited Biñan, but as the
inhabitants never found occasion to abandon their homes,
they evidently suffered no serious inconvenience.
Commerce, a powerful factor, destroying the hermit
character of the Islands, gained by the short experience of

freer trade under England’s rule, since the Filipinos
obtained a taste for articles before unused, which led them
to be discontented and insistent, till the Manila market
finally came to be better supplied. The contrast of the
British judicial system with the Spanish tribunals was also a
revelation, for the foulest blot upon the colonial
administration of Spain was her iniquitous courts of justice,
and this was especially true of the Philippines.
Anda’s triumphal entry into the capital was celebrated with
a wholesale hanging of Chinese, which must have Page
43made Francisco Mercado glad that he was now so
identified with the country as to escape the prejudice
against his race.
A few years later came the expulsion of the Jesuit fathers
and the confiscation of their property. It certainly weakened
the government; personal acquaintance counted largely with
the Filipinos; whole parishes knew Spain and the Church
only through their parish priest, and the parish priest was
usually a Jesuit whose courtesy equalled that of the most
aristocratic officeholder or of any exiled “caja abierta.”
Francisco Mercado did not live in a Jesuit parish but in the
neighboring hacienda of St. John the Baptist at Kalamba,
where there was a great dam and an extensive irrigation
system which caused the land to rival in fertility the rich
soil of Biñan. Everybody in his neighborhood knew that the
estate had been purchased with money left in Mexico by
pious Spaniards who wanted to see Christianity spread in

the Philippines, and it seemed to them sacrilege that the
government should take such property for its own secular
uses.
The priests in Biñan were Filipinos and were usually
leaders among the secular clergy, for the parish was
desirable beyond most in the archdiocese because of its
nearness to Manila, its excellent climate, its well-to-do
parishioners and the great variety of its useful and
ornamental plants and trees. Many of the fruits and
vegetables of Biñan were little known elsewhere, for they
were of American origin, brought by Dominicans on the
voyages from Spain by way of Mexico. They were
introduced first into the great gardens at the hacienda house,
which was a comfortable and spacious building adjoining
the church, and the favorite resting place for members of
the Order in Manila.
The attendance of the friars on Sundays and fête days Page
44gave to the religious services on these occasions a dignity
usually belonging to city churches. Sometimes, too, some of
the missionaries from China and other Dominican notables
would be seen in Biñan. So the people not only had more of
the luxuries and the pomp of life than most Filipinos, but
they had a broader outlook upon it. Their opinion of Spain
was formed from acquaintance with many Spaniards and
from comparing them with people of other lands who often
came to Manila and investigated the region close to it,
especially the show spots such as Biñan. Then they were on
the road to the fashionable baths at Los Baños, where the

higher officials often resorted. Such opportunities gave a
sort of education, and Biñan people were in this way more
cultured than the dwellers in remote places, whose only
knowledge of their sovereign state was derived from a
single Spaniard, the friar curate of their parish.
Monastic training consists in withdrawing from the world
and living isolated under strict rule, and this would scarcely
seem to be the best preparation for such responsibility as
was placed upon the Friars. Troubles were bound to come,
and the people of Biñan, knowing the ways of the world,
would soon be likely to complain and demand the changes
which would avoid them; the residents of less worldly wise
communities would wait and suffer till too late, and then in
blind wrath would wreak bloody vengeance upon guilty and
innocent alike.
Kalamba, a near neighbor of Biñan, had other reasons for
being known besides its confiscation by the government. It
was the scene of an early and especially cruel massacre of
Chinese, and about Francisco’s time considerable talk had
been occasioned because an archbishop had established an
uniform scale of charges for the various rites of the Church.
While these charges were often complained of, it was the
poorer people (some of whom were in receipt Page 45of
charity) who suffered. The rich were seeking more
expensive ceremonies in order to outshine the other well-to-
do people of their neighborhood. The real grievance was,
however, not the cost, but the fact that political
discriminations were made so that those who were out of

favor with the government were likewise deprived of
church privileges. The reform of Archbishop Santo y Rufino
has importance only because it gave the people of the
provinces what Manila had long possessed—a knowledge
of the rivalry between the secular and the regular clergy.
The people had learned in Governor Bustamente’s time that
Church and State did not always agree, and now they saw
dissensions within the Church. The Spanish Conquest and
the possession of the Philippines had been made easy by the
doctrine of the indivisibility of Church and State, by the
teaching that the two were one and inseparable, but events
were continually demonstrating the falsity of this early
teaching. Hence the foundation of the sovereignty of Spain
was slowly weakening, and nowhere more surely than in the
region near Manila which numbered José Rizal’s keen-
witted and observing great grandfather among its leading
men.
Francisco Mercado was a bachelor during the times of these
exciting events and therefore more free to visit Manila and
Cavite, and he was possibly the more likely to be interested
in political matters. He married on May 26, 1771, rather
later in life than was customary in Biñan, though he was by
no means as old as his father, Domingo, was when he
married. His bride, Bernarda Monicha, was a Chinese
mestiza of the neighboring hacienda of San Pedro Tunasan,
who had been early orphaned and from childhood had lived
in Biñan. As the coadjutor priest of the parish bore the same
name, one uncommon in the Biñan records of that period, it

is possible that he was a Page 46relative. The frequent
occurrence of the name of Monicha among the last names
of girls of that vicinity later on must be ascribed to
Bernarda’s popularity as godmother.
Mr. and Mrs. Francisco Mercado had two children, both
boys, Juan and Clemente. During their youth the people of
the Philippines were greatly interested in the struggles
going on between England, the old enemy of Spain, and the
rebellious English-American colonies. So bitter was the
Spanish hatred of the nation which had humiliated her
repeatedly on both land and sea, that the authorities forgot
their customary caution and encouraged the circulation of
any story that told in favor of the American colonies. Little
did they realize the impression that the statement of
grievances—so trivial compared with the injustices that
were being inflicted upon the Spanish colonials—was
making upon their subjects overseas, who until then had
been carefully guarded from all modern ideas of
government. American successes were hailed with
enthusiasm in the most remote towns, and from this time
may be dated a perceptible increase in Philippine
discontent. Till then outbreaks and uprisings had been more
for revenge than with any well-considered aim, but
henceforth complaints became definite, demands were
made that to an increasing number of people appeared to be
reasonable, and those demands were denied or ignored, or
promises were made in answer to them which were never
fulfilled.

Francisco Mercado was well to do, if we may judge from
the number of carabaos he presented for registration, for his
was among the largest herds in the book of brands that has
chanced to be preserved with the Biñan church records. In
1783 he was alcalde, or chief officer of the town, and he
lived till 1801. His name appears so often as godfather in
the registers of baptisms and weddings Page 47that he must
have been a good-natured, liberal and popular man.
Mrs. Francisco Mercado survived her husband by a number
of years, and helped to nurse through his baby ailments a
grandson also named Francisco, the father of Doctor Rizal.
Francisco Mercado’s eldest son, Juan, built a fine house in
the center of Biñan, where its pretentious stone foundations
yet stand to attest how the home deserved the pride which
the family took in it.
At twenty-two Juan married a girl of Tubigan, who was two
years his elder, Cirila Alejandra, daughter of Domingo
Lam-co’s Chinese godson, Siong-co. Cirila’s father’s silken
garments were preserved by the family until within the
memory of persons now living, and it is likely that José
Rizal, Siong-co’s great-grandson, while in school at Biñan,
saw these tangible proofs of the social standing in China of
this one of his ancestors.
Juan Mercado was three times the chief officer of Biñan—
in 1808, 1813 and 1823. His sympathies are evident from
the fact that he gave the second name, Fernando, to the son
born when the French were trying to get the Filipinos to

declare for King Joseph, whom his brother Napoleon had
named sovereign of Spain. During the little while that the
Philippines profited by the first constitution of Spain,
Mercado was one of the two alcaldes. King Ferdinand VII
then was relying on English aid, and to please his allies as
well as to secure the loyalty of his subjects, Ferdinand
pretended to be a very liberal monarch, swearing to uphold
the constitution which the representatives of the people had
framed at Cadiz in 1812. Under this constitution the
Filipinos were to be represented in the Spanish Cortes, and
the grandfather of Rizal was one of the electors to choose
the Representative.
Page 48During the next twenty-five years the history of the
connection of the Philippines with Spain is mainly a record
of the breaking and renewing of the King’s oaths to the
constitution, and of the Philippines electing delegates who
would find the Cortes dissolved by the time they could get
to Madrid, until in the final constitution that did last
Philippine representation was left out altogether. Had things
been different the sad story of this book might never have
been told, for though the misgovernment of the Philippines
was originally owing to the disregard for the Laws of the
Indies and to giving unrestrained power to officials, the
effects of these mistakes were not apparent until well into
the nineteenth century.
Another influence which educated the Filipino people was
at work during this period. They had heard the American
Revolution extolled and its course approved, because the

Spaniards disliked England. Then came the French
Revolution, which appalled the civilized world. A people,
ignorant and oppressed, washed out in blood the wrongs
which they had suffered, but their liberty degenerated into
license, their ideals proved impracticable, and the anarchy
of their radical republic was succeeded by the military
despotism of Napoleon.
A book written in Tagalog by a friar pointed out the
differences between true liberty and false. It was the story
of an old municipal captain who had traveled and returned
to enlighten his friends at home. The story was well told,
and the catechism form in which, by his friends’ questions
and the answers to them, the author’s opinions were
presented, was familiar to Filipinos, so that there were
many intelligent readers, but its results were quite different
from what its pious and patriotic author had intended they
should be.
The book told of the broadening influences of travel and of
education; it suggested that liberty was possible Page 49only
for the intelligent, but that schools, newspapers, libraries
and the means of travel which the American colonists were
enjoying were not provided for the Filipinos.
They were further told that the Spanish colonies in America
were repeating the unhappy experiences of the French
republic, while the “English North Americans,” whose ships
during the American Revolution had found the Pacific a
safe refuge from England, had developed considerable

commerce with the Philippines. A kindly feeling toward the
Americans had been aroused by the praise given to Filipino
mechanics who had been trained by an American naval
officer to repair his ship when the Spaniards at the
government dockyards proved incapable of doing the work.
Even the first American Consul, whose monument yet
remains in the Plaza Cervantes, Manila, though, because of
his faith, he could not be buried in the consecrated ground
of the Catholic cemeteries, received what would appear to
be a higher honor, a grave in the principal business plaza of
the city.
The inferences were irresistible: the way of the French
Revolution was repugnant alike to God and government,
that of the American was approved by both. Filipinos of
reflective turn of mind began to study America; some even
had gone there; for, from a little Filipino settlement, St.
Malo near New Orleans, sailors enlisted to fight in the
second war of the United States against England; one of
them was wounded and his name was long borne on the
pension roll of the United States.
The danger of the dense ignorance in which their rulers kept
the Filipinos showed itself in 1819, when a French ship
from India having introduced Asiatic cholera into the
Islands, the lowest classes of Manila ascribed it to the
collections of insects and reptiles which a French naturalist,
who was a passenger upon the ship, had brought Page
50ashore. However the story started, the collection and the
dwelling of the naturalist fared badly, and afterwards the

mob, excited by its success, made war upon all foreigners.
At length the excitement subsided, but too much damage to
foreign lives and property had been done to be ignored, and
the matter had an ugly look, especially as no Spaniard had
suffered by this outbreak. The Insular government roused
itself to punish some of the minor misdoers and made many
explanations and apologies, but the aggrieved nations
insisted, and obtained as compensation a greater security for
foreigners and the removal of many of the restraints upon
commerce and travel. Thus the riot proved a substantial step
in Philippine progress.
Following closely the excitement over the massacre of the
foreigners in Manila came the news that Spain had sold
Florida to the United States. The circumstances of the sale
were hardly creditable to the vendor, for it was under
compulsion. Her lax government had permitted its territory
to become the refuge of criminals and lawless savages who
terrorized the border until in self-defense American soldiers
under General Jackson had to do the work that Spain could
not do. Then with order restored and the country held by
American troops, an offer to purchase was made to Spain
who found the liberal purchase money a very welcome
addition to her bankrupt treasury.
Immediately after this the Monroe Doctrine attracted
widespread attention in the Philippines. Its story is part of
Spanish history. A group of reactionary sovereigns of
Europe, including King Ferdinand, had united to crush out
progressive ideas in their kingdoms and to remove the

dangerous examples of liberal states from their
neighborhoods. One of the effects of this unholy alliance
was to nullify all the reforms which Spain had introduced to
secure English assistance in her time of Page 51need, and the
people of England were greatly incensed. Great Britain had
borne the brunt of the war against Napoleon because her
liberties were jeopardized, but naturally her people could
not be expected to undertake further warfare merely for the
sake of people of another land, however they might
sympathize with them.
George Canning, the English statesman to whom belonged
much of the credit for the Constitution of Cadiz, thought out
a way to punish the Spanish king for his perfidy. King
Ferdinand was planning, with the Island of Cuba as a base,
to begin a campaign that should return his rebellious
American colonies to their allegiance, for they had taken
advantage of disturbances in the Peninsula to declare their
independence. England proposed to the United States that
they, the two Anglo-Saxon nations whose ideas of liberty
had unsettled Europe and whom the alliance would have
attacked had it dared, should unite in a protectorate over the
New World. England was to guard the sea and the United
States were to furnish the soldiers for any land fighting
which might come on their side of the Atlantic.
World politics had led the enemies of England to help her
revolting colonies, Napoleon’s jealousy of Britain had
endowed the new nation with the vast Louisiana Territory,
and European complications saved the United States from

the natural consequences of their disastrous war of 1812,
which taught them that union was as necessary to preserve
their independence as it had been to win it. Canning’s
project in principle appealed to the North Americans, but
the study of it soon showed that Great Britain was selfish in
her suggestion. After a generation of fighting, England
found herself drained of soldiers and therefore she
diplomatically invited the coöperation of her former
colonies; but, regardless of any formal arrangement, her
navy could be relied on to prevent those Page 52who had
played her false from transporting large armies across the
ocean into the neighborhood of her otherwise defenseless
colonies. That was self-preservation.

Sketch of Pacific Ocean spheres of Influence, made by
Rizal when President Harrison was taking a decided policy
regarding Samoa.

President Monroe’s advisers were willing that their country
should run some risk on its own account, but they had the
traditional American aversion to entangling alliances. So the
Cabinet counseled that the young nation alone should make
itself the protector of the South American republics, and
drafted the declaration warning the world that aggression
against any of the New World democracies would be
resented as unfriendliness to the United States.
It was the firm attitude of President Monroe that compelled
Spain to forego the attempt to reconquer her former
colonies, and therefore Mexico and Central and Page 53South
America owe their existence as republics quite as much to
the elder commonwealth as does Cuba.
The American attitude revealed in the Monroe Doctrine was
especially obnoxious to the Spaniards in the Philippines but
their intemperate denunciations of the policy of America for
the Americans served only to spread a knowledge of that
doctrine among the people of that little territory which
remained to them to misgovern. Secretly there began to be,
among the stouter-hearted Filipinos, some who cherished a
corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the Philippines for the
Filipinos.
Thoughts of separation from Spain by means of rebellion,
by sale and by the assistance of other nations, had been thus
put into the heads of the people. These were all changes
coming from outside, but it next to be demonstrated that

Spain herself did not hold her noncontiguous territories as
sacred as she did her home dominions.
The sale of Florida suggested that Cuba, Porto Rico and the
Philippines were also available assets, and an offer to sell
them was made to the King of France; but this sovereign
overreached himself, for, thinking to drive a better bargain,
he claimed that the low prices were too high. Thereupon the
Spanish Ambassador, who was not in accord with his
unpatriotic instructions, at once withdrew the offer and the
negotiations terminated. But the Spanish people learned of
the proposed sale and their indignation was great. The news
spread to the Spaniards in the Philippines. Through their
comments the Filipinos realized that the much-talked-of
sacred integrity of the Spanish dominions was a
meaningless phrase, and that the Philippines would not
always be Spanish if Spain could get her price.
Gobernadorcillo Mercado, “Captain Juan,” as he was called,
made a creditable figure in his office, and there Page 54used
to be in Biñan a painting of him with his official sword,
cocked hat and embroidered blouse. The municipal
executive in his time did not always wear the ridiculous
combination of European and old Tagalog costumes,
namely, a high hat and a short jacket over the floating tails
of a pleated shirt, which later undignified the position. He
has a notable record for his generosity, the absence of
oppression and for the official honesty which distinguished
his public service from that of many who held his same
office. He did, however, change the tribute lists so that his

family were no longer “Chinese mestizos,” but were
enrolled as “Indians,” the wholesale Spanish term for the
natives of all Spain’s possessions overseas. This, in a way,
was compensation (it lowered his family’s tribute) for his
having to pay the taxes of all who died in Biñan or moved
away during his term of office. The municipal captain then
was held accountable whether the people could pay or not,
no deductions ever being made from the lists. Most
gobernadorcillos found ways to reimburse themselves, but
not Mercado. His family, however, were of the fourth
generation in the Philippines and he evidently thought that
they were entitled to be called Filipinos.
A leader in church work also, and several times “Hermano
mayor” of its charitable society, the Captain’s name appears
on a number of lists that have come down from that time as
a liberal contributor to various public subscriptions. His
wife was equally benevolent, as the records show.
Mr. and Mrs. Mercado did not neglect their family, which
was rather numerous. Their children were Gavino,
Potenciana (who never married), Leoncio, Fausto, Barcelisa
(who became the wife of Hermenegildo Austria), Gabriel,
Julian, Gregorio Fernando, Casimiro, Petrona (who married
Gregorio Neri), Tomasa (later Page 55Mrs. F. de Guzman),
and Cornelia, the belle of the family, who later lived in
Batangas.
Young Francisco was only eight years old when his father
died, but his mother and sister Potenciana looked well after

him. First he attended a Biñan Latin school, and later he
seems to have studied Latin and philosophy in the College
of San José in Manila.
A sister, Petrona, for some years had been a dressgoods
merchant in nearby Kalamba, on an estate that had recently
come under the same ownership as Biñan. There she later
married, and shortly after was widowed. Possibly upon their
mother’s death, Potenciana and Francisco removed to
Kalamba; though Petrona died not long after, her brother
and sister continued to make their home there.
Francisco, in spite of his youth, became a
tenant of the estate as did some others of
his family, for their Biñan holdings were
not large enough to give farms to all
Captain Juan’s many sons. The landlords
early recognized the agricultural skill of
the Mercados by further allotments, as
they could bring more land under
cultivation. Sometimes Francisco was able
Father of Rizal.
to buy the holdings of others who proved
less successful in their management and
became discouraged.
The pioneer farming, clearing the miasmatic forests
especially, was dangerous work, and there were few
families that did not buy their land with the lives of some of
its members. In 1847 the Mercados had funerals, of brothers
and nephews of Francisco, and, chief among them, of that

elder sister who had devoted her life to him, Page
56Potenciana. She had always prompted and inspired the
young man, and Francisco’s success in life was largely due
to her wise counsels and her devoted encouragement of his
industry and ambition. Her thrifty management of the home,
too, was sadly missed.
A year after his sister Potenciana’s death,
Francisco Mercado married Teodora
Alonzo, a native of Manila, who for
several years had been residing with her
mother at Kalamba. The history of the
family of Mrs. Mercado is unfortunately
not so easily traced as is that of her
husband, and what is known is of less
simplicity and perhaps of more interest
Mother of Rizal. since the mother’s influence is greater
than the father’s, and she was the mother
of José Rizal.
Her father, Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo (born 1790, died 1854),
is said to have been “very Chinese” in appearance. He had a
brother who was a priest, and a sister, Isabel, who was quite
wealthy; he himself was also well to do. Their mother,
Maria Florentina (born 1771, died 1817), was, on her
mother’s side, of the famous Florentina family of Chinese
mestizos originating in Baliwag, Bulacan, and her father
was Captain Mariano Alejandro of Biñan.

Lorenzo Alberto was municipal captain of Biñan in 1824, as
had been his father, Captain Cipriano Alonzo (died 1805),
in 1797. The grandfather, Captain Gregorio Alonzo (died
1794), was a native of Quiotan barrio, and twice, in 1763
and again in 1768, at the head of the mestizos’ organization
of the Santa Cruz district in Manila.
Page 57Captain Lorenzo was educated for a surveyor, and his
engineering books, some in English and others in French,
were preserved in Biñan till, upon the death of his son, the
family belongings were scattered. He was wealthy, and had
invested a considerable sum of money with the American
Manila shipping firms of Peele, Hubbell & Co., and
Russell, Sturgis & Co.
The family story is that he became acquainted with Brigida
de Quintos, Mrs. Rizal’s mother, while he was a student in
Manila, and that she, being unusually well educated for a
girl of those days, helped him with his mathematics. Their
acquaintance apparently arose through relationship, both
being connected with the Reyes family. They had five
children: Narcisa (who married Santiago Muger), Teodora
(Mrs. Francisco Rizal Mercado), Gregorio, Manuel and
José. All were born in Manila, but lived in Kalamba, and
they used the name Alonzo till that general change of names
in 1850 when, with their mother, they adopted the name
Realonda. This latter name has been said to be an allusion
to royal blood in the family, but other indications suggest
that it might have been a careless mistake made in writing
by Rosa Realonda, whose name sometimes appears written

as Redonda. There is a family Redondo (Redonda in its
feminine form) Alonzo of Ilokano origin, the same stock as
their traditions give for Mrs. Rizal’s father, some of whose
members were to be found in the neighborhood of Biñan
and Pasay. One member of this family was akin in spirit to
José Rizal, for he was fined twenty-five thousand pesos by
the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands for “contempt
of religion.” It appears that he put some original
comparisons into a petition which sought to obtain justice
from an inferior tribunal where, by the omission of the word
“not” in copying, Page 58the clerk had reversed the court’s
decision but the judge refused to change the record.
Brigida de Quintos’s death record, in Kalamba (1856),
speaks of her as the daughter of Manuel de Quintos and
Regina Ochoa.
The most obscure part of Rizal’s family tree is the Ochoa
branch, the family of the maternal grandmother, for all the
archives,—church, land and court,—disappeared during the
late disturbed conditions of which Cavite was the center. So
one can only repeat what has been told by elderly people
who have been found reliable in other accounts where the
clews they gave could be compared with existing records.
The first of the family is said to have been Policarpio
Ochoa, an employé of the Spanish customs house.
Estanislao Manuel Ochoa was his son, with the blood of old
Castile mingling with Chinese and Tagalog in his veins. He
was part owner of the Hacienda of San Francisco de

Malabon. One story says that somewhere in this family was
a Mariquita Ochoa, of such beauty that she was known in
Cavite, where was her home, as the Sampaguita (jasmine)
of the Parian, or Chinese, quarter.
There was a Spanish nobleman also in Cavite in her time
who had been deported for political reasons—probably for
holding liberal opinions and for being thought to be
favorable to English ideas. It is said that this particular “caja
abierta” was a Marquis de Canete, and if so there is ground
for the claim that he was of royal blood; at least some of his
far-off ancestors had been related to a former ruling family
of Spain.
Mariquita’s mother knew the exile, since, according to the
custom in Filipino families, she looked after the business
interests of her husband. Curious to see the belle of whom
he had heard so much, the Marquis made an excuse of
doing business with the mother, and went Page 59to her home
on an occasion when he knew that the mother was away. No
one else was there to answer his knock and Mariquita,
busied in making candy, could not in her confusion find a
coconut shell to dip water for washing her hands from the
large jar, and not to keep the visitor waiting, she answered
the door as she was. Not only did her appearance realize the
expectations of the Marquis, but the girl seemed equally
attractive for her self-possessed manners and lively mind.
The nobleman was charmed. On his way home he met a cart
loaded with coconut dippers and he bought the entire lot
and sent it as his first present.

After this the exile invented numerous excuses to call, till
Mariquita’s mother finally agreed to his union with her
daughter. His political disability made him out of favor with
the State church, the only place in which people could be
married then, but Mariquita became what in English would
be called a common-law wife. One of their children, José,
had a tobacco factory and a slipper factory in Meisic,
Manila, and was the especial protector of his younger sister,
Regina, who became the wife of attorney Manuel de
Quintos. A sister of Regina was Diega de Castro, who with
another sister, Luseria, sold “chorizos” (sausages) or
“tiratira” (taffy candy), the first at a store and the second in
their own home, but both in Cavite, according to the
variations of one narrative.
A different account varies the time and omits the noble
ancestor by saying that Regina was married unusually
young to Manuel de Quintos to escape the attentions of the
Marquis. Another authority claims that Regina was wedded
to the lawyer in second marriage, being the widow of
Facundo de Layva, the captain of the ship Hernando
Magallanes, whose pilot, by the way, was Andrew Stewart,
an Englishman.
Page 60It is certain that Regina Ochoa was of Spanish,
Chinese and Tagalog ancestry, and it is recorded that she
was the wife of Manuel de Quintos. Here we stop
depending on memories, for in the restored burial register of
Kalamba church in the entry of the funeral of Brigida de

Quintos she is called “the daughter of Manuel de Quintos
and Regina Ochoa.”
Manuel de Quintos was an attorney of Manila, graduated
from Santo Tomás University, whose family were Chinese
mestizos of Pangasinan. The lawyer’s father, of the same
name, had been municipal captain of Lingayan, and an
uncle was leader of the Chinese mestizos in a protest they
had made against the arbitrariness of their provincial
governor. This petition for redress of grievances is
preserved in the Supreme Court archives with “Joaquin de
Quintos” well and boldly written at the head of the
complainants’ names, evidence of a culture and a courage
that were equally uncommon in those days. Complaints
under Spanish rule, no matter how well founded, meant
trouble for the complainants; we must not forget that it was
a vastly different thing from signing petitions or adhering to
resolutions nowadays. Then the signers risked certainly
great annoyance, sometimes imprisonment, and not
infrequently death.
The home of Quintos had been in San Pedro Macati at the
time of Captain Novales’s uprising, the so-called “American
revolt” in protest against the Peninsulars sent out to
supersede the Mexican officers who had remained loyal to
Spain when the colony of their birth separated itself from
the mother country. As little San Pedro Macati is charged
with having originated the conspiracy, it is unlikely that it
was concealed from the liberal lawyer, for attorneys were
scarcer and held in higher esteem in those days.

The conservative element then, as later, did not often Page
61let drop any opportunity of purging the community of
those who thought for themselves, by condemning them for
crime unheard and undefended, whether they had been
guilty of it or not.
All the branches of Mrs. Rizal’s family were much richer
than the relatives of her husband; there were numerous
lawyers and priests among them—the old-time proof of
social standing—and they were influential in the country.
There are several names of these related families that
belong among the descendants of Lakandola, as traced by
Mr. Luther Parker in his study of the Pampangan migration,
and color is thereby given, so far as Rizal is concerned, to a
proud boast that an old Pampangan lady of this descent
makes for her family. She, who is exceedingly well posted
upon her ancestry, ends the tracing of her lineage from
Lakandola’s time by asserting that the blood of that chief
flowed in the veins of every Filipino who had the courage
to stand forward as the champion of his people from the
earliest days to the close of the Spanish régime. Lakandola,
of course, belonged to the Mohammedan Sumatrans who
emigrated to the Philippines only a few generations before
Magellan’s discovery.
To recall relatives of Mrs. Rizal who were in the
professions may help to an understanding of the prominence
of the family. Felix Florentino, an uncle, was the first clerk
of the Nueva Segovia (Vigan) court. A cousin-german, José

Florentino, was a Philippine deputy in the Spanish Cortes,
and a lawyer of note, as was also his brother, Manuel.
Another relative, less near, was Clerk Reyes, of the Court of
First Instance in Manila. The priest of Rosario, Vicar of
Batangas Province, Father Leyva, was a half-blood relation,
and another priestly relative was Mrs. Rizal’s paternal
uncle, Father Alonzo. Page 62Page 63These were in the earlier
days when professional men were scarcer. Father Almeida,
of Santa Cruz Church, Manila, and Father Agustin Mendoz,
his predecessor in the same church, and one of the sufferers
in the Cavite trouble of ’72—a deporté—were most
distantly connected with the Rizal family. Another relative,
of the Reyes connection, was in the Internal Revenue
Service and had charge of Kalamba during the latter part of
the eighteenth century.

Family tree made by Rizal when in Dapitan.
Mrs. Rizal was baptized in Santa Cruz Church, Manila,
November 18, 1827, as Teodora Morales Alonzo, her
godmother being a relative by marriage, Doña Maria
Cristina. She was given an exceptionally good fundamental
education by her gifted mother, and completed her training
in Santa Rosa College, Manila, which was in the charge of

Filipino sisters. Especially did the religious influence of her
schooling manifest itself in her after life. Unfortunately
there are no records in the institution, because it is said all
the members of the Order who could read and write were
needed for instruction and there was no one competent who
had time for clerical work.
Brigida de Quintos had removed to the property in Kalamba
which Lorenzo Alberto had transferred to her, and there as
early as 1844 she is first mentioned as Brigida de Quintos,
then as Brigida de Alonzo, and later as Brigida Realonda.
Page 64

Chapter IV

Rizal’s Early Childhood

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonzo Realonda, the seventh
child of Francisco Engracio Rizal Mercado y Alejandro and
his wife, Teodora Morales Alonzo Realonda y Quintos, was
born in Kalamba, June 19, 1861.
He was a typical Filipino, for few persons in this land of
mixed blood could boast a greater mixture than his.
Practically all the ethnic elements, perhaps even the Negrito
in the far past, combined in his blood. All his ancestors,
except the doubtful strain of the Negrito, had been
immigrants to the Philippines, early Malays, and later
Sumatrans, Chinese of prehistoric times and the refugees
from the Tartar dominion, and Spaniards of old Castile and
Valencia—representatives of all the various peoples who
have blended to make the strength of the Philippine race.
Shortly before José’s birth his family had built a pretentious
new home in the center of Kalamba on a lot which
Francisco Mercado had inherited from his brother. The
house was destroyed before its usefulness had ceased, by
the vindictiveness of those who hated the man-child that
was born there. And later on the gratitude of a free people
held the same spot sacred because there began that life

consecrated to the Philippines and finally given for it, after
preparing the way for the union of the various disunited
Chinese mestizos, Spanish mestizos, and half a hundred
dialectically distinguished “Indians” into the united people
of the Philippines.
José was christened in the nearby church when three days
old, and as two out-of-town bands happened to be in
Kalamba for a local festival, music was a feature of Page
65the event. His godfather was Father Pedro Casañas, a
Filipino priest of a Kalamba family, and the priest who
christened him was also a Filipino, Father Rufino Collantes.
Following is a translation of the record of Rizal’s birth and
baptism: “I, the undersigned parish priest of the town of
Calamba, certify that from the investigation made with
proper authority, for replacing the parish books which were
burned September 28, 1862, to be found in Docket No. 1 of
Baptisms, page 49, it appears by the sworn testimony of
competent witnesses that José Rizal Mercado is the legitimate
son, and of lawful wedlock, of Don Francisco Rizal
Mercado and Doña Teodora Realonda, having been
baptized in this parish on the 22d day of June in the year
1861, by the parish priest, Rev. Rufino Collantes, Rev.
Pedro Casañas being his godfather.”—Witness my
signature.
(Signed) Leoncio Lopez.

Birthplace of José Rizal.
Page 66José Rizal’s earliest training recalls the education of
William and Alexander von Humboldt, those two nineteenth
century Germans whose achievements for the prosperity of
their fatherland and the advancement of humanity have
caused them to be spoken of as the most remarkable pair of
brothers that ever lived. He was not physically a strong
child, but the direction of his first studies was by an
unusually gifted mother, who succeeded, almost without the
aid of books, in laying a foundation upon which the man
placed an amount of well-mastered knowledge along many
different lines that is truly marvelous, and this was done in
so short a time that its brevity constitutes another wonder.
At three he learned his letters, having insisted upon being
taught to read and being allowed to share the lessons of an
elder sister. Immediately thereafter he was discovered with
her story book, spelling out its words by the aid of the

syllabary or “caton” which he had propped up before him
and was using as one does a dictionary in a foreign
language.
The little boy spent also much of his time in the church,
which was conveniently near, but when the mother
suggested that this might be an indication of religious
inclination, his prompt response was that he liked to watch
the people.
To how good purpose the small eyes and ears were used, the
true-to-life types of the characters in “Noli Me Tangere”
and “El Filibusterismo” testify.
Three uncles, brothers of the mother, concerned themselves
with the intellectual, artistic and physical training of this
promising nephew. The youngest, José, a teacher, looked
after the regular lessons. The giant Manuel developed the
physique of the youngster, until he had a supple body of silk
and steel and was no longer a sickly lad, though he did not
entirely lose his somewhat delicate Page 67looks. The more
scholarly Gregorio saw that the child earned his candy
money—trying to instill the idea into his mind that it was
not the world’s way that anything worth having should
come without effort; he taught him also the value of rapidity
in work, to think for himself, and to observe carefully and
to picture what he saw.

A Group of Sketches by Rizal.
Page 68

Sometimes José would draw a bird flying without lifting
pencil from the paper till the picture was finished. At other
times it would be a horse running or a dog in chase, but it
always must be something of which he had thought himself
and the idea must not be overworked; there was no payment
for what had been done often before. Thus he came to think
for himself, ideas were suggested to him indirectly, so he

was never a servile copyist, and he acquired the habit of
speedy accomplishment.
Clay at first, then wax, was his favorite play material. From
these he modeled birds and butterflies that came ever nearer
to the originals in nature as the wise praise of the uncles
called his attention to possibilities of improvement and
encouraged him to further effort. This was the beginning of
his nature study.
José had a pony
and used to take
long rides
through all the
surrounding
country, so rich
in picturesque
scenery. Besides
these horseback
expeditions
were excursions
afoot; on the
Wooden bust of his father carved by Rizal latter his
companion was
his big black
dog, Usman. His father pretended to be fearful of some
accident if dog and pony went together, so the boy had to
choose between these favorites, and alternated walking and
riding, just as Mr. Mercado had planned he should. The
long pedestrian excursions of his European life, though

spoken of as German and English habits, were merely
continuations of this childhood custom. There were other
playmates besides the dog and the horse, especially doves
that lived in several houses about the Page 69Mercado home,
and the lad was friend and defender of all the animals,
birds, and even insects in the neighborhood. Had his
childish sympathies been respected the family would have
been strictly vegetarian in their diet.
At times José was permitted to spend the night in one of the
curious little straw huts which La Laguna farmers put up
during the harvest season, and the myths and legends of the
region which he then heard interested him and were later
made good use of in his writings.
Sleight-of-hand tricks were a favorite amusement, and he
developed a dexterity which mystified the simple folk of the
country. This diversion, and his proficiency in it, gave rise
to that mysterious awe with which he was regarded by the
common people of his home region; they ascribed to him
supernatural powers, and refused to believe that he was
really dead even after the tragedy of Bagumbayan.
Entertainment of the neighbors with magic-lantern
exhibitions was another frequent amusement, an ordinary
lamp throwing its light on a common sheet serving as a
screen. José’s supple fingers twisted themselves into
fantastic shapes, the enlarged shadows of which on the
curtain bore resemblance to animals, and paper accessories
were worked in to vary and enlarge the repertoire of action

figures. The youthful showman was quite successful in
catering to the public taste, and the knowledge he then
gained proved valuable later in enabling him to approach
his countrymen with books that held their attention and
gave him the opportunity to tell them of shortcomings
which it was necessary that they should correct.
Almost from babyhood he had a grown-up way about him,
a sort of dignity that seemed to make him realize and
respect the rights of others and unconsciously disposed his
elders to reason with him, rather than scold him Page 70for
his slight offenses. This habit grew, as reprimands were
needed but once, and his grave promises of better behavior
were faithfully kept when the explanation of why his
conduct was wrong was once made clear to him. So the
child came to be not an unwelcome companion even for
adults, for he respected their moods and was never
troublesome. A big influence in the formation of the child’s
character was his association with the parish priest of
Kalamba, Father Leoncio Lopez.

The church and convento at Kalamba.
The Kalamba church and convento, which were located
across the way from the Rizal home, were constructed after
the great earthquake of 1863, which demolished so many
edifices throughout the central part of the Philippines.
The curate of Kalamba had a strong personality and was
notable among the Filipino secular clergy of that day when
responsibility had developed many creditable figures. An
English writer of long residence in the Philippines, Page
71John Foreman, in his book on the Philippine Islands,
describes how his first meeting with this priest impressed
him, and tells us that subsequent acquaintance confirmed
the early favorable opinion of one whom he considered
remarkable for broad intelligence and sanity of view. Father
Leoncío never deceived himself and his judgment was
sound and clear, even when against the opinions and
persons of whom he would have preferred to think
differently. Probably José, through the priest’s fondness for
children and because he was well behaved and the son of
friendly neighbors, was at first tolerated about the convento,
the Philippine name for the priest’s residence, but soon he
became a welcome visitor for his own sake.
He never disturbed the priest’s meditations when the old
clergyman was studying out some difficult question, but
was a keen observer, apparently none the less curious for
his respectful reserve. Father Leoncío may have forgotten
the age of his listener, or possibly was only thinking aloud,

but he spoke of those matters which interested all thinking
Filipinos and found a sympathetic, eager audience in the
little boy, who at least gave close heed if he had at first no
valuable comments to offer.
In time the child came to ask questions, and they were so
sensible that careful explanation was given, and questions
were not dismissed with the statement that these things
were for grown-ups, a statement which so often repels the
childish zeal for knowledge. Not many mature people in
those days held so serious converse as the priest and his
child friend, for fear of being overheard and reported, a
danger which even then existed in the Philippines.
That the old Filipino priest of Rizal’s novels owed
something to the author’s recollections of Father Leoncío is
suggested by a chapter in “Noli Me Tangere.” Ibarra,
viewing Manila by moonlight on the first night Page 72after
his return from Europe, recalls old memories and makes
mention of the neighborhood of the Botanical Garden, just
beyond which the friend and mentor of his youth had died.
Father Leoncio Lopez died in Calle Concepción in that
vicinity, which would seem to identify him in connection
with that scene in the book, rather than numerous others
whose names have been sometimes suggested.
Two writings of Rizal recall thoughts of his youthful days.
One tells how he used to wander down along the lake shore
and, looking across the waters, wonder about the people on
the other side. Did they, too, he questioned, suffer injustice

as the people of his home town did?
Was the whip there used as freely,
carelessly and unmercifully by the
authorities? Had men and women
also to be servile and hypocrites to
live in peace over there? But
among these thoughts, never once
Father Leoncio Lopez. did it occur to him that at no distant
day the conditions would be
changed and, under a government that safeguarded the
personal rights of the humblest of its citizens, the region
that evoked his childhood wondering was to become part of
a province bearing his own name in honor of his labors
toward banishing servility and hypocrisy from the character
of his countrymen.
The lake district of Central Luzon is one of the most
historic regions in the Islands, the May-i probably of the
twelfth century Chinese geographer. Here was the scene of
the earliest Spanish missionary activity. On the south Page
73shore is Kalamba, birthplace of Doctor Rizal, with Biñan,
the residence of his father’s ancestors, to the northwest, and
on the north shore the land to which reference is made
above. Today this same region at the north bears the name
of Rizal Province in his honor.

Sketch map of the lake district by Rizal.
The other recollection of Rizal’s youth is of his first reading
lesson. He did not know Spanish and made bad Page 74work
of the story of the “Foolish Butterfly,” which his mother
had selected, stumbling over the words and grouping them
without regard to the sense. Finally Mrs. Rizal took the
book from her son and read it herself, translating the tale
into the familiar Tagalog used in their home. The moral is
supposed to be obedience, and the young butterfly was
burned and died because it disregarded the parental warning
not to venture too close to the alluring flame. The reading
lesson was in the evening and by the light of a coconut-oil

lamp, and some moths were very appropriately fluttering
about its cheerful blaze. The little boy watched them as his
mother read and he missed the moral, for as the insects
singed their wings and fluttered to their death in the flame
he forgot their disobedience and found no warning in it for
him. Rather he envied their fate and considered that the
light was so fine a thing that it was worth dying for. Thus
early did the notion that there are things worth more than
life enter his head, though he could not foresee that he was
to be himself a martyr and that the day of his death would
before long be commemorated in his country to recall to his
countrymen lessons as important to their national existence
as his mother’s precept was for his childish welfare.
When he was four the mystery of life’s ending had been
brought home to him by the death of a favorite little sister,
and he shed the first tears of real sorrow, for until then he
had only wept as children do when disappointed in getting
their own way. It was the first of many griefs, but he
quickly realized that life is a constant struggle and he
learned to meet disappointments and sorrows with the tears
in the heart and a smile on the lips, as he once advised a
nephew to do.
At seven José made his first real journey; the family went to
Antipolo with the host of pilgrims who in May Page 75visit
the mountain shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Safe Travel.
In the early Spanish days in Mexico she was the special
patroness of voyages to America, especially while the

galleon trade lasted; the statue was brought to Antipolo in
1672.
A print of the Virgin, a souvenir of this pilgrimage, was,
according to the custom of those times, pasted inside José’s
wooden chest when he left home for school; later on it was
preserved in an album and went with him in all his travels.
Afterwards it faced Bougereau’s splendid conception of the
Christ-mother, as one who had herself thus suffered,
consoling another mother grieving over the loss of a son.
Many years afterwards Doctor Rizal was charged with
having fallen away from religion, but he seems really rather
to have experienced a deepening of the religious spirit
which made the essentials of charity and kindness more
important in his eyes than forms and ceremonies.
Yet Rizal practiced those forms prescribed for the individual
even when debarred from church privileges. The lad
doubtless got his idea of distinguishing between the sign
and the substance from a well-worn book of explanations of
the church ritual and symbolism “intended for the use of
parish priests.” It was found in his library, with Mrs. Rizal’s
name on the flyleaf. Much did he owe his mother, and his
grateful recognition appears in his appreciative portrayal of
maternal affection in his novels.
His parents were both religious, but in a different way. The
father’s religion was manifested in his charities; he used to
keep on hand a fund, of which his wife had no account, for
contributions to the necessitous and loans to the

irresponsible. Mrs. Rizal attended to the business affairs and
was more careful in her handling of money, though quite as
charitably disposed. Her early training in Santa Rosa had
taught her the habit of frequent prayer Page 76and she began
early in the morning and continued till late in the evening,
with frequent attendance in the church. Mr. Rizal did not
forget his church duties, but was far from being so
assiduous in his practice of them, and the discussions in the
home frequently turned on the comparative value of words
and deeds, discussions that were often given a humorous
twist by the husband when he contrasted his wife’s
liberality in prayers with her more careful dispensing of
money aid.
Not many homes in Kalamba were so well posted on events
of the outside world, and the children constantly heard
discussions of questions which other households either
ignored or treated rather reservedly, for espionage was
rampant even then in the Islands. Mrs. Rizal’s literary
training had given her an acquaintance with the better
Spanish writers which benefited her children; she told them
the classic tales in style adapted to their childish
comprehension, so that when they grew older they found
that many noted authors were old acquaintances. The Bible,
too, played a large part in the home. Mrs. Rizal’s copy was
a Spanish translation of the Latin Vulgate, the version
authorized by her Church but not common in the Islands
then. Rizal’s frequent references to Biblical personages and
incidents are not paralleled in the writings of any
contemporary Filipino author.

The frequent visitors to their home, the church, civil and
military authorities, who found the spacious Rizal mansion
a convenient resting place on their way to the health resort
at Los Baños, brought something of the city, and a
something not found by many residents even there, to the
people of this village household. Oftentimes the house was
filled, and the family would not turn away a guest of less
rank for the sake of one of higher distinction, though that
unsocial practice was frequently followed by persons who
forgot their self-respect in toadying to rank.
Page 77Little José did not know Spanish very well, so far as
conversational usage was concerned, but his mother tried to
impress on him the beauty of the Spanish poets and
encouraged him in essays at rhyming which finally grew
into quite respectable poetical compositions. One of these
was a drama in Tagalog which so pleased a municipal
captain of the neighboring village of Paete, who happened
to hear it while on a visit to Kalamba, that the youthful
author was paid two pesos for the production. This was as
much money as a field laborer in those days would have
earned in half a month; although the family did not need the
coin, the incident impressed them with the desirability of
cultivating the boy’s talent.
José was nine years old when he was sent to study in Biñan.
His master there, Justiniano Aquino Cruz, was of the old
school and Rizal has left a record of some of his maxims,
such as “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” “The letter
enters with blood,” and other similar indications of his

heroic treatment of the unfortunates under his care.
However, if he was a strict disciplinarian, Master Justiniano
was also a conscientious instructor, and the boy had been
only a few months under his care when the pupil was told
that he knew as much as his master, and had better go to
Manila to school. Truthful José repeated this conversation
without the modification which modesty might have
suggested, and his father responded rather vigorously to the
idea and it was intimated that in the father’s childhood
pupils were not accustomed to say that they knew as much
as their teachers. However, Master Justiniano corroborated
the child’s statement, so that preparations for José’s going to
Manila began to be made. This was in the Christmas
vacation of 1871.
Biñan had been a valuable experience for young Rizal.
There he had met a host of relatives and from them heard
much of the past of his father’s family. His maternal Page
78grandfather’s great house was there, now inhabited by his
mother’s half-brother, a most interesting personage.
This uncle, José Alberto, had been educated in British India,
spending eleven years in a Calcutta missionary school. This
was the result of an acquaintance which his father had made
with an English naval officer who visited the Philippines
about 1820, the author of “An Englishman’s Visit to the
Philippines.” Lorenzo Alberto, the grandfather, himself
spoke English and had English associations. He had also
liberal ideas and preferred the system under which the
Philippines were represented in the Cortes and were treated

not as a colony but as part of
the homeland and its people
were considered Spaniards.
The great
Biñan
bridge had
been built
under
Rizal’s uncle, José Alberto. Lorenzo
Alberto’s
supervision, and for services to the
Spanish nation during the expedition to Sir John Bowring.
Cochin-China—probably liberal
contributions of money—he had been granted the title of
Knight of the American Order of Isabel the Catholic, but by
the time this recognition reached him he had died, and the
patent was made out to his son.
An episode well known in the village—its chief event, if
one might judge from the conversation of the inhabitants—
was a visit which a governor of Hongkong had Page 79made
there when he was a guest in the home of Alberto. Many
were the tales told of this distinguished Englishman, who
was Sir John Bowring, the notable polyglot and translator
into English of poetry in practically every one of the
dialects of Europe. His achievements along this line had put
him second or third among the linguists of the century. He
was also interested in history, and mentioned in his Biñan
visit that the Hakluyt Society, of which he was a Director,

was then preparing to publish an exceedingly interesting
account of the early Philippines that did more justice to its
inhabitants than the regular Spanish historians. Here Rizal
first heard of Morga, the historian, whose book he in after
years made accessible to his countrymen. A desire to know
other languages than his own also possessed him and he
was eager to rival the achievements of Sir John Bowring.
In his book entitled “A Visit to the
Philippine Islands,” which was translated
into Spanish by Mr. José del Pan, a liberal
editor of Manila, Sir John Bowring gives
the following account of his visit to Rizal’s
uncle:
“We reached Biñan before sunset .... First we passed
between files of youths, then of maidens; and through a
triumphal arch we reached the handsome dwelling of a
rich mestizo, whom we found decorated with a Spanish José del Pan.
order, which had been granted to his father before him.
He spoke English, having been educated at Calcutta, and
his house—a very large one—gave abundant evidence that he had not studied in
vain the arts of domestic civilization. The furniture, the beds, the table, the
cookery, were all in good taste, and the obvious sincerity of the kind reception
Page 80added to its agreeableness. Great crowds were gathered together in the
square which fronts the house of Don José Alberto.”

The Philippines had just had a liberal governor, De la Torte,
but even during this period of apparent liberalness there
existed a confidential government order directing that all
letters from Filipinos suspected of progressive ideas were to
be opened in the post. This violation of the mails furnished
the list of those who later suffered in the convenient
insurrection of ’72.

An agrarian trouble, the old
disagreement between landlords and
tenants, had culminated in an active
outbreak which the government was
unable to put down, and so it made
terms by which, among other things,
the leader of the insurrection was
established as chief of a new civil
guard for the purpose of keeping
Governor De la Torre.
order. Here again was another
preparation for ’72, for at that time
the agreement was forgotten and the officer suffered
punishment, in spite of the immunity he had been promised.
Religious troubles, too, were rife. The Jesuits had returned
from exile shortly before, and were restricted to teaching
work in those parishes in the missionary district where
collections were few and danger was great. To make room
for those whom they displaced the better parishes in the
more thickly settled regions were taken from Filipino
priests and turned over to members of the religious Orders.
Naturally there was discontent. A confidential
communication from the secular archbishop, Doctor
Martinez, shows that he considered the Filipinos Page 81had
ground for complaint, for he states that if the Filipinos were
under a non-Catholic government like that of England they
would receive fairer treatment than they were getting from
their Spanish co-religionaries, and warns the home
government that trouble will inevitably result if the

discrimination against the natives of the country is
continued.
The Jesuit method of education in
their newly established “Ateneo
Municipal” was a change from that
in the former schools. It treated the
Filipino as a Spaniard and made no
distinctions between the races in the
school dormitory. In the older
institutions of Manila the Spanish
students lived in the Spanish way Archbishop Martinez.
and spoke their own language, but
Filipinos were required to talk Latin,
sleep on floor mats and eat with their hands from low
tables. These Filipino customs obtained in the hamlets, but
did not appeal to city lads who had become used to Spanish
ways in their own homes and objected to departing from
them in school. The disaffection thus created was among
the educated class, who were best fitted to be leaders of
their people in any dangerous insurrection against the
government.
However, a change had to take place to meet the Jesuit
competition, and in the rearrangement Filipino professors
were given a larger share in the management of the schools.
Notable among these was Father Burgos. He had earned his
doctor’s degree in two separate courses, was among the best
educated in the capital and by far the most public-spirited
and valiant of the Filipino priests.

Page 82He enlisted the interest of many of the older Filipino
clergy and through their contributions subsidized a paper, El
Eco Filipino, which spoke from the Filipino standpoint and
answered the reflections which were the stock in trade of
the conservative organ, for the reactionaries had an abusive
journal just as they had had in 1821 and were to have in the
later days.
Such were the
conditions when José
Rizal got ready to leave
home for school in
Manila, a departure
which was delayed by
the misfortunes of his
mother. His only, and
elder, brother, Paciano,
had been a student in
San José College in
Manila for some years,
and had regularly failed
in passing his
examinations because
of his outspokenness
against the evils of the
The Very Rev. James Burgos, D.D. country. Paciano was a
great favorite with
Doctor Burgos, in whose home he lived and for whom he
acted as messenger and go-between in the delicate

negotiations of the propaganda which the doctor was
carrying on.
In February of ’72 all the dreams of a brighter and freer
Philippines were crushed out in that enormous injustice Page
83which made the mutiny of a few soldiers and arsenal
employés in Cavite the excuse for deporting, imprisoning,
and even shooting those whose correspondence, opened
during the previous year, had shown them to be
discontented with the backward conditions in the
Philippines.
Doctor Burgos, just as he had been nominated to a higher
post in the Church, was the chief victim. Father Gomez, an
old man, noted for charity, was another, and the third was
Father Zamora. A reference in a letter of his to “powder,”
which was his way of saying money, was distorted into a
dangerous significance, in spite of the fact that the letter
was merely an invitation to a gambling game. The trial was
a farce, the informer was garroted just when he was on the
point of complaining that he was not receiving the pardon
and payment which he had been promised for his services in
convicting the others. The whole affair had an ugly look,
and the way it was hushed up did not add to the confidence
of the people in the justice of the proceedings. The Islands
were then placed under military law and remained so for
many years.
Father Burgos’s dying advice to Filipinos was for them to
be educated abroad, preferably outside of Spain, but if they

could do no better, at least go to the Peninsula. He urged
that through education only could progress be hoped for. In
one of his speeches he had warned the Spanish government
that continued oppressive measures would drive the
Filipinos from their allegiance and make them wish to
become subjects of a freer power, suggesting England,
whose possessions surrounded the Islands.
Doctor Burgos’s idea of England as a hope for the
Philippines was borne out by the interest which the British
newspapers of Hongkong took in Philippine affairs. They
gave accounts of the troubles and picked flaws in the
garbled reports which the officials sent abroad.
Page 84Some zealous but unthinking reactionary at this time
conceived the idea of publishing a book somewhat similar
to that which had been gotten out against the Constitution of
Cadiz. “Captain Juan” was its name; it was in catechism
form, and told of an old municipal captain who deserved to
be honored because he was so submissively subservient to
all constituted authority. He tries to distinguish between
different kinds of liberty, and the especial attention which
he devotes to America shows how live a topic the great
republic was at that time in the Islands. This interest is
explained by the fact that an American company had just
then received a grant of the northern part of Borneo, later
British North Borneo, for a trading company. It was
believed that the United States had designs on the
Archipelago because of treaties which had been negotiated

with the Sultan of Sulu and certain American commercial
interests in the Far East, which were then rather important.
Americans, too, had become known in
the Philippines through a soldier of
fortune who had helped out the
Chinese government in suppressing the
rebellion in the neighborhood of
Shanghai. “General” F. T. Ward, from
Massachusetts, organized an army of
deserters from European ships, but
General F. T. Ward.
their lack of discipline made them
undesirable soldiers, and so he
disbanded the force. He then gathered a regiment of Manila
men, as the Filipinos usually found as quartermasters on all
ships sailing in the East were then called. With the aid of
some other Americans these troops were disciplined and
drilled into such efficiency that the men came to have the
title among Page 85the Chinese of the “Ever-Victorious”
army, because of the almost unbroken series of successes
which they had experienced. A partial explanation, possibly,
of their fighting so well is that they were paid only when
they won.
The high praise given the Filipinos at this time was in
contrast to the disparagement made of their efforts in Indo-
China, where in reality they had done the fighting rather
than their Spanish officers. When a Spaniard in the
Philippines quoted of the Filipino their customary saying,
“Poor soldier, worse sacristan,” the Filipinos dared make no

open
reply,
but
they
conso
led
thems
elves
with
reme
mberi
ng
the
flatter
ing
com Monument to the “Ever-Victorious” army, Shanghai.
ments
of “General” Ward and the favorable opinion of Archbishop
Martinez.
References to Filipino military capacity were banned by the
censors and the archbishop’s communication had been
confidential, but both became known, for despotisms drive
its victims to stealth and to methods which would not be
considered creditable under freer conditions. Page 86

Chapter V

Jagor’s Prophecy

Rizal’s first home in Manila was in a nipa house with
Manuel Hidalgo, later to be his brother-in-law, in Calle
Espeleta, a street named for a former Filipino priest who
had risen to be bishop and governor-general. This spot is
now marked with a tablet which gives the date of his
coming as the latter part of February, 1872.
Rizal’s own recollections speak of June as being the date of
the formal beginning of his studies in Manila. First he went
to San Juan de Letran and took an examination in the
Catechism. Then he went back to Kalamba and in July
passed into the Ateneo, possibly because of the more
favorable conditions under which the pupils were admitted,
receiving credit for work in arithmetic, which in the other
school, it is said, he would have had to restudy. This
perhaps accounts for the credit shown in the scholastic year
1871–72. Until his fourth year Rizal was an externe, as
those residing outside of the school dormitory were then
called. The Ateneo was very popular and so great was the
eagerness to enter it that the waiting list was long and two
or three years’ delay was not at all uncommon.

There is a little uncertainty about this period; some writers
have gone so far as to give recollections of childhood
incidents of which Rizal was the hero while he lived in the
house of Doctor Burgos, but the family deny that he was
ever in this home, and say that he has been confused with
his brother Paciano.
The greatest influence upon Rizal during this period was the
sense of Spanish judicial injustice in the legal persecutions
of his mother, who, though innocent, for two years was
treated as a criminal and held in prison.
Page 87Much of the story is not necessary for this narrative,
but the mother’s troubles had their beginning in the
attempted revenge of a lieutenant of the Civil Guard, one of
a body of Spaniards who were no credit to the mother
country and whom Rizal never lost opportunity in his
writings of painting in their true colors. This official had
been in the habit of having his horse fed at the Mercado
home when he visited their town from his station in Biñan,
but once there was a scarcity of fodder and Mr. Mercado
insisted that his own stock was entitled to care before he
could extend hospitality to strangers. This the official
bitterly resented. His opportunity for revenge soon came,
and was not overlooked. A disagreement between José
Alberto, the mother’s brother in Biñan, and his wife, also
his cousin, to whom he had been married when they were
both quite young, led to sensational charges which a
discreet officer would have investigated and would
assuredly have then realized to be unfounded. Instead the

lieutenant accepted the most ridiculous statements, brought
charges of attempted murder against Alberto and his sister,
Mrs. Rizal, and evidently figured that he would be able to
extort money from the rich man and gratify his revenge at
the same time.
Now comes a disgruntled judge, who had not received the
attention at the Mercado home which he thought his dignity
demanded. Out of revenge he ordered Mrs. Rizal to be
conducted at once to the provincial prison, not in the usual
way by boat, but, to cause her greater annoyance, afoot
around the lake. It was a long journey from Kalamba to
Santa Cruz, and the first evening the guard and his prisoner
came to a village where there was a festival in progress.
Mrs. Rizal was well known and was welcomed in the home
of one of the prominent families. The festivities were at
their height when the judge, who had been on horseback
and so had reached the town Page 88earlier, heard that the
prisoner, instead of being in the village calaboose, was a
guest of honor and apparently not suffering the annoyance
to which he had intended to subject her. He strode to the
house, and, not content to knock, broke in the door,
splintered his cane on the poor constable’s head, and then
exhausted himself beating the owner of the house.

Mrs Rizal and her two daughters.
These proceedings were revealed in a charge of prejudice
which Mrs. Rizal’s lawyers urged against the judge who at
the same time was the one who decided the case Page 89and
also the prosecutor. The Supreme Court agreed that her
contention was correct and directed that she be discharged
from custody. To this order the judge paid due respect and
ordered her release, but he said that the accusation of
unfairness against him was contempt of court, and gave her
a longer sentence under this charge than the previous one
from which she had just been absolved. After some delay
the Supreme Court heard of this affair and decided that the
judge was right. But, because Mrs. Rizal had been longer in
prison awaiting trial than the sentence, they dated back her

imprisonment, and again ordered her release. Here the
record gets a little confused because it is concerned with a
story that her brother had sixteen thousand pesos concealed
in his cell, and everybody, from the Supreme Court down,
seemed interested in trying to locate the money.

Bilibid Prison.
While the officials were looking for his sack of gold,
Alberto gave a power of attorney to an overintelligent
lawyer who worded his authority so that it gave him the
right to do everything which his principal himself could
have done “personally, legally and ecclesiastically.” From
some source outside, but not from the brother, the attorney
Page 90heard that Mrs. Rizal had had money belonging to
Alberto, for in the extensive sugar-purchasing business
which she carried on she handled large sums and frequently
borrowed as much as five thousand pesos from this brother.
Anxious to get his hands on money, he instituted a charge of
theft against her, under his power of attorney and acting in
the name of his principal. Mrs. Rizal’s attorney demurred to
such a charge being made without the man who had lent the
money being at all consulted, and held that a power of

attorney did not warrant such an action. In time the
intelligent Supreme Court heard this case and decided that it
should go to trial; but later, when the attorney, acting for his
principal, wanted to testify for him under the power of
attorney, they seem to have reached their limit, for they
disapproved of that proposal.
Anyone who cares to know just how ridiculous and
inconsistent the judicial system of the Philippines then was
would do well to try to unravel the mixed details of the half
dozen charges, ranging from cruelty through theft to
murder, which were made against Mrs. Rizal without a
shadow of evidence. One case was trumped up as soon as
another was finished, and possibly the affair would have
dragged on till the end of the Spanish administration had
not her little daughter danced before the Governor-General
once when he was traveling through the country, won his
approval, and when he asked what favor he could do for
her, presented a petition for her mother’s release. In this
way, which recalls the customs of primitive nations, Mrs.
Rizal finally was enabled to return to her home.

Model of head of a Dapitan girl by Rizal.
Doctor Rizal tells us that it was then that he first began to
lose confidence in mankind. A story of a school companion,
that when Rizal recalled this incident the red came into his
eyes, probably has about the same foundation as the
frequent stories of his weeping with emotion upon other
people’s shoulders when advised of momentous Page 91Page
92changes in his life. Doctor Rizal did not have these
Spanish ways, and the narrators are merely speaking of

what other Spaniards would have done, for self-restraint
and freedom from exhibitions of emotion were among his
most prominent characteristics.
Some time during Rizal’s early years of school came his
first success in painting. It was the occasion of a festival in
Kalamba; just at the last moment an important banner was
accidentally damaged and there was not time to send to
Manila for another. A hasty consultation was held among
the village authorities, and one councilman suggested that
José Rizal had shown considerable skill with the brush and
possibly he could paint something that would pass. The
gobernadorcillo proceeded to the lad’s home and explained
the need. Rizal promptly went to work, under the official’s
direction, and speedily produced a painting which the
delighted municipal executive declared was better than the
expensive banner bought in Manila. The achievement was
explained to all the participants in the festival and young
José was the hero of the occasion.
During intervals of school work Rizal found time to
continue his modeling in clay which he procured from the
brickyard of a cousin at San Pedro Macati.
Rizal’s uncle, José Alberto, had played a considerable part
in his political education. He was influential with the
Regency in Spain, which succeeded Queen Isabel when that
sovereign became too malodorous to be longer tolerated,
and he was the personal friend of the Regent, General Prim,
whose motto, “More liberal today than yesterday, more

liberal tomorrow than today,” he was fond of quoting. He
was present in Madrid at the time of General Prim’s
assassination and often told of how this wise patriot,
recognizing the unpreparedness of the Spanish people for a
republic, opposed the efforts for Page 93what would, he
knew, result in as disastrous a failure as had been France’s
first effort, and how he lost his life through his desire to
follow the safer course of proceeding gradually through the
preparatory stage of a constitutional monarchy. Alberto was
made by him a Knight of the Order of Carlos III, and, after
Prim’s death, was created by King Amadeo a Knight
Commander, the step higher in the Order of Isabel the
Catholic.
Events
proved
Prim’s
wisdom,
as
Alberto
was
careful to
observe,
for King
Amadeo
was soon
convince
d of the
Memorial to José Alberto in the church at Biñan.
unfitness
of his

people for even a constitutional monarchy, told them so,
resigned his throne, and bade them farewell. Then came a
republic marked by excesses such as even the worst
monarch had not committed; among them the dreadful
massacre of the members of the filibustering party on the
steamer Virginius in Cuba, which would have caused war
with the United States had not the Americans been deluded
into the idea that they were dealing with a sister republic.
America and Switzerland had been the only nations which
Page 94had recognized Spain’s new form of government.
Prim sought an alliance with America, for he claimed that
Spain should be linked with a country which would buy
Spanish goods and to which Spain could send her products.
France, with whom the Bourbons wished to be allied, was a
competitor along Spain’s own lines.
During the earlier disturbances in Spain a party of Carlists
were sent to the Philippine Islands; they were welcomed by
the reactionary Spaniards, for devotion to King Carlos had
been their characteristic ever since the days when Queen
Isabel had taken the throne that in their opinion belonged to
the heir in the male line. Rizal frequently makes mention of
this disloyalty to the ruler of Spain on the part of those who
claimed to be most devoted Spaniards.
Along with the stories of these troubles which Rizal heard
during his school days in Manila were reports of how these
exiles had established themselves in foreign cities, Basa in
Hongkong, Regidor in London, and Tavera in Paris. At their
homes in these cities they gave a warm welcome to such

Filipinos as traveled abroad and they were always ready to
act as guardians for Filipino students who wished to study
in their cities, Many availed themselves of these
opportunities and it came to be an ambition among those in
the Islands to get an education which they believed was
better than that which Spain afforded. There was some
ground for such a belief, because many of the most
prominent successful men of Spanish and Philippine birth
were men whose education had been foreign. A well-known
instance in Manila was the architect Roxas, father of the
present Alcalde of Manila, who learned his profession in
England and was almost the only notable builder in Manila
during his lifetime.
Paciano Rizal, José’s elder brother, had retired from Page
95Manila on the death of Doctor Burgos and devoted
himself to farming; in some ways, perhaps, his career
suggested the character of Tasio, the philosopher of “Noli
Me Tangere.” He was careful to see that his younger brother
was familiar with the liberal literature with which he had
become acquainted through Doctor Burgos.
The first foreign book read by Rizal, in a Spanish
translation, was Dumas’s great novel, “The Count of Monte
Cristo,” and the story of the wrongs suffered by the prisoner
of the Château d’If recalled the injustice done his mother.
Then came the book which had greatest influence upon the
young man’s career; this was a Spanish translation of
Jagor’s “Travels in the Philippines,” the observations of a
German naturalist who had visited the Islands some fifteen

years before. This latter book, among other comments,
suggested that it was the fate of the North American
republic to develop and bring to their highest prosperity the
lands which Spain had conquered and Christianized with
sword and cross. Sooner or later, this German writer
believed, the Philippine Islands could no more escape this
American influence than had the countries on the mainland,
and expressed the hope that one day the Philippines would
succumb to the same influence; he felt, however, that it was
desirable first for the Islanders to become better able to
meet the strong competition of the vigorous young people
of the New World, for under Spain the Philippines had
dreamed away its past.
The exact title of the book is “Travels | in the | Philippines. |
By F. Jagor. | With numerous illustrations and a Map |
London: | Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly. | 1875.” The
title of the Spanish translation reads, “Viajes | por | Filipinas
| de F. Jagor | Traducidos del Alemán | por S. Vidal y Soler |
Ingeniero de Montes | Edición illustrada con numerosos
grabados | Madrid: Imprenta, Estereopidea y Galvanoplastia
de Ariban y Ca. Page 96| (Sucesores de Rivadencyra) |
Impresores de Camara de S. M. | Calle del Duque de Osuna,
núm 3. 1875,” The following extract from the book will
show how marvelously the author anticipated events that
have now become history:
“With the altered condition of things, however, all this has disappeared. The
colony can no longer be kept secluded from the world. Every facility afforded
for commercial intercourse is a blow to the old system, and a great step made in
the direction of broad and liberal reforms. The more foreign capital and foreign
ideas and customs are introduced, increasing the prosperity, enlightenment, and

self-esteem of the population, the more impatiently will the existing evils be
endured.
England can and does open her possessions unconcernedly to the world. The
British colonies are united to the mother country by the bond of mutual
advantage, viz., the produce of raw material by means of English capital, and
the exchange of the same for English manufactures. The wealth of England is so
great, the organization of her commerce with the world so complete, that nearly
all the foreigners even in the British possessions are for the most part agents for
English business houses, which would scarcely be affected, at least to any
marked extent, by a political dismemberment. It is entirely different with Spain,
which possesses the colony as an inherited property, and without the power of
turning it to any useful account.
Government monopolies rigorously maintained, insolent disregard and neglect
of the half-castes and powerful creoles, and the example of the United States,
were the chief reasons of the downfall of the American possessions. The same
causes threaten ruin to the Philippines; but of the monopolies I have said
enough.
Half-castes and creoles, it is true are not, as they formerly were in America,
excluded from all orificial appointments; but they feel deeply hurt and injured
through the crowds of place-hunters which the frequent changes of Ministers
send to Manilla. The influence, also, of the American element is at least visible
on the horizon, and will be more noticeable when the relations increase between
Page 97the two countries. At present they are very slender. The trade in the
meantime follows in its old channels to England and to the Atlantic ports of the
United States. Nevertheless, whoever desires to form an opinion upon the future
history of the Philippines, must not consider simply their relations to Spain, but
must have regard to the prodigious changes which a few decades produce on
either side of our planet.
For the first time in the history of the world the mighty powers on both sides of
the ocean have commenced to enter upon a direct intercourse with one another
—Russia, which alone is larger than any two other parts of the earth; China,
which contains within its own boundaries a third of the population of the world;
and America, with ground under cultivation nearly sufficient to feed treble the
total population of the earth. Russia’s further rôle in the Pacific Ocean is not to
be estimated at present.
The trade between the two other great powers will therefore be presumably all
the heavier, as the rectification of the pressing need of human labour on the one
side, and of the corresponding overplus on the other, will fall to them.

“The world of the ancients was confined to the shores of the Mediterranean; and
the Atlantic and Indian Oceans sufficed at one time for our traffic. When first
the shores of the Pacific re-echoed with the sounds of active commerce, the
trade of the world and the history of the world may be really said to have begun.
A start in that direction has been made; whereas not so very long ago the
immense ocean was one wide waste of waters, traversed from both points only
once a year. From 1603 to 1769 scarcely a ship had ever visited California, that
wonderful country which, twenty-five years ago, with the exception of a few
places on the coast, was an unknown wilderness, but which is now covered with
flourishing and prosperous towns and cities, divided from sea to sea by a
railway, and its capital already ranking the third of the seaports of the Union;
even at this early stage of its existence a central point of the world’s commerce,
and apparently destined, by the proposed junction of the great oceans, to play a
most important part in the future.
In proportion as the navigation of the west coast of America extends the
influence of the American element over the South Page 98Sea, the captivating,
magic power which the great republic exercises over the Spanish colonies1 will
not fail to make itself felt also in the Philippines. The Americans are evidently
destined to bring to a full development the germs originated by the Spaniards.
As conquerors of modern times, they pursue their road to victory with the
assistance of the pioneer’s axe and plough, representing an age of peace and
commercial prosperity in contrast to that bygone and chivalrous age whose
champions were upheld by the cross and protected by the sword.
A considerable portion of Spanish America already belongs to the United States,
and has since attained an importance which could not possibly have been
anticipated either under the Spanish Government or during the anarchy which
followed. With regard to permanence, the Spanish system cannot for a moment
be compared with that of America. While each of the colonies, in order to
favour a privileged class by immediate gains, exhausted still more the already
enfeebled population of the metropolis by the withdrawal of the best of its
ability, America, on the contrary, has attracted to itself from all countries the
most energetic element, which, once on its soil and, freed from all fetters,
restlessly progressing, has extended its power and influence still further and
further. The Philippines will escape the action of the two great neighbouring
powers all the less for the fact that neither they nor their metropolis find their
condition of a stable and well-balanced nature.
It seems to be desirable for the natives that the above-mentioned views should
not speedily become accomplished facts, because their education and training
hitherto have not been of a nature to prepare them successfully to compete with
either of the other two energetic, creative, and progressive nations. They have,
in truth, dreamed away their best days.”

Page 99This prophecy of Jagor’s made a deep impression
upon Rizal and seems to furnish the explanation of his life
work. Henceforth it was his ambition to arouse his
countrymen to prepare themselves for a freer state. He
dedicated himself to the work which Doctor Jagor had
indicated as necessary. It seems beyond question that
Doctor Rizal, as early as 1876, believed that America would
sometime come to the Philippines, and wished to prepare
his countrymen for the changed conditions that would then
have to be met. Many little incidents in his later life confirm
this view: his eagerness to buy expensive books on the
United States, such as his early purchase in Barcelona of
two different “Lives of the Presidents of the United States”;
his study of the country in his travel across it from San
Francisco to New York; the reference in “The Philippines in
a Hundred Years”; and the studies of the English Revolution
and other Anglo-Saxon influences which culminated in the
foundation of the United States of America.

The Books that remain from Rizal’s library.
Besides the interest he took in clay modeling, to which
reference has already been made, Rizal was expert in

carving. When first in
the Ateneo he had
carved an image Page
100of the Virgin of
such grace and beauty
that one of the Fathers
asked him to try an
image of the Sacred
Heart. Rizal complied,
and produced the
carving that played so
important a part in his
future life. The Jesuit
Father had intended to
take the image with
him to Spain, but in
some way it was left
behind and the
schoolboys put it up
on the door of their
dormitory. There it
remained for nearly
Rizal’s carving of the Sacred Heart. twenty years,
constantly reminding
the many lads who passed in and out of the one who
teachers and pupils alike agreed was the greatest of all their
number, for Rizal during these years was the schoolboy
hero of the Ateneo, and from the Ateneo came the men who
were most largely concerned in making the New
Philippines. The image itself is of batikulin, an easily

carved wood, and shows considerable skill when one
remembers that an ordinary pocketknife was the simple
instrument used in its manufacture. It was recalled to
Rizal’s memory when he visited the Ateneo upon his first
return from Spain and was forbidden the house by the
Jesuits because of his alleged apostasy, and Page 101again in
the chapel of Fort Santiago, where it played an important
part in what was called his conversion.

Bust of Father Guerrico, S. J., modeled from memory by
Rizal. Now in the Ateneo, Manila.

The proficiency he attained in the art of clay modeling is
evidenced by many of the examples illustrated in this
volume. They not only indicate an astonishing versatility,
but they reveal his very characteristic method of working—
a characteristic based on his constant desire to adapt the
best things he found abroad to the conditions of his own
country. The same characteristic appears also in most of his

literary work, and in it there is no servile imitation; it is
careful and studied selection, adaptation and combination.
For example, the composition of a steel engraving in a
French art journal suggested his model in clay of a
Philippine wild boar; the head of the subject in a painting in
the Luxembourg Gallery and the rest of a figure in an
engraving in a newspaper are combined in a statuette he
modeled in Brussels and sent, in May, 1890, to Valentina
Ventura in place of a letter; a clipping from a newspaper cut
is also adapted for his model of “The Vengeance of the
Harem”; and as evidence of his facility of expressing
himself in this medium, his clay modeling of a Dapitan
woman may be cited. One day while in exile he saw a
native woman clearing up the street in front of her home
preparatory to a festival; the movements and the attitudes of
the figure were so thoroughly typical and so impressed
themselves on his mind that he worked out this statuette
from memory. Page 102

A composite statuette by Rizal: the head from a painting in
the Luxembourg (shown in upper right-hand corner), the
rest from an engraving.
Page 103

In a literary way Rizal’s first pretentious effort was a
melodrama in one act and in verse, entitled “Junta al Pasig”
(Beside the Pasig), a play in honor of the Virgin, which was
given in the Ateneo to the great edification of a considerable
audience, who were enthusiastic in their praise and hearty in

their applause, but the young author neither saw the play
nor paid any attention to the manner of its reception, for he
was downstairs, intent on his own diversions and heedless
of what was going on above.

Clay model of a Dapitan woman, from life, by Rizal.
Thursday was the school holiday in those days, and Page
104Rizal usually spent the time at the Convent of La
Concordia, where his youngest sister, Soledad, was a
boarder. He was a great friend of the little one and a
welcome visitor in the Convent; he used to draw pictures
for her edification, sometimes teasing her by making her
own portrait, to which he gave exaggerated ears to indicate
her curiosity. Then he wrote short satirical skits, such as the

following, which in English doggerel quite matches its
Spanish original:

“The girls of Concordia College
Go dressed in the latest of styles—
Bangs high on their foreheads for knowledge—
But hungry their grins and their smiles!”

Some of these girls made an impression upon José, and one
of his diary entries of this time tells of his rude awakening
when a girl, some years his elder, who had laughingly
accepted his boyish adoration, informed him that she was to
marry a relative of his, and he speaks of the heart-pang with
which he watched the carromata that carried her from his
sight to her wedding.
José was a great reader, and the newspapers were giving
much attention to the World’s Fair in Philadelphia which
commemorated the first centennial of American
independence, and published numerous cuts illustrating
various interesting phases of American life. Possibly as a
reaction from the former disparagement of things American,
the sentiment in the Philippines was then very friendly.
There was one long account of the presentation of a Spanish
banner to a Spanish commission in Philadelphia, and the
newspapers, in speaking of the wonderful progress which
the United States had made, recalled the early Spanish
alliance and referred to the fact that, had it not been for the

discoveries of the Spaniards, their new land would not have
been known to Europe.
Page 105Rizal during his last two years in the Ateneo was a
boarder. Throughout his entire course he had been the
winner of most of the prizes. Upon receiving his Bachelor
of Arts diploma he entered the University of Santo Tomás;
in the first year he studied the course in philosophy and in
the second year began to specialize in medicine.
The
Ateneo
course
of study
was a
good
deal like
that of
our
present A sketch of himself by Rizal, in the training class.
high
school,
though not so thorough nor so advanced. Still, the method
of instruction which has made Jesuit education notable in
all parts of the world carried on the good work which the
mother’s training had begun. The system required the
explanation of the morrow’s lesson, questioning on the
lesson of the day and a review of the previous day’s work.
This, with the attention given to the classics, developed and

quickened faculties which gave Rizal a remarkable power
of assimilating knowledge of all kinds for future use.
The story is told that Rizal was undecided as to his career,
and wrote to the rector of the Ateneo for advice; but the
Jesuit was then in the interior of Mindanao, and by the time
the answer, suggesting that he should devote himself to
agriculture, was received, he had already made his choice.
However, Rizal did continue the study of agriculture,
besides specializing in medicine, carrying on double work
as he took the course in the Ateneo which led to the degree
of land surveyor and agricultural expert. This work was
completed before he had reached the age Page 106fixed by
law, so that he could not then receive his diploma, which
was not delivered to him until he had attained the age of
twenty-one years.

Rizal’s sister Saturnina. Painted in oil by José Rizal while in
Santo Tomás University.
In the “Life” of Rizal published in Barcelona after his death
a brilliant picture is painted of how Rizal might have
followed the advice of the rector of the Ateneo, and have
lived a long, useful and honorable life as a farmer and
gobernadorcillo of his home town, respected by the
Spaniards, looked up to by his countrymen and filling an
humble but safe lot in life. Today one can hardly feel Page
107that such a career would have been suited to the man or
regret that events took the course they did.
Poetry was highly esteemed in the Ateneo, and Rizal
frequently made essays in verse, often carrying his
compositions to Kalamba for his mother’s criticisms and
suggestions. The writings of the Spanish poet Zorilla were
making a deep impression upon him at this time, and while
his schoolmates seemed to have been more interested in
their warlike features, José appears to have gained from
them an understanding of how Zorilla sought to restore the
Spanish people to their former dignity, rousing their pride
through recalling the heroic events in their past history.
Some of the passages in the melodrama, “Junta al Pasig,”
already described, were evidently influenced by his study of
Zorilla; the fierce denunciation of Spain which is there put
in the mouth of Satan expresses, no doubt, the real
sentiments of Rizal.

In 1877 a society known as the Liceo Literario-Artistica
(Lyceum of Art and Literature) offered a prize for the best
poem by a native. The winner was Rizal with the following
verses, “Al Juventud Filipino” (To the Philippine Youth).
The prize was a silver pen, feather-shaped and with a gold
ribbon running through it.

To the Philippine Youth
Theme: “Growth”
(Translation by Charles Derbyshire)

Hold high the brow serene,
O youth, where now you stand;
Let the bright sheen
Of your grace be seen,
Fair hope of my fatherland!

Page 108

Come now, thou genius grand,
And bring down inspiration;
With thy mighty hand,
Swifter than the wind’s volation,
Raise the eager mind to higher station.

Come down with pleasing light
Of art and science to the fight,
O youth, and there untie
The chains that heavy lie,
Your spirit free to blight.

See how in flaming zone
Amid the shadows thrown,

The Spaniard’s holy hand
A crown’s resplendent band
Proffers to this Indian land.

Thou, who now wouldst rise
On wings of rich emprise,
Seeking from Olympian skies
Songs of sweetest strain,
Softer than ambrosial rain;

Thou, whose voice divine
Rivals Philomel’s refrain,
And with varied line
Through the night benign
Frees mortality from pain;

Thou, who by sharp strife
Wakest thy mind to life;
And the memory bright
Of thy genius’ light
Makest immortal in its strength;

Page 109

And thou, in accents clear
of Phoebus, to Apells dear;
Or by the brush’s magic art
Takest from nature’s store a part,
To fix it on the simple canvas’ length;

Go forth, and then the sacred fire
Of thy genius to the laurel may aspire;
To spread around the fame,
And in victory acclaim,
Through wider spheres the human name.

Day, O happy day,
Fair Filipinas, for thy land!

p y
So bless the Power today
That places in thy way
This favor and this fortune grand.

The next competition at the Liceo was in honor of the
fourth centennial of the death of Cervantes; it was open to
both Filipinos and Spaniards, and there was a dispute as to
the winner of the prize. It is hard to figure out just what
really happened; the newspapers speak of Rizal as winning
the first prize, but his certificate says second, and there
seems to have been some sort of compromise by which a
Spaniard who was second was put at the head. Newspapers,
of course, were then closely censored, but the liberal La
Oceania contains a number of veiled allusions to medical
poets, suggesting that for the good of humanity they should
not be permitted to waste their time in verse-making. One
reference quotes the title of Rizal’s first poem in saying that
it was giving a word of advice “To the Philippine Youth,”
and there are other indications that for some considerable
time the outcome of this contest was a very live topic in the
city of Manila.
Page 110Rizal’s poem was an allegory, “The Council of the
Gods”—“El consejo de los Dioses.” It was an exceedingly
artistic appreciation of the chief figure in Spanish literature.
The rector of the Ateneo had assisted his former student by
securing for him needed books, and though Rizal was at
that time a student in Santo Tomás, the rivalries were such
that he was still ranked with the pupils of the Jesuits and his
success was a corresponding source of elation to the Ateneo
pupils and alumni. Some people have stated that Father

Evaristo Arias, a notably brilliant writer of the Dominicans,
was a competitor, a version I once published, but
investigation shows that this was a mistake. However,
sentiment in the University against Rizal grew, until matters
became so unpleasant that he felt it time to follow the
advice of Father Burgos and continue his education outside
of the Islands.
Just before this incident Rizal had been the victim of a
brutal assault in Kalamba; one night when he was passing
the barracks of the Civil Guard he noted in the darkness a
large body, but did not recognize who it was, and passed
without any attention to it. It turned out that the large body
was a lieutenant of the Civil Guard, and, without warning or
word of any kind, he drew his sword and wounded Rizal in
the back. Rizal complained of this outrage to the authorities
and tried several times, without success, to see the
Governor-General. Finally he had to recognize that there
was no redress for him. By May of 1882 Rizal had made up
his mind to set sail for Europe, and his brother, Paciano,
equipped him with seven hundred pesos for the journey,
while his sister, Saturnina, intrusted to him a valuable
diamond ring which might prove a resource in time of
emergency.
José had gone to Kalamba to attend a festival there, when
Mr. Hidalgo, from Manila, notified him that his boat was
ready to sail. The telegram, asking his immediate Page
111return to the city, was couched in the form of advice of
the condition of a patient, and the name of the steamer,

Salvadora, by a play on words, was used in the sense of
“May save her life.” Rizal had previously requested of Mr.
Ramirez, of the Puerta del Sol store, letters of introduction
to an Englishman, formerly in the Philippines, who was
then living in Paris. He said nothing more of his intentions,
but on his last night in the city, with his younger sister as
companion, he drove all through the walled city and its
suburbs, changing horses twice in the five hours of his
farewell. The next morning he embarked on the steamer,
and there yet remains the sketch which he made of his last
view of the city, showing its waterfront as it appeared from
the departing steamer. To leave town it was necessary to
have a passport; his was in the name of José Mercado, and
had been secured by a distant relative of his who lived in
the Santa Cruz district.

Rizal’s parting view of Manila. A pencil sketch by himself.

Sketches
1. Singapore Lighthouse. 2. Along the Suez Canal. 3. Castle
of St. Elmo, Naples. (From Rizal’s Sketch-book)
After five days’ journey the little steamer reached the Page
112Page 113English colony of Singapore. There Rizal saw a
modern city for the first time. He was intensely interested in
the improvements. Especially did the assured position of the
natives, confident in their rights and not fearful of the

authorities, arouse his admiration. Great was the contrast
between the fear of their rulers shown by the Filipinos and
the confidence which the natives of Singapore seemed to
have in their government.

Studies of passengers on the French mail steamer.
(From Rizal’s sketch-book.)
At Singapore, Rizal transferred to a French mail Page 114Page
115Steamer and seems to have had an interesting time
making himself understood on board. He had studied some
French in his Ateneo course, writing an ode which gained
honors, but when he attempted to speak the language he
was not successful in making Frenchmen understand him.
So he resorted to a mixed system of his own, sometimes

using Latin words and making the changes which regularly
would have occurred, and when words failed, making signs,
and in extreme cases drawing pictures of what he wanted.
This versatility with the pencil, for many of his offhand
sketches had humorous touches that almost carried them
into the cartoon class, interested officers and passengers, so
that the young student had the freedom of the ship and a
voyage far from tedious.

Aden—May 28, 1882. (From Rizal’s Sketch-book.)
The passage of the Suez Canal, a glimpse of Egypt, Aden,
where East and West meet, and the Italian city of Naples,
with its historic castle, were the features of the trip which
most impressed him. Page 116

1 I take the liberty, here, of citing an instance of this. In 1861, when I found
myself on the West Coast of Mexico, a dozen backwoods families determined
upon settling in Sonora (forming an oasis in the desert); a plan which was
frustrated by the invasion at that time of the European powers. Many native
farmers awaited the arrival of these immigrants in order to take them under their
protection. The value of land in consequence of the announcement of the project
rose very considerably.

Chapter VI

The Period of Preparation

Rizal disembarked at Marseilles, saw a little of that famous
port, and then went by rail to Barcelona, crossing the
Pyrenees, the desolate ruggedness of which contrasted with
the picturesque luxuriance of his tropical home, and
remained a day at the frontier town of Port-Bou. The
customary Spanish disregard of tourists compared very
unfavorably with the courteous attention which he had
remarked on his arrival at Marseilles, for the custom house
officers on the Spanish frontier rather reminded him of the
class of employes found in Manila.
At Barcelona he met many who had been his schoolmates in
the Ateneo and others to whom he was known by name. It
was the custom of the Filipino students there to hold
reunions every other Sunday at the café, for their limited
resources did not permit the daily visits which were the
Spanish custom. In honor of the new arrival a special
gathering occurred in a favorite café in Plaza de Catalonia.
The characteristics of the Spaniards and the features of
Barcelona were all described for Rizal’s benefit, and he had
to answer a host of questions about the changes which had
occurred in Manila. Most of his answers were to the effect

that old defects had not yet been remedied nor incompetent
officials supplanted, and he gave a rather hopeless view of
the future of their country. Somewhat in this gloomy mood,
he wrote home for a newly established Tagalog newspaper
of Manila, his views of “Love of country,” an article not so
optimistic as most of his later writings.
In Barcelona he remained but a short time, long enough,
however, to see the historic sights around that city, which
was established by Hannibal, had numbered Page 117many
noted Romans among its residents, and in later days was the
scene of the return of Columbus from his voyages in the
New World, bringing with him samples of Redskins, birds
and other novel products of the unknown country. Then
there were the magnificent boulevards, the handsome
dwellings, the interest which the citizens took in adorning
their city and the pride in the results, and above all, the
disgust at all things Spanish and the loyalty to Catalonia,
rather than to the “mother-fatherland.”
The Catalan was the most progressive type in Spain, but he
had no love for his compatriots, was ever complaining of
their “mañana” habits and of the evils that were bound to
exist in a country where Church and State were so
inextricably intermingled. Many Catalans were avowedly
republicans. Signs might be seen on the outside of buildings
telling of the location of republican clubs, unpopular
officials were hooted in the streets, the newspapers were
intemperate in their criticism of the government, and a
campaign was carried on openly which aimed at changing

from a monarchy to a democracy, without any apparent
molestation from the authorities. All these things impressed
the lad who had seen in his own country the most
respectfully worded complaints of unquestionable abuses
treated as treason, bringing not merely punishment, but
opprobrium as well.
He, himself, in order to obtain a better education, had had to
leave his country stealthily like a fugitive from justice, and
his family, to save themselves from persecution, were
compelled to profess ignorance of his plans and
movements. His name was entered in Santo Tomás at the
opening of the new term, with the fees paid, and Paciano
had gone to Manila pretending to be looking for this brother
whom he had assisted out of the country.
Early in the fall Rizal removed to Madrid and entered Page
118the Central University there. His short residence in
Barcelona was possibly for the purpose of correcting the
irregularity in his passport, for in that town it would be
easier to obtain a cedula, and with this his way in the
national University would be made smoother. He enrolled
in two courses, medicine, and literature and philosophy;
besides these he studied sculpture, drawing and art in San
Carlos, and took private lessons in languages from Mr.
Hughes, a well-known instructor of the city. With all these
labors it is not strange that he did not mingle largely in
social life, and lack of funds and want of clothes, which
have been suggested as reasons for this, seem hardly
adequate. José had left Manila with some seven hundred

pesos and a diamond ring. Besides, he received funds from
his father monthly, which were sent through his cousin,
Antonio Rivera, of Manila, for fear that the landlords might
revenge themselves upon their tenant for the slight which
his son had cast upon their university in deserting it for a
Peninsular institution. It was no easy task in those days for a
lad from the provinces to get out of the Islands for study
abroad.
Rizal frequently attended the theater, choosing especially
the higher class dramas, occasionally went to a masked ball,
played the lotteries in small amounts but regularly, and for
the rest devoted most of his money to the purchase of
books. The greater part of these were second-hand, but he
bought several standard works in good editions, many with
bindings de luxe. Among the books first purchased figure a
Spanish translation of the “Lives of the Presidents of the
United States,” from Washington to Johnson, morocco
bound, gilt-edged, and illustrated with steel engravings—
certainly an expensive book; a “History of the English
Revolution;” a comparison of the Romans and the Teutons,
and several other books which indicated interest in the freer
system Page 119of the Anglo-Saxons. Later, another “History
of the Presidents,” to Cleveland, was added to his library.
The following lines, said to be addressed to his mother,
were written about this time, evidently during an attack of
homesickness:

“You Ask Me for Verses”
(Translated by Charles Derbyshire)

You bid me now to strike the lyre,
That mute and torn so long has lain;
And yet I cannot wake the strain,
Nor will the Muse one note inspire!
Coldly it shakes in accents dire,
As if my soul itself to wring,
And when its sound seems but to fling
A jest at its own low lament;
So in sad isolation pent,
My soul can neither feel nor sing.

There was a time—ah, ’tis too true—
But that time long ago has past—
When upon me the Muse had cast
Indulgent smile and friendship’s due;
But of that age now all too few
The thoughts that with me yet will stay;
As from the hours of festive play
There linger on mysterious notes,
And in our minds the memory floats
Of minstrelsy and music gay.

A plant I am, that scarcely grown,
Was torn from out its Eastern bed,
Where all around perfume is shed,
And life but as a dream is known;
The land that I can call my own,Page 120
By me forgotten ne’er to be,
Where trilling birds their song taught me,
And cascades with their ceaseless roar,
And all along the spreading shore
The murmurs of the sounding sea.

While yet in childhood’s happy day,

I learned upon its sun to smile,
And in my breast there seemed the while
Seething volcanic fires to play.
A bard I was, and my wish alway
To call upon the fleeting wind,
With all the force of verse and mind:
“Go forth, and spread around its fame,
From zone to zone with glad acclaim,
And earth to heaven together bind!”

But it I left, and now no more—
Like a tree that is broken and sere—
My natal gods bring the echo clear
Of songs that in past times they bore;
Wide seas I cross’d to foreign shore,
With hope of change and other fate;
My folly was made clear too late,
For in the place of good I sought
The seas reveal’d unto me naught,
But made death’s specter on me wait.

All these fond fancies that were mine,
All love, all feeling, all emprise,
Were left beneath the sunny skies,
Which o’er that flowery region shine;
So press no more that plea of thine,Page 121
For songs of love from out a heart
That coldly lies a thing apart;
Since now with tortur’d soul I haste
Unresting o’er the desert waste,
And lifeless gone is all my art.

In Madrid a number of young Filipinos were intense
enthusiasts over political agitation, and with the
recklessness of youth, were careless of what they said or
how they said it, so long as it brought no danger to them. A
sort of Philippine social club had been organized by older
Filipinos and Spaniards interested in the Philippines, with

the idea of quietly assisting toward improved insular
conditions, but it became so radical under the influence of
this younger majority, that its conservative members were
compelled to drop out and the club broke up. The young
men were constantly holding meetings to revive it, but
never arrived at any effective conclusions. Rizal was
present at some of these meetings and suggested that a good
means of propaganda would be a book telling the truth
about Philippine conditions and illustrated by Filipino
artists. At first the project was severely criticised; later a
few conformed to the plan, and Rizal believed that his
scheme was in a fair way of accomplishment. At the
meeting to discuss the details, however, each member of the
company wanted to write upon the Filipino woman, and the
rest of the subjects scarcely interested any of them. Rizal
was disgusted with this trifling and dropped the affair, nor
did he ever again seem to take any very enthusiastic interest
in such popular movements. His more mature mind put him
out of sympathy with the younger men. Their admiration
gave him great prestige, but his popularity did not arise
from comradeship, as he had but very few intimates.
Early in his stay in Madrid, Rizal had come across a Page
122second-hand copy, in two volumes, of a French novel,
which he bought to improve his knowledge of that
language. It was Eugene Sue’s “The Wandering Jew,” that
work which transformed the France of the nineteenth
century. However one may agree or disagree with its
teachings and concede or dispute its literary merits, it
cannot be denied that it was the most powerful book in its

effects on the century, surpassing even Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,” which is usually credited with having
hurried on the American Civil War and brought about the
termination of African slavery in the United States. The
book, he writes in his diary, affected him powerfully, not to
tears, but with a tremendous sympathy for the unfortunates
that made him willing to risk everything in their behalf. It
seemed to him that such a presentation of Philippine
conditions would certainly arouse Spain, but his modesty
forbade his saying that he was going to write a book like the
French masterpiece. Still, from this time his recollections of
his youth and the stories which he could get from his
companions were written down and revised, till finally the
half had been prepared of what was finally the novel “Noli
Me Tangere.”
Through Spaniards who still remembered José’s uncle, he
joined a lodge of Masons called the “Acacia.” At this time
few Filipinos in Spain had joined the institution, and those
were mostly men much more mature than himself. Thus he
met leaders of Spanish national life who were men of state
affairs and much more sedate, men with broader views and
more settled opinions than the irresponsible class with
whom his school companions were accustomed to associate.
A distinction must be made between the Masonry of this
time and the much more popular institution in which
Filipinos later figured so Page 123largely when Professor
Miguel Morayta became head of the Grand Lodge which
for a time was a rival of that to which the “Acacia” owed
allegiance, and finally triumphed over it.

In 1884 Rizal had begun his
studies in English; he had
been studying French during
and since his voyage to Spain;
Italian was acquired
apparently at a time when the
exposition of Genoa had
attracted Spanish interest
toward Italy, and largely Don Pablo Ortigas y Reyes.
through the reading of Italian
translations of works which he
knew in other languages. German, too, he had started to
study, but had not advanced far with it. Thus Rizal was
preparing himself for the travels through Europe which he
had intended to make from the time when he first left his
home, for he well knew that it was only by knowing the
language of a country that it would be possible for him to
study the people, see in what way they differed from his
own, and find out which of their customs and what lessons
from their history might be of advantage to the Filipinos.
A feature in Rizal’s social life was a weekly visit to the
home of Don Pablo Ortigas y Reyes, a liberal Spaniard who
had been Civil Governor of Manila in General de La Torre’s
time. Here Filipino students gathered, and were entertained
by the charming daughter of the home, Consuelo, who was
the person to whom were dedicated the verses of Rizal
usually entitled “á la Senorita C. O. y R.”

In Rizal’s later days he found a regular relaxation in Page
124playing chess, in which he was skilled, with the
venerable ex-president of the short-lived Spanish republic,
Pi y Margal. This statesman was accused of German
tendencies because of his inclination toward Anglo-Saxon
safeguards for liberty, and was a champion of general
education as a preparation for a freer Spain.

Facsimile of the beginning of a poem by Rizal to Miss C. O.
y Keyes, Don Pablo’s charming daughter.
Rizal usually was present on public occasions in Filipino
circles and took a leading part in them, as, for example,
when he delivered the principal address at the banquet
given by the Madrid Filipino colony in honor of their artist
countrymen, after Luna and Hidalgo had won prizes in the
Madrid National exposition. He was also at the New Year’s
banquet when the students gathered in the restaurant to bid
farewell to the old and usher Page 125Page 126in the new year,

and his was the chief speech, summarizing the remarks of
the others.

Rizal in Juan Luna’s studio in Paris.
In 1885, having completed the second of his two courses,
with his credentials of licentiate in medicine and also in
philosophy and literature, Rizal made a trip through the
country provinces to study the Spanish peasant, for the rural
people, he thought, being agriculturists, would be most like
the farmer folk of his native land. Surely the Filipinos did

not suffer in the comparison, for the Spanish peasants had
not greatly changed from the day when they were so
masterfully described by Cervantes. It seemed to Rizal
almost like being in Don Quixote’s land, so many were the
figures who might have been the characters in the book.
The fall of ’85 found Rizal in Paris, studying art, visiting
the various museums and associating with the Lunas, the
Taveras and other Filipino residents of the French capital,
for there had been a considerable colony in that city ever
since the troubles of 1872 had driven the Tavera family into
exile and they had made their home in that city. In Paris a
fourth of “Noli Me Tangere” was written, and Rizal
specialized in ophthalmology, devoting his attention to
those eye troubles that were most prevalent in the
Philippines and least understood. His mother’s growing
blindness made him covet the skill which might enable him
to restore her sight. So successfully did he study that he
became the favorite pupil of Doctor L. de Weckert, the
leading authority among the oculists of France, and author
of a three-volume standard work. Rizal next went to
Germany, having continued his studies in its language in the
French capital, and was present at Heidelberg on the five
hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the University.
Because he had no passport he could only attend lectures,
but could not regularly matriculate. He lived in Page 127one
of the student boarding houses, with a number of law
students, and when he was proposed for membership in the
Chess Club he was registered in the Club books as being a

student of law like the men who proposed him. These Chess
Club gatherings were quite a feature of the town, being held
in the large saloons with several hundred people present,
and the contests of skill were eagerly watched by shrewd
and competent judges. Rizal was a clever player, and left
something of a record among the experts.
The following lines were
written by Rizal in a letter
home while he was a
student in Germany:

To the Flowers of
Heidelberg
(translation by Charles Derbyshire)

Go to my native land, go,
foreign flowers,
Sown by the traveler on his
way; The ruined castle at Heidelberg.
And there beneath its azure
sky,
Where all of my affections lie;
There from the weary pilgrim say,
What faith is his in that land of ours!

Page 128

Go there and tell how when the dawn,
Her early light diffusing,
Your petals first flung open wide;
His steps beside chill Neckar drawn,

You see him silent by your side,
Upon its Spring perennial musing.

Saw how when morning’s light,
All your fragrance stealing,
Whispers to you as in mirth
Playful songs of love’s delight,
He, too, murmurs his love’s feeling
In the tongue he learned at birth.

That when the sun on Koenigstuhl’s height
Pours out its golden flood,
And with its slowly warming light
Gives life vale and grove and wood,
He greets that sun, here only upraising,
Which in his native land is at its zenith blazing.

And tell there of that day he stood,
Near to a ruin’d castle gray,
By Neckar’s banks, or shady wood,
And pluck’d you from beside the way;
Tell, too, the tale to you addressed,
And how with tender care,
Your bending leaves he press’d
’Twixt pages of some volume rare.

Bear then, O flowers, love’s message bear;
My love to all the lov’d ones there,
Peace to my country—fruitful land—
Faith whereon its sons may stand,
And virtue for its daughters’ care;
All those belovéd creatures greet,
That still around home’s altar meet.

Page 129

And when you come unto its shore,
This kiss I now on you bestow,
Fling where the winged breezes blow;

That borne on them it may hover o’er
All that I love, esteem, and adore.

But though, O flowers, you come unto that land,
And still perchance your colors hold;
So far from this heroic strand,
Whose soil first bade your life unfold,
Still here your fragrance will expand;
Your soul that never quits the earth
Whose light smiled on you at your birth.

From Heidelberg he went to Leipzig, then famous for the
new studies in psychology which were making the science
of the mind almost as exact as that of the body, and became
interested in the comparison of race characteristics as
influenced by environment, history and language. This
probably accounts for the advanced views held by Rizal,
who was thoroughly abreast of the new psychology. These
ideas were since popularized in America largely through
Professor Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard University, who
was a fellow-student of Rizal at Heidelberg and also had
been at Leipzig.
A little later Rizal went to Berlin and there became
acquainted with a number of men who had studied the
Philippines and knew it as none whom he had ever met
previously. Chief among these was Doctor Jagor, the author
of the book which ten years before had inspired in him his
life purpose of preparing his people for the time when
America should come to the Philippines. Then there was
Doctor Rudolf Virchow, head of the Anthropological
Society and one of the greatest scientists in the world.

Virchow was of intensely democratic ideals, Page 130he was
a statesman as well as a scientist, and the interest of the
young student in the history of his country and in
everything else which concerned it, and his sincere
earnestness, so intelligently directed toward helping his
country, made Rizal at once a prime favorite. Under
Virchow’s sponsorship he became a member of the Berlin
Anthropological Society.
Rizal lived in the third floor of a
corner lodging house not very far
from the University; in this room he
spent much of his time, putting the
finishing touches to what he had
previously written of his novel, and
there he wrote the latter half of “Noli
Me Tangere” The German influence,
Dr. Rudolf Virchow. and absence from the Philippines for
so long a time, had modified his early
radical views, and the book had now
become less an effort to arouse the Spanish sense of justice
than a means of education for Filipinos by pointing out their
shortcomings. Perhaps a Spanish school history which he
had read in Madrid deserves a part of the credit for this
changed point of view, since in that the author, treating of
Spain’s early misfortunes, brings out the fact that
misgovernment may be due quite as much to the hypocrisy,
servility and undeserving character of the people as it is to
the corruption, tyranny and cruelty of the rulers.

Page
131T
he
prin
ter
of
“No
li
Me The house where Rizal completed “Noli me Tangere.”
Tan
gere
” lived in a neighboring street, and, like most printers in
Germany, worked for a very moderate compensation, so
that the volume of over four hundred pages cost less than a
fourth of what it would have done in England, or one half of
what it would cost in economical Spain. Yet even at so
modest a price, Rizal was delayed in the publication until
one fortunate morning he received a visit from a
countryman, Doctor Maximo Viola, who invited him to take
a pedestrian trip. Rizal responded that his interests kept him
in Berlin at that time as he was awaiting funds from home
with which to publish a book he had just completed, and
showed him the manuscript. Doctor Viola was much
interested and offered to use the money he had put aside for
the trip to help pay the publisher. So the work went ahead,
and when the delayed remittance from his family arrived,
Rizal repaid the obligation. Then the two sallied forth on
their trip.

After a considerable tour of the historic spots and scenic
places in Germany, they arrived at Dresden, where Doctor
Rizal was warmly greeted by Doctor A. B. Meyer, the
Director of the Royal Saxony Ethnographical Institute. He
was an authority upon Philippine matters, for some years
before he had visited the Islands to make a study of the
people. With a countryman resident in the Philippines,
Doctor Meyer made careful and thorough scientific
investigations, and his conclusions were more favorable to
the Filipinos than the published views of many of the
unscientific Spanish observers.
In the Museum of Art at Dresden, Rizal saw a painting of
“Prometheus Bound,” which recalled to him a
representation of the same idea in a French gallery, and
from memory he modeled this figure, which especially
appealed to him as being typical of his country. Page 132

Manuscript of “Noli me Tangere” Bought by the Philippine
Government for $25,000.
In Austrian territory he first visited Doctor Ferdinand Page
133Blumentritt, whom Rizal had known by reputation for
many years and with whom he had long corresponded. The
two friends stayed at the Hotel Roderkrebs, but were guests
at the table of the Austrian professor, whose wife gave them
appetizing demonstrations of the characteristic cookery of
Hungary. During Rizal’s stay he was very much interested

in a gathering of tourists, arranged to make known the
beauties of that picturesque region, sometimes called the
Austrian Switzerland, and he delivered an address upon this
occasion. It is noteworthy that the present interest in
attracting tourists to the Philippines, as an economic benefit
to the country, was anticipated by Doctor Rizal and that he
was always looking up methods used in foreign countries
for building up tourists’ travel.
One day,
while the
visitors were
discussing
Philippine
matters with
their host,
Doctor Rizal
made an off Pencil sketch of Dr. F. Blumentritt by Rizal.
hand sketch of
Doctor
Blumentritt, on a scrap of paper which happened to be at
hand, so characteristic that it serves as an excellent portrait,
and it has been preserved among the Rizal relics which
Doctor Blumentritt had treasured of the friend for whom he
had so much respect and affection.

The Victory of Death over Life and Science over Death.
Statuettes made by Rizal for Dr. Blumentritt and exhibited
in the Dresden Museum of Modern Art.
With a letter of introduction to a friend of Doctor
Blumentritt in Vienna, Nordenfels, the greatest of Austrian
novelists, Doctor Viola and Doctor Rizal went on to the
capital, where they were entertained by the Concordia Club.

So favorable was the impression that Rizal made upon Mr.
Nordenfels that an answer was written to the Page 134Page
135note of introduction, thanking the professor for having
brought to his notice a person whom he had found so
companionable and whose genius he so much admired.
Nordenfels had been interested in Spanish subjects, and was
able to discuss intelligently the peculiar development of
Castilian civilization and the politics of the Spanish
metropolis as they affected the overseas possessions.
After having seen Rome and a little more of Italy, they
embarked for the Philippines, again on the French mail,
from Marseilles, coming by way of Saigon, where a rice
steamer was taken for Manila. Page 136

Chapter VII

The Period of Propaganda

The city had not altered much during Rizal’s seven years of
absence. The condition of the Binondo pavement, with the
same holes in the road which Rizal claimed he remembered
as a schoolboy, was unchanged, and this recalls the
experience of Ybarra in “Noli Me Tangere” on his
homecoming after a like period of absence.
Doctor Rizal at once went to his home in Kalamba. His first
operation in the Philippines relieved the blindness of his
mother, by the removal of a double cataract, and thus the
object of his special study in Paris was accomplished. This
and other like successes gave the young oculist a fame
which brought patients from all parts of Luzon; and, though
his charges were moderate, during his seven months’ stay in
the Islands Doctor Rizal accumulated over five thousand
pesos, besides a number of diamonds which he had bought
as a secure way of carrying funds, mindful of the help that
the ring had been with which he had first started from the
Philippines.
Shortly after his arrival, Governor-General Terrero
summoned Rizal by telegraph to Malacañan from Kalamba.
The interview proved to be due to the interest in the author

of “Noli Me Tangere” and a curiosity to read the novel,
arising from the copious extracts with which the Manila
censors had submitted an unfavorable opinion when asking
for the prohibition of the book. The recommendation of the
censor was disregarded, and General Terrero, fearful that
Rizal might be molested by some of the many persons who
would feel themselves aggrieved by his plain picturing of
undesirable classes in the Philippines, gave him for a
bodyguard a young Spanish lieutenant, Page 137José Taviel
de Andrade. The young men soon became fast friends, as
they had artistic and other tastes in common. Once they
climbed Mr. Makiling, near Kalamba, and placed there,
after the European custom, a flag to show that they had
reached the summit. This act was at first misrepresented by
the enemies of Rizal as planting a German banner, for they
started a story that he had taken possession of the Islands in
the name of the country where he was educated, which was
just then in unfriendly relations with Spain over the
question of the ill treatment of the Protestant missionaries in
the Caroline Islands. This same story was repeated after the
American occupation with the variation that Rizal, as the
supreme chief and originator of the ideas of the Katipunan
(which in fact he was not—he was even opposed to the
society as it existed in his time), had placed there a Filipino
banner, in token that the Islands intended to reassume the
independent condition of which the Spanish had
dispossessed them.
“Noli Me Tangere” circulated first among Doctor Rizal’s
relatives; on one occasion a cousin made a special trip to

Kalamba and took
the author to task
for having
caricatured her in
the character of
Doña Victorina.
Rizal made no
denial, but merely José T. de Andrade, Rizal’s bodyguard.
suggested that the
book was a mirror
of Philippine life, with types that unquestionably existed in
the country, and that if anybody recognized one of the
characters as picturing himself or herself, that person would
do well to correct the faults which therein appeared
ridiculous.
A somewhat liberal administration was now governing Page
138the Philippines, and efforts were being made to correct
the more glaring abuses in the social conditions. One of
these reforms proposed that the larger estates should bear
their share of the taxes, which it was believed they were
then escaping to a great extent. Requests were made of the
municipal government of Kalamba, among other towns, for
a statement of the relation that the big Dominican hacienda
bore to the town, what increase or decrease there might
have been in the income of the estate, and what taxes the
proprietors were paying compared with the revenue their
place afforded.

Rizal interested the people of the community to gather
reliable statistics, to go thoroughly into the actual
conditions, and to leave out the generalities which usually
characterized Spanish documents.
He asked the people to coöperate, pointing out that when
they did not complain it was their own fault more than that
of the government if they suffered injustice. Further, he
showed the folly of exaggerated statements, and insisted
upon a definite and moderate showing of such abuses as
were unquestionably within the power of the authorities to
relieve. Rizal himself prepared the report, which is an
excellent presentation of the grievances of the people of his
town. It brings forward as special points in favor of the
community their industriousness, their willingness to help
themselves, their interest in education, and concludes with
expressing confidence in the fairness of the government,
pointing out the fact that they were risking the displeasure
of their landlords by furnishing the information requested.
The paper made a big stir, and its essential statements, like
everything else in Rizal’s writings, were never successfully
challenged.
Conditions in Manila were at that time disturbed owing to
the precedence which had been given in a local festival to
the Chinese, because they paid more money. The Page
139Filipinos claimed that, being in their home country, they
should have had prior consideration and were entitled to it
by law. The matter culminated in a protest, which was
doubtless submitted to Doctor Rizal on the eve of his

departure from the Islands; the protest in a general way met
with his approval, but the theatrical methods adopted in the
presentation of it can hardly have been according to his
advice.
He sailed for Hongkong in
February of 1888, and
made a short stay in the
British colony, becoming
acquainted there with Jose
Maria Basa, an exile of
’72, who had constituted
himself the especial Jose Maria Basa, of Hongkong.
guardian of the Filipino
students in that city. The visitor was favorably impressed by
the methods of education in the British colony and with the
spirit of patriotism developed thereby. He also looked into
the subject of the large investments in Hongkong property
by the corporation landlords of the Philippines, their
preparation for the day of trouble which they foresaw.
Rizal was interested in the Chinese theater, comparing the
plays with the somewhat similar productions which existed
in the Philippines; there, however, they had been given a
religious twist, which at first glance hid their debt to the
Chinese drama. The Doctor notes meeting, at nearby
Macao, an exile of ’72, whose condition and patient,
uncomplaining bearing of his many troubles aroused Rizal’s
sympathies and commanded his admiration.

With little delay, the journey was continued to Japan, where
Doctor Rizal was surprised by an invitation to make his
home in the Spanish consulate. There he was Page
140hospitably entertained, and a like courtesy was shown
him in the Spanish minister’s home in Tokio. The latter
even offered him a position, as a sort of interpreter,
probably, should he care to remain in the country. This
offer, however, was declined. Rizal made considerable
investigation into the condition of the various Japanese
classes and acquired such facility in the use of the language
that with it and his appearance, for he was “very Japanese,”
the natives found it difficult to believe that he was not one
of themselves. The month or more passed here he
considered one of the happiest in his travels, and it was with
regret that he sailed from Yokohama for San Francisco. A
Japanese newspaper man, who knew no other language than
his own, was a companion on the entire journey to London,
and Rizal acted as his interpreter.
Not only did he enter into the spirit of the language but with
remarkable versatility he absorbed the spirit of the Japanese
artists and acquired much dexterity in expressing himself in
their style, as is shown by one of the illustrations in this
book. The popular idea that things occidental are reversed
in the Orient was amusingly caricatured in a sketch he made
of a German face; by reversing its lines he converted it into
an old-time Japanese countenance.
The diary of the voyage from Hongkong to Japan records an
incident to which he alludes as being similar to that of

Aladdin in the Tagalog tale of Florante. The Filipino wife of
an Englishman, Mrs. Jackson, who was a passenger on
board, told Rizal a great deal about a Filipino named
Rachal, who was educated in Europe and had written a
much-talked-of novel, which she described and of which
she spoke in such flattering terms that Rizal declared his
identity. The confusion in names is explained Page 141Page
142by the fact that Rachal is a name well known in the
Philippines as that of a popular make of piano.

Imitation of Japanese art by Rizal.
At San Francisco the boat was held for some time in
quarantine because of sickness aboard, and Rizal was
impressed by the fact that the valuable cargo of silk was not
delayed but was quickly transferred to the shore. His diary
is illustrated with a drawing of the Treasury flag on the
customs launch which acted as go-between for their boat

and the shore. Finally, the first-class passengers were
allowed to land, and he went to the Palace Hotel.
With little delay, the overland journey was begun; the
scenery through the picturesque Rocky Mountains
especially impressed him, and finally Chicago was reached.
The thing that struck him most forcibly in that city was the
large number of cigar stores with an Indian in front of each
—and apparently no two Indians alike. The unexpressed
idea was that in America the remembrance of the first
inhabitants of the land and their dress was retained and
popularized, while in the Philippines knowledge of the first
inhabitants of the land was to be had only from foreign
museums.
Niagara Falls is the next impression recorded in the diary,
which has been preserved and is now in the Newberry
Library of Chicago. The same strange, awe-inspiring
mystery which others have found in the big falls affected
him, but characteristically he compared this world-wonder
with the cascades of his native La Laguna, claiming for
them greater delicacy and a daintier enchantment.
From Albany, the train ran along the banks of the Hudson,
and he was reminded of the Pasig in his homeland, with its
much greater commerce and its constant activity.
At New York, Rizal embarked on the City of Rome, then the
finest steamer in the world, and after a pleasant Page
143voyage, in which his spare moments were occupied in
rereading “Gulliver’s Travels” in English, Rizal reached

England, and said good-by to the friends whom he had met
during their brief ocean trip together.
Rizal’s first letters home to his
family speak of being in the
free air of England and once
more amidst European activity.
For a short time he lived with
Doctor Antonio Maria
Regidor, an exile of ’72, who
had come to secure what Dr. Antonio Maria Regidor.
Spanish legal Business he
could in the British metropolis.
Doctor Regidor was formerly an official in the Philippines,
and later proved his innocence of any complicity in the
troubles of ’72.

A “Wheel of Fortune” Answer book arranged for the Rizal
boys.

Doctor Rizal then boarded with a Mr. Beckett, organist of
St. Paul’s Church, at 37 Charlecote Crescent, in the favorite
North West residence section. The zoölogical Page
144gardens were conveniently near and the British Museum
was within easy walking distance. The new member was a
favorite with all the family, which consisted of three
daughters besides the father and mother.
Rizal’s youthful interest in sleight-of-hand tricks was still
maintained. During his stay in the Philippines he had
sometimes amused his friends in this way, till one day he
was horrified to find that the simple country folk, who were
also looking on, thought that he was working miracles. In
London he resumed his favorite diversion, and a Christmas
gift of Mrs. Beckett to him, “The Life and Adventures of
Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist,” indicated the interest his
friends took in this amusement. One of his own purchases
was “Modern Magic,” the frontispiece of which is the
sphinx that figures in the story of “El Filibusterismo.”
It was Rizal’s custom to study the
deceptions practiced upon the peoples
of other lands, comparing them with
those of which his own countrymen had
been victims. Thus he could get an idea
of the relative credulity of different
peoples and could also account for
many practices the origin of which was
Dr. Reinhold Rost.
otherwise less easy to understand. His
investigations were both in books and

by personal research. In quest of these experiences he one
day chanced to visit a professional phrenologist; the bump-
reader was a shrewd guesser, for he dwelt especially upon
Rizal’s aptitude for learning languages and advised him to
take up the study of them.

Facsimile of a page of one of Andersen’s fairy tales,
translated by Rizal for his nephews and nieces.

This interest in languages, shown in his childish ambition to
be like Sir John Bowring, made Rizal a congenial Page
145Page 146companion of a still more distinguished linguist,
Doctor Reinhold Rost, the librarian of the India Office. The
Raffles Library in Singapore now owns Doctor Rost’s
library, and its collection of grammars in seventy languages
attests the wide range of the studies of this Sanscrit scholar.
Doctor Rost was born and educated in Germany, though
naturalized as a British subject, and he was a man of great
musical taste. His family sometimes formed an orchestra, at
other times a glee club, and furnished all the necessary parts
from its own members. Rizal was a frequent visitor, usually
spending his Sundays in athletic exercises with the boys, for
he quickly became proficient in the English sports of
boxing and cricket. While resting he would converse with
the father, or chat with the daughters of the home. All the
children had literary tastes, and one, Daisy, presented him
with a copy of a novel which she had just translated from
the German, entitled “Ulli.”
Some idea of Doctor Rizal’s own linguistic attainments may
be gained from the fact that instead of writing letters to his
nephews and nieces he made for them translations of some
of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. They consist of
some forty manuscript pages, profusely illustrated, and the
father is referred to in a “dedication,” as though it were a
real book. The Hebrew Bible quotation is in allusion to a
jocose remark once made by the father that German was
like Hebrew to him, the verse being that in which the sons

of Jacob, not recognizing that their brother was the seller,
were bargaining for some of Pharaoh’s surplus corn, “And
he (Joseph) said, How is the old man, your father?” Rizal
always tried to relieve by a touch of humor anything that
seemed to him as savoring of affectation, the phase of
Spanish character that repelled him and the imitation of
which Page 147by his countrymen who knew nothing of the
un-Spanish world disgusted him with them.

Facsimile of the dedication of Rizal’s translation of
Andersen’s fairy tales.
Another example of his versatility in language and of its
usefulness to him as well, is shown in a trilingual letter
written by Rizal in Dapitan when the censorship of his
correspondence had become annoying through ignorant
exceptions to perfectly harmless matters. No Spaniard

available spoke more than one language besides his own
and it was necessary to send the letter to three different
persons to find out its contents. The critics took the hint and
Rizal received better treatment thereafter.

Facsimile of parts of a trilingual letter written by Rizal in
Dapitan.

Facsimile of parts of a trilingual letter written by Rizal in
Dapitan.
Another one of Rizal’s youthful aspirations was attained in
London, for there he began transcribing the Page 148Page
149Page 150early Spanish history by Morga of which Sir John
Bowring had told his uncle. A copy of this rare book was in
the British Museum and he gained admission as a reader
there through the recommendation of Doctor Rost. Only

five hundred persons can be accommodated in the big
reading room, and as students are coming from every
continent for special researches, good reason has to be
shown why these studies cannot be made at some other
institution.

The copy of Morga’s History in the British Museum used
by Rizal.
Besides the copying of the text of Morga’s history, Rizal
read many other early writings on the Philippines, and the
manifest unfairness of some of these who thought that they
could glorify Spain only by disparaging the Filipinos
aroused his wrath. Few Spanish writers held up the good
name of those who were under their flag, and Rizal had to
resort to foreign authorities to disprove their libels. Morga
was almost alone among Spanish historians, Page 151Page
152but his assertions found corroboration in the
contemporary chronicles of other nationalities. Rizal spent
his evenings in the home of Doctor Regidor, and many a

time the bitterness and impatience with which his day’s
work in the Museum had inspired him, would be forgotten
as the older man counseled patience and urged that such
prejudices were to be expected of a little educated nation.
Then Rizal’s brow would clear as he quoted his favorite
proverb, “To understand all is to forgive all.”

Application, recommendation, and admission of Rizal to the
reading-room of the British Museum.

Doctor Rost was editor of Trübner’s Record, a journal
devoted to the literature of the East, founded by the famous
Oriental Bookseller and Publisher of London, Nicholas
Trübner, and Doctor Rizal contributed to it in May, 1889,
some specimens of Tagal folklore, an extract from which is
appended, as it was then printed:

Specimens of Tagal Folklore
By Doctor J. Rizal

Proverbial Sayings
Malakas ang bulong sa sigaw, Low words are stronger than loud words.
Ang lakí sa layaw karaniwa ’y hubad, A petted child is generally naked (i.e.
poor).
Hampasng magulang ay nakatabã, Parents’ punishment makes one fat.
Ibang harī ibang ugaīl, New king, new fashion.
Nagpupútol ang kapus, ang labis ay nagdurugtong, What is short cuts off a
piece from itself, what is long adds another on (the poor gets poorer, the rich
richer).
Ang nagsasabing tapus ay siyang kinakapus, He who finishes his words finds
himself wanting.
Nangangakõ habang napapakõ, Man promises while in need.
Page 153Ang naglalakad ng maráhan, matinik may mababaw, He who walks
slowly, though he may put his foot on a thorn, will not be hurt very much
(Tagals mostly go barefooted).
Ang maniwalã sa sabi ’y walang bait na sarili, He who believes in tales has no
own mind.
Ang may isinuksok sa dingding, ay may titingalain, He who has put something
between the wall may afterwards look on (the saving man may afterwards be
cheerful).—The wall of a Tagal house is made of palm-leaves and bamboo, so
that it can be used as a cupboard.
Walang mahirap gisingin na paris nang nagtutulogtulugan, The most difficult
to rouse from sleep is the man who pretends to be asleep.
Labis sa salitã, kapus sa gawã, Too many words, too little work.
Hipong tulog ay nadadalá ng ánod, The sleeping shrimp is carried away by the
current.
Sa bibig nahuhuli ang isda, The fish is caught through the mouth.

Puzzles
Isang butil na palay sikip sa buony bahay, One rice-corn fills up all the house.
—The light. The rice-corn with the husk is yellowish.
Matapang akó so dalawá, duag akó sa isá, I am brave against two, coward
against one.—The bamboo bridge. When the bridge is made of one bamboo
only, it is difficult to pass over; but when it is made of two or more, it is very
easy.
Dalá akó niya, dalá ko siya, He carries me, I carry him.—The shoes.
Isang balong malalim puna ng patalím, A deep well filled with steel blades.—
The mouth.

Page 154The Filipino colony in Spain had established a
fortnightly review, published first in Barcelona and later in
Madrid, to enlighten Spaniards on their distant colony, and
Rizal wrote for it from the start. Its name, La Solidaridad,
perhaps may be translated Equal Rights, as it aimed at like
laws and the same privileges for the Peninsula and the
possessions overseas.

Heading of the Filipino-Madrid review “La Solidaridad.”

From the Philippines came news of a contemptible attempt
to reach Rizal through his family—one of many similar
petty persecutions. His sister Lucia’s husband had died and
the corpse was refused interment in consecrated ground,
upon the pretext that the dead man, who had been
exceptionally liberal to the church and was of
unimpeachable character, had been negligent in his
religious duties. Another individual with a notorious record
of longer absence from confession died about the same
time, and his funeral took place from the church without
demur. The ugly feature about the refusal to bury Hervosa
was that the telegram from the friar parish-priest to the
Archbishop at Manila in asking instructions, was careful to
mention that the deceased was a brother-in-law of Rizal.
Doctor Rizal wrote a scorching article for La Solidaridad
under the caption “An Outrage,” and Page 155took the matter
up with the Spanish Colonial Minister, then Becerra, a
professed Liberal. But that weakling statesman, more liberal
in words than in actions, did nothing.

Staff of “La Solidaridad.” José Rizal, Marcelo H. de Pilar,
Mariano Ponce.
That the union of Church and State can be as demoralizing
to religion as it is disastrous to good government seems
sufficiently established by Philippine incidents like this, in
which politics was substituted for piety as the test of a good
Catholic, making marriage impossible and denying decent
burial to the families of those who differed politically with
the ministers of the national religion.
Page 156Of all his writings, the article in which Rizal speaks
of this indignity to the dead comes nearest to exhibiting
personal feeling and rancor. Yet his main point is to indicate
generally what monstrous conditions the Philippine mixture
of religion and politics made possible.

The following are part of a series of nineteen verses
published in La Solidaridad over Rizal’s favorite pen name
of Laong Laan:

To my Muse
(translation by Charles Derbyshire)

Invoked no longer is the Muse,
The lyre is out of date;
The poets it no longer use,
And youth its inspiration now imbues
With other form and state.

If today our fancies aught
Of verse would still require,
Helicon’s hill remains unsought;
And without heed we but inquire,
Why the coffee is not brought.

In the place of thought sincere
That our hearts may feel,
We must seize a pen of steel,
And with verse and line severe
Fling abroad a jest and jeer.

Muse, that in the past inspired me,
And with songs of love hast fired me;
Go thou now to dull repose,
For today in sordid prose
I must earn the gold that hired me.

Page 157

Now must I ponder deep,

Meditate, and struggle on;
E’en sometimes I must weep;
For he who love would keep
Great pain has undergone.

Fled are the days of ease,
The days of Love’s delight;
When flowers still would please
And give to suffering souls surcease
From pain and sorrow’s blight.

One by one they have passed on,
All I loved and moved among;
Dead or married—from me gone,
For all I place my heart upon
By fate adverse are stung.

Go thou, too, O Muse, depart,
Other regions fairer find;
For my land but offers art
For the laurel, chains that bind,
For a temple, prisons blind.

But before thou leavest me, speak:
Tell me with thy voice sublime,
Thou couldst ever from me seek
A song of sorrow for the weak,
Defiance to the tyrant’s crime.

Rizal’s congenial situation in the British capital was
disturbed by his discovering a growing interest in the
youngest of the three girls whom he daily met. He felt that
his career did not permit him to marry, nor was his youthful
affection for his cousin in Manila an entirely Page
158forgotten sentiment. Besides, though he never lapsed into

such disregard for his feminine friends as the low Spanish
standard had made too common among the Filipino students
in Madrid, Rizal was ever on his guard against himself. So
he suggested to Doctor Regidor that he considered it would
be better for him to leave London. His parting gift to the
family with whom he had lived so happily was a clay
medallion bearing in relief the profiles of the three sisters.
Other regretful good-bys were said to a number of young
Filipinos whom he had gathered around him and formed
into a club for the study of the history of their country and
the discussion of its politics.
Rizal now went to Paris, where he was glad to be again with
his friend Valentin Ventura, a wealthy Pampangan who had
been trained for the law. His tastes and ideals were very
much those of Rizal, and he had sound sense and a freedom
from affectation which especially appealed to Rizal. There
Rizal’s reprint of Morga’s rare history was made, at a
greater cost but also in better form than his first novel.
Copious notes gave references to other authorities and
compared present with past conditions, and Doctor
Blumentritt contributed a forceful introduction.
When Rizal returned to London to correct the proofsheets,
the old original book was in use and the copy could not be
checked. This led to a number of errors, misspelled and
changed words, and even omissions of sentences, which
were afterwards discovered and carefully listed and filed
away to be corrected in another edition.

Possibly it has been made clear already that, while Rizal did
not work for separation from Spain, he was no admirer of
the Castilian character, nor of the Latin type, for that matter.
He remarked on Blumentritt’s comparison of the Spanish
rulers in the Philippines with the Page 159Czars of Russia,
that it is flattering to the Castilians but it is more than they
merit, to put them in the same class as Russia. Apparently
he had in mind the somewhat similar comparison in Burke’s
speech on the conciliation of America, in which he said that
Russia was more advanced and less cruel than Spain and so
not to be classed with it.
During his stay in Paris, Rizal was a frequent visitor at the
home of the two Doctors Pardo de Tavera, sons of the exile
of ’72 who had gone to France, the younger now a
physician in South America, the elder a former Philippine
Commissioner. The interest of the one in art, and of the
other in philology, the ideas of progress through education
shared by both, and many other common tastes and ideals,
made the two young men fast friends of Rizal. Mrs. Tavera,
the mother, was an interesting conversationalist, and Rizal
profited by her reminiscences of Philippine official life, to
the inner circle of which her husband’s position had given
her the entrée.
On Sundays Rizal fenced at Juan Luna’s house with his
distinguished artist-countryman, or, while the latter was
engaged with Ventura, watched their play. It was on one of
these afternoons that the Tagalog story of “The Monkey and
the Tortoise”1 was hastily sketched as a joke to fill the

remaining pages of Mrs. Luna’s autograph album, in which
she had been insisting Rizal must write before all its space
was used up. A comparison of the Tagalog version with a
Japanese counterpart was published by Rizal in English, in
Trübner’s Magazine, suggesting that the two people may
have had a common origin. This study received
considerable attention from other ethnologists, and was
among the topics at an ethnological conference.
At times his antagonist was Miss Nellie Baustead, who had
great skill with the foils. Her father, himself born Page 160in
the Philippines, the son of a wealthy merchant of Singapore,
had married a member of the Genato family of Manila. At
their villa in Biarritz, and again in their home in Belgium,
Rizal was a guest later, for Mr. Baustead had taken a great
liking to him.

Rizal fencing with Luna in Paris.
The teaching instinct that led him to act as mentor to the
Filipino students in Spain and made him the inspiration of a

mutual improvement club of his young countrymen in
London, suggested the foundation of a school in Paris. Later
a Pampangan youth offered him $40,000 with which to
found a Filipino college in Hongkong, where many young
men from the Philippines had obtained an education better
than their own land could afford but not entirely adapted to
their needs. The scheme attracted Rizal, and a prospectus
for such an institution which was later found among his
papers not only proves how deeply he was interested, but
reveals the fact that his ideas of education were essentially
like those Page 161carried out in the present public-school
course of instruction in the Philippines.
Early in
August of
1890 Rizal
went to
Madrid to
seek redress
for a wrong
done his
family by the
notorious
General
Weyler, the
“Butcher” of
evil memory General Weyler, known as “Butcher Weyler.”
in Cuba, then
Governor-General of the Philippines. Just as the mother’s
loss of liberty, years before, was caused by revengeful

feelings on the part of an official because for one day she
was obliged to omit a customary gift of horse feed, so the
father’s loss of land was caused by a revengeful official,
and for quite as trivial a cause.
Mr. Mercado was a great poultry fancier and especially
prided himself upon his fine stock of turkeys. He had been
accustomed to respond to the frequent requests of the estate
agent for presents of birds. But at one time disease had so
reduced the number of turkeys that all that remained were
needed for breeding purposes and Mercado was obliged to
refuse him. In a rage the agent insisted, and when that
proved unavailing, threats followed.
Page 162But Francisco Mercado was not a man to be moved
by threats, and when the next rent day came round he was
notified that his rent had been doubled. This was paid
without protest, for the tenants were entirely at the mercy of
the landlords, no fixed rate appearing either in contracts or
receipts. Then the rent-raising was kept on till Mercado was
driven to seek the protection of the courts. Part of his case
led to exactly the same situation as that of the Biñan
tenantry in his grandfather’s time, when the landlords were
compelled to produce their title-deeds, and these proved
that land of others had been illegally included in the estate.
Other tenants, emboldened by Mercado’s example also
refused to pay the exorbitant rent increases.

Rizal’s parents during the land troubles.
The justice of the peace of Kalamba, before whom the case
first came, was threatened by the provincial governor for
taking time to hear the testimony, and the case was turned
over to the auxiliary justice, who promptly decided in the
manner desired by the authorities. Mercado at once took an
appeal, but the venal Weyler moved a force of artillery to
Kalamba and quartered it upon the town as if rebellion
openly existed there. Then the court representatives evicted
the people from their homes and Page 163directed them to
remove all their buildings from the estate lands within
twenty-four hours. In answer to the plea that they had
appealed to the Supreme Court the tenants were told their
houses could be brought back again if they Page 164won their
appeal. Of course this was impossible and some 150,000
pesos’ worth of property was consequently destroyed by the
court agents, who were worthy estate employees. Twenty or
more families were made homeless and the other tenants
were forbidden to shelter them under pain of their own
eviction. This is the proceeding in which Retana suggests
that the governor-general and the landlords were legally
within their rights. If so, Spanish law was a disgrace to the

nation. Fortunately the Rizal-Mercado family had another
piece of property at Los Baños, and there they made their
home.

The Writ of eviction against Rizal’s father. (Facsimile.)
Weyler’s motives in this matter do not have to be surmised,
for among the (formerly) secret records of the government
there exists a letter which he wrote when he first denied the
petition of the Kalamba residents. It is marked
“confidential” and is addressed to the landlords, expressing

the pleasure which this action gave him. Then the official
adds that it cannot have escaped their notice that the times
demand diplomacy in handling the situation but that, should
occasion arise, he will act with energy. Just as Weyler had
favored the landlords at first so he kept on and when he had
a chance to do something for them he did it.
Finally, when Weyler left the Islands an investigation was
ordered into his administration, owing to rumors of
extensive and systematic frauds on the government, but
nothing more came of the case than that Retana, later
Rizal’s biographer, wrote a book in the General’s defense,
“extensively documented,” and also abusively anti-Filipino.
It has been urged (not by Retana, however) that the Weyler
régime was unusually efficient, because he would allow no
one but himself to make profits out of the public, and
therefore, while his gains were greater than those of his
predecessors, the Islands really received more attention
from him.
Page 165During the Kalamba discussion in Spain, Retana,
until 1899 always scurrilously anti-Filipino, made the
mistake of his life, for he charged Rizal’s family with not
paying their rent, which was not true. While Rizal believed
that duelling was murder, to judge from a pair of pictures
preserved in his album, he evidently considered that
homicide of one like Retana was justifiable. After the
Spanish custom, his seconds immediately called upon the
author of the libel. Retana notes in his “Vida del Dr. Rizal”
that the incident closed in a way honorable to both Rizal

and himself—he, Retana, published an explicit retraction
and abject apology in the Madrid papers. Another time, in
Madrid, Rizal risked a duel when he challenged Antonio
Luna, later the General, because of a slighting allusion to a
lady at a public banquet. He had a nicer sense of honor in
such matters than prevailed in Madrid, and Luna promptly
saw the matter from Rizal’s point of view and withdrew the
offensive remark. This second incident complements the
first, for it shows that Rizal was as willing to risk a duel
with his superior in arms as with one not so skilled as he.
Rizal was an exceptional pistol shot and a fair swordsman,
while Retana was inferior with either sword or pistol, but
Luna, who would have had the choice of weapons, was
immeasurably Rizal’s superior with the sword.
Owing to a schism a rival arose against the old Masonry
and finally the original organization succumbed to the
offshoot. Doctor Miguel Morayta, Professor of History in
the Central University at Madrid, was the head of the new
institution and it had grown to be very popular among
students. Doctor Morayta was friendly to the Filipinos and a
lodge of the same name as their paper was organized among
them. For their outside work they had a society named the
Hispano-Filipino Association, of which Morayta was
president, with convenient clubrooms Page 166and a
membership practically the same as the Lodge La
Solidaridad.
Just before Christmas of 1890, this Hispano-Filipino
Association gave a largely attended banquet at which there

were many prominent speakers. Rizal stayed away, not
because of growing pessimism, as Retana suggests, but
because one of the speakers was the same Becerra who had
feared to act when the outrage against the body of Rizal’s
brother-in-law had been reported to him. Now out of office,
the ex-minister was again bold in words, but Rizal for one
was not again to be deceived by them.
The propaganda carried on by his countrymen in the
Peninsula did not seem to Rizal effective, and he found his
suggestions were not well received by those at its head. The
story of Rizal’s separation from La Solidaridad, however, is
really not material, but the following quotation from a letter
written to Carlos Oliver, speaking of the opposition of the
Madrid committee of Filipinos to himself, is interesting as
showing Rizal’s attitude of mind:
“I regret exceedingly that they war against me, attempting
to discredit me in the Philippines, but I shall be content
provided only that my successor keeps on with the work. I
ask only of those who say that I created discord among the
Filipinos: Was there any effective union before I entered
political life? Was there any chief whose authority I wanted
to oppose? It is a pity that in our slavery we should have
rivalries over leadership.”
And in Rizal’s letter from Hongkong, May 24, 1892, to
Zulueta, commenting on an article by Leyte in La
Solidaridad, he says:

“Again I repeat, I do not understand the reason of the
attack, since now I have dedicated myself to preparing for
our countrymen a safe refuge in case of persecution Page
167and to writing some books, championing our cause,
which shortly will appear. Besides, the article is impolitic in
the extreme and prejudicial to the Philippines. Why say that
the first thing we need is to have money? A wiser man
would be silent and not wash soiled linen in public.”

Room in which “El Filibusterismo” was begun.
(Pencil sketch by Rizal.)
Early in ’91 Rizal went to Paris, visiting Mr. Baustead’s
villa in Biarritz en route, and he was again a guest of his
hospitable friend when, after the winter season was over,
the family returned to their home in Brussels.
During most of the year Rizal’s residence was in Ghent,
where he had gathered around him a number of Filipinos.
Doctor Blumentritt suggested that he should devote himself

to the study of Malay-Polynesian languages, and as it
appeared that thus he could earn a living in Holland he
thought to make his permanent home there. But his parents
were old and reluctant to leave their native land to pass their
last years in a strange country, and that plan failed. Page 168

Facsimile of the first page of the MS. of “El
Filibusterismo.”
(Property of Mr. Valentin Ventura, of Barcelona.)

He now occupied himself in finishing the sequel to “Noli
Me Tangere,” the novel “El Filibusterismo,” which he had
begun in October of 1887 while on his visit to the
Philippines. The bolder painting of the evil effects Page 169of
the Spanish culture upon the Filipinos may well have been
inspired by his unfortunate experiences with his
countrymen in Madrid who had not seen anything of
Europe outside of Spain. On the other hand, the confidence
of the author in those of his countrymen who had not been
contaminated by the so-called Spanish civilization, is even
more noticeable than in “Noli Me Tangere.”

Cover of the MS. of “El Filibusterismo.”
Rizal had now done all that he could for his country; he had
shown them by Morga what they were when Spain found
them; through “Noli Me Tangere” he had painted their
condition after three hundred years of Spanish influence;
and in “El Filibusterismo” he had pictured what their future
must be if better counsels did not prevail in the colony.

These works were for the instruction of his countrymen, the
fulfilment of the task he set for himself when he first read
Doctor Jagor’s criticism fifteen years before; time only was
now needed for them to accomplish their work and for
education to bring forth its fruits. Page 170

1 See Appendix.

Chapter VIII

Despujol’s Duplicity

As soon as he had set in motion what influence he
possessed in Europe for the relief of his relatives, Rizal
hurried to Hongkong and from there wrote to his parents
asking their permission to join them. Some time before, his
brother-in-law, Manuel Hidalgo, had been deported upon
the recommendation of the governor of La Laguna, “to
prove to the Filipinos that they were mistaken in thinking
that the new Civil Code gave them any rights” in cases
where the governor-general agreed with his subordinate’s
reason for asking for the deportation as well as in its
desirability. The offense was having buried a child, who had
died of cholera, without church ceremonies. The law
prescribed and public health demanded it. But the law was a
dead letter and the public health was never considered when
these cut into church revenues, as Hidalgo ought to have
known.
Upon Rizal’s arrival in Hongkong, in the fall of 1891, he
received notice that his brother Paciano had been returned
from exile in Mindoro, but that three of his sisters had been
summoned, with the probability of deportation.

A trap to get Rizal into the hands of the government by
playing upon his affection for his mother was planned at
this time, but it failed. Mrs. Rizal and one of her daughters
were arrested in Manila for “falsification of cedula” because
they no longer used the name Realonda, which the mother
had dropped fifteen years before. Then, though there were
frequently boats running to Kalamba, the two women were
ordered to be taken there for trial on foot. As when Mrs.
Rizal had been a prisoner before, the humane guards
disobeyed their orders Page 171and the elderly lady was
carried in a hammock. The family understood the plans of
their persecutors, and Rizal was told by his parents not to
come to Manila. Then the persecution of the mother and the
sister dropped.
In Hongkong, Rizal was already acquainted with most of
the Filipino colony, including Jose M. Basa, a ’72 exile of
great energy, for whom he had the greatest respect. The old
man was an unceasing enemy of all the religious orders and
was constantly getting out “proclamations,” as the handbills
common in the old-time controversies were called. One of
these, against the Jesuits, figures in the case against Rizal
and bears some minor corrections in his handwriting.
Nevertheless, his participation in it was probably no more
than this proofreading for his friend, whose motives he
could appreciate, but whose plan of action was not in
harmony with his own ideas.
Letters of introduction from London friends secured for
Rizal the acquaintance of Mr. H. L. Dalrymple, a justice of

the peace—which is a position more coveted and honored
in English lands than here—and a member of the public
library committee, as well as of the board of medical
examiners. He was a merchant, too, and agent for the
British North Borneo Company, which had recently secured
a charter as a semi-independent colony for the extensive
cession which had originally been made to the American
Trading Company and later transferred to them.
Rizal spent much of his time in the library, reading
especially the files of the older newspapers, which
contained frequent mention of the Philippines. As an old-
time missionary had left his books to the library, the
collection was rich in writings of the fathers of the early
Church, as well as in philology and travel. He spent much
time also in long conversations with Editor Frazier-Smith
Page 172of the Hongkong Telegraph, the most enterprising of
the daily newspapers. He was the master of St. John’s
Masonic lodge (Scotch constitution), which Rizal had
visited upon his first arrival, intensely democratic and a
close student of world politics. The two became fast friends
and Rizal contributed to the Telegraph several articles on
Philippine matters. These were printed in Spanish,
ostensibly for the benefit of the Filipino colony in
Hongkong, but large numbers of the paper were mailed to
the Philippines and thus at first escaped the vigilance of the
censors. Finally the scheme was discovered and the
Telegraph placed on the prohibited list, but, like most
Spanish actions, this was just too late to prevent the

circulation of what Rizal had wished to say to his
countrymen.

Rizal’s professional card when in Hongkong.
With the first of the year 1892 the free portion of Rizal’s
family came to Hongkong. He had been licensed to practice
medicine in the colony, and opened an office, specializing
as an oculist with notable success.

Statuette modelled by Rizal.
Another congenial companion was a man of his own
profession, Doctor L. P. Marquez, a Portuguese who had
received his medical education in Dublin and was a
naturalized British subject. He was a leading member of
Page 173the Portuguese club, Lusitania, which was of
radically republican proclivities and possessed an excellent
library of books on modern political conditions. An
inspection of the colonial prison with him inspired Rizal’s
article, “A Visit to Victoria Gaol,” through which runs a
pathetic contrast of the English system of imprisonment for
reformation Page 174with the Spanish vindictive methods of

punishment. A souvenir of one of their many conferences
was a dainty modeling in clay made by Rizal with that
astonishing quickness that resulted from his Uncle Gabriel’s
training during his early childhood.
In the spring, Rizal took a voyage to British North Borneo
and with Mr. Pryor, the agent, looked over vacant lands
which had been offered him by the Company for a Filipino
colony. The officials were anxious to grow abaca, cacao,
sugar cane and coconuts, all products of the Philippines, the
soil of which resembled theirs. So they welcomed the
prospect of the immigration of laborers skilled in such
cultivation, the Kalambans and other persecuted people of
the Luzon lake region, whom Doctor Rizal hoped to
transplant there to a freer home.
A different kind of governor-
general had succeeded Weyler in
the Philippines; the new man was
Despujol, a friend of the Jesuits
and a man who at once gave the
Filipinos hope of better days, for
his promises were quickly backed
Don Eulogio Despujol. up by the beginnings of their
performance. Rizal witnessed this
novel experience for his country
with gratification, though he had seen too many
disappointments to confide in the continuance of reform,
and he remembered that the like liberal term of De la Torre
had ended in the Cavite reaction.

He wrote early to the new chief executive, applauding
Despujol’s policy and offering such coöperation as he might
be able to give toward making it a complete success. No
reply had been received, but after Rizal’s return from his
Borneo trip the Spanish consul in Hongkong Page 175Page
176assured him that he would not be molested should he go
to Manila.

Proposed settlement in Borneo.
Rizal therefore made up his mind to visit his home once
more. He still cherished the plan of transferring those of his
relatives and friends who were homeless through the land
troubles, or discontented with their future in the Philippines,
to the district offered to him by the British North Borneo
Company. There, under the protection of the British flag,
but in their accustomed climate, with familiar surroundings
amid their own people, a New Kalamba would be

established. Filipinos would there have a chance to prove to
the world what they were capable of, and their free
condition would inevitably react on the neighboring
Philippines and help to bring about better government there.
Rizal had no intention of renouncing his Philippine
allegiance, for he always regretted the naturalization of his
countrymen abroad, considering it a loss to the country
which needed numbers to play the influential part he hoped
it would play in awakening Asia. All his arguments were for
British justice and “Equality before the Law,” for he
considered that political power was only a means of
securing and assuring fair treatment for all, and in itself of
no interest.
With such ideas he sailed for home, bearing the Spanish
consul’s passport. He left two letters in Hongkong with his
friend Doctor Marquez marked, “To be opened after my
death,” and their contents indicate that he was not
unmindful of how little regard Spain had had in his country
for her plighted honor.
One was to his beloved parents, brother and sisters, and
friends:
“The affection that I have ever professed for you suggests
this step, and time alone can tell whether or not it Page 177is
sensible. Their outcome decides things by results, but
whether that be favorable or unfavorable, it may always be
said that duty urged me, so if I die in doing it, it will not
matter.

“I realize how much suffering I have caused you, still I do
not regret what I have done. Rather, if I had to begin over
again, still I should do just the same, for it has been only
duty. Gladly do I go to expose myself to peril, not as any
expiation of misdeeds (for in this matter I believe myself
guiltless of any), but to complete my work and myself offer
the example of which I have always preached.
“A man ought to die for duty and his principles. I hold fast
to every idea which I have advanced as to the condition and
future of our country, and shall willingly die for it, and even
more willingly to procure for you justice and peace.
“With pleasure, then, I risk life to save so many innocent
persons—so many nieces and nephews, so many children of
friends, and children, too, of others who are not even
friends—who are suffering on my account. What am I? A
single man, practically without family, and sufficiently
undeceived as to life. I have had many disappointments and
the future before me is gloomy, and will be gloomy if light
does not illuminate it, the dawn of a better day for my
native land. On the other hand, there are many individuals,
filled with hope and ambition, who perhaps all might be
happy were I dead, and then I hope my enemies would be
satisfied and stop persecuting so many entirely innocent
people. To a certain extent their hatred is justifiable as to
myself, and my parents and relatives.
“Should fate go against me, you will all understand that I
shall die happy in the thought that my death will Page 178end

all your troubles. Return to our country and may you be
happy in it.
“Till the last moment of my life I shall be thinking of you
and wishing you all good fortune and happiness.”
*****
The other letter was directed “To the Filipinos,” and said:
“The step which I am taking, or rather am about to take, is
undoubtedly risky, and it is unnecessary to say that I have
considered it some time. I understand that almost every one
is opposed to it; but I know also that hardly anybody else
comprehends what is in my heart. I cannot live on seeing so
many suffer unjust persecutions on my account; I cannot
bear longer the sight of my sisters and their numerous
families treated like criminals. I prefer death and cheerfully
shall relinquish life to free so many innocent persons from
such unjust persecution.
“I appreciate that at present the future of our country
gravitates in some degree around me, that at my death many
will feel triumphant, and, in consequence, many are wishing
for my fall. But what of it? I hold duties of conscience
above all else, I have obligations to the families who suffer,
to my aged parents whose sighs strike me to the heart; I
know that I alone, only with my death, can make them
happy, returning them to their native land and to a peaceful
life at home. I am all my parents have, but our country has

many, many more sons who can take my place and even do
my work better.
“Besides I wish to show those who deny us patriotism that
we know how to die for duty and principles. What matters
death, if one dies for what one loves, for native land and
beings held dear?
“If I thought that I were the only resource for the policy of
progress in the Philippines and were I convinced that my
countrymen were going to make use of my services, Page
179perhaps I should hesitate about taking this step; but there
are still others who can take my place, who, too, can take
my place with advantage. Furthermore, there are perchance
those who hold me unneeded and my services are not
utilized, resulting that I am reduced to inactivity.
“Always have I loved our unhappy land, and I am sure that
I shall continue loving it till my latest moment, in case men
prove unjust to me. My career, my life, my happiness, all
have I sacrificed for love of it. Whatever my fate, I shall die
blessing it and longing for the dawn of its redemption.”
And then followed the note; “Make these letters public after
my death.”
Suspicion of the Spanish authorities was justified. The
consul’s cablegram notifying Governor-General Despujol.
that Rizal had fallen into their trap, sent the day of issuing
the “safe-conduct” or special passport, bears the same date
as the secret case filed against him in Manila, “for anti

religious and anti
patriotic agitation.” On
that same day the
deceitful Despujol was
confidentially
inquiring of his
executive secretary
whether it was true Page
180that Rizal had been
naturalized as a
German subject, and,
if so, what effect
would that have on the
governor-general’s
right to take executive Rizal’s passport, or “safe-conduct.”
action; that is, could he
deport one who had
the protection of a strong nation with the same disregard for
the forms of justice that he could a Filipino?

Facsimile of a part of Despujol’s private inquiry of
Executive Secretary de la Torre.
This inquiry is joined to an order to the local authorities in
the provinces near Manila instructing them to watch the
comings and goings of their prominent people Page 181during
the following weeks. The scheme resembled that which was
concocted prior to ’72, but Governor-General de la Torte
was honest in his reforms. Despujol may, or may not, have
been honest in other matters, but as concerns Rizal there is
no lack of proof of his perfidy. The confidential file relating
to this part of the case was forgotten in destroying and
removing secret papers when Manila passed into a
democratic conqueror’s hands, and now whoever wishes
may read, in the Bureau of Archives, documents which the
Conde de Caspe, to use a noble title for an ignoble man,

considered safely hidden. As with Page 182Weyler’s
contidential letter to the friar landlords, these discoveries
convict their writers of bad faith, with no possibility of
mistake.

Case secretly filed against Rizal.
This point in the reformed Spanish writer’s biography of
Rizal is made occasion for another of his treacherous
attacks upon the good name of his pretended hero. Just as in
the land troubles Retana held that legally Governor-General
Weyler was justified in disregarding an appeal pending in
the courts, so in this connection he declares: ”(Despujol)
unquestionably had been deceived by Rizal when, from
Hongkong, he offered to Despujol not to meddle in
politics.” That Rizal meddled in politics rests solely upon

Despujol’s word, and it will be seen later how little that is
worth; but, politics or no politics, Rizal’s fate was settled
before he ever came to Manila.
Rizal was
accompanied to
Manila by his
sister Lucia,
widow of that
brother-in-law who
had been denied
Christian burial
Luis de la Torre, Secretary to Despujol.
because of his
relationship to
Rizal. In the Basa home, among other waste papers, and for
that use, she had gathered up five copies of a recent
“proclamation,” entitled “Pobres Frailes” (Poor Friars), a
small sheet possibly two inches wide and five long. These,
crumpled up, were tucked into the case of the pillow which
Mrs. Hervosa used on board. Later, rolled up in her blankets
and bed mat, or petate, they went to the custom house along
with the other baggage, and of course were discovered in
the rigorous examination which the officers always made.
How strict Philippine customs searches were, Henry
Norman, an English writer of travels, explains Page 183by
remarking that Manila was the only port where he had ever
had his pockets picked officially. His visit was made at
about the time of which we are writing, and the object, he
says, was to keep out anti friar publications.

Rizal and his sister landed without difficulty, and he at once
went to the Oriente Hotel, then the best in town, for Rizal
always traveled and lived as became a member of a well-to-
do family. Next he waited on the Governor-General, with
whom he had a very brief interview, for it happened to be
on one of the numerous religious festivals, during which he
obtained favorable consideration for his deported sisters.
Several more interviews occurred in which the hopes first
given were realized, so that those of the family then
awaiting exile were pardoned and those already deported
were to be returned at an early date.
One night Rizal was the guest of honor at a dinner given by
the masters and wardens of the Masonic lodges of Manila,
and he was surprised and delighted at the progress the
institution had made in the Islands. Then he had another
task not so agreeable, for, while awaiting a delayed
appointment with the Governor-General, he with two others
ran up on the new railway to Tarlac. Ostensibly this was to
see the country, but it was not for a pleasure trip. They were
investigating the sales of Rizal’s books and trying to find
out what had become of the money received from them, for
while the author’s desire had been to place them at so low a
price as to be within the reach of even the poor, it was
reported that the sales had been few and at high prices, so
that copies were only read by the wealthy whose desire to
obtain the rare and much-discussed novels led them to pay
exorbitant figures for them.

Rizal’s party, consisting of the Secretary of one of the
lodges of Manila, and another Mason, a prominent school-
teacher, were under constant surveillance and a Page
184minute record of their every act is preserved in the
“reserved” files, now, of course, so only in name, as they
are no longer secret. Immediately after they left a house it
would be thoroughly searched and the occupants strictly
questioned. In spite of the precautions of the officials, Rizal
soon learned of this, and those whom they visited were
warned of what to expect. In one home so many forbidden
papers were on hand that Rizal delayed his journey till the
family completed their task of carrying them upstairs and
hiding them in the roof.
At another place he came across an instance of superstition
such as that which had caused him to cease his sleight-of-
hand exhibitions on his former return to the Islands. Their
host was a man of little education but great hospitality, and
the party were most pleasantly entertained. During the
conversation he spoke of Rizal, but did not seem to know
that his hero had come back to the Philippines. His remarks
drifted into the wildest superstition, and, after asserting that
Rizal bore a charmed life, he startled his audience by saying
that if the author of “Noli Me Tangere” cared to do so, he
could be with them at that very instant. At first the three
thought themselves discovered by their host, but when Rizal
made himself known, the old man proved that he had had
no suspicion of his guest’s identity, for he promptly became
busy preparing his home for the search which he realized
would shortly follow. On another occasion their host was a

stranger whom Rizal treated for a temporary illness, leaving
a prescription to be filled at the drug store. The name signed
to the paper was a revelation, but the first result was activity
in cleaning house.
No fact is more significant of the utter rottenness of the
Spanish rule than the unanimity of the people in their
discontent. Only a few persons at first were in open
opposition, but books, pamphlets and circulars were eagerly
Page 185sought, read and preserved, with the knowledge
generally, of the whole family, despite the danger of
possessing them. At times, as in the case of Rizal’s novels,
an entire neighborhood was in the secret; the book was
buried in a garden and dug up to be read from at a gathering
of the older men, for which a dance gave pretext. Informers
were so rare that the possibility of treachery among
themselves was hardly reckoned in the risk.
The authorities were constantly searching dwellings, often
entire neighborhoods, and with a thoroughness which
entirely disregarded the possibility of damaging an innocent
person’s property. These “domiciliary registrations” were,
of course, supposed to be unexpected, but in the later
Spanish days the intended victims usually had warning from
some employee in the office where it was planned, or from
some domestic of the official in charge; very often,
however, the warning was so short as to give only time for a
hasty destruction of incriminating documents and did not
permit of their being transferred to other hiding places.
Thus large losses were incurred, and to these must be added

damages from dampness when a hole in the ground, the
inside of a post, or cementing up in the wall furnished the
means of concealment. Fires, too, were frequent, and such
events attracted so much attention that it was scarcely safe
to attempt to save anything of an incriminating nature.
Six years of war conditions did their part toward destroying
what little had escaped, and from these explanations the
reader may understand how it comes that the tangled story
of Spain’s last half century here presents an historical
problem more puzzling than that of much more remote
times in more favored lands.
It seems almost providential that the published statement of
the Governor-General can be checked not only by an
account which Rizal secretly sent to friends, but Page 186also
by the candid memoranda contained in the untruthful
executive’s own secret folios. While some unessential
details of Rizal’s career are in doubt, not a point vital to
establishing his good name lacks proof that his character
was exemplary and that he is worthy of the hero-worship
which has come to him.
After Rizal’s return to Manila from his railway trip he had
the promised interview with the Governor-General. At their
previous meetings the discussions had been quite informal.
Rizal, in complimenting the General upon his inauguration
of reforms, mentioned that the Philippine system of having
no restraint whatever upon the chief executive had at least
the advantage that a well-disposed governor-general would

find no red-tape hindrances to his plans for the public
benefit. But Despujol professed to believe that the best of
men make mistakes and that a wise government would
establish safeguards against this human fallibility.
The final, and fatal, interview began with the Governor-
General asking Rizal if he still persisted in his plan for a
Filipino colony in British North Borneo; Despujol had
before remarked that with so much Philippine land lying
idle for want of cultivation it did not seem to him patriotic
to take labor needed at home away for the development of a
foreign land. Rizal’s former reply had dealt with the
difficulty the government was in respecting the land
troubles, since the tenants who had taken the old renters’
places now also must be considered, and he pointed out that
there was, besides, a bitterness between the parties which
could not easily be forgotten by either side. So this time he
merely remarked that he had found no reason for changing
his original views.
Hereupon the General took from his desk the five little
sheets of the “Poor Friars” handbill, which he said had been
found in the roll of bedding sent with Rizal’s baggage Page
187to the custom house, and asked whose they could be.
Rizal answered that of course the General knew that the
bedding belonged to his sister Lucia, but she was no fool
and would not have secreted in a place where they were
certain to be found five little papers which, hidden within
her camisa or placed in her stocking, would have been
absolutely sure to come in unnoticed.

Rizal, neither then nor later, knew the real truth, which was
that these papers were gathered up at random and without
any knowledge of their contents. If it was a crime to have
lived in a house where such seditious printed matter was
common, then Rizal, who had openly visited Basa’s home,
was guilty before ever the handbills were found. But no
reasonable person would believe another rational being
could be so careless of consequences as to bring in openly
such dangerous material.
The very title was in sarcastic allusion to the inconsistency
of a religious order being an immensely wealthy
organization, while its individual members were vowed to
poverty. News, published everywhere except in the
Philippines, of losses sustained in outside commercial
enterprises running into the millions, was made the text for
showing how money, professedly raised in the Philippines
for charities, was not so used and was invested abroad in
fear of that day of reckoning when tyranny would be
overthrown in anarchy and property would be insecure. The
belief of the pious Filipinos, fostered by their religious
exploiters, that the Pope would suffer great hardship if their
share of “Peter’s pence” was not prompt and full, was
contrasted with another newspaper story of a rich dowry
given to a favorite niece by a former Pope, but that in no
way taught the truth that the Head of the Church was not
put to bodily discomfort whenever a poor Filipino failed to
come forward with his penny.

Page 188Despujol managed to work himself into something
like a passion over this alleged disrespect to the Pope, and
ordered Rizal to be taken as a prisoner to Fort Santiago by
the nephew who acted as his aide.
Like most facts, this version runs a middle course between
the extreme stories which have been current. Like circulars
may have been printed at the “Asilo de Malabon,” as has
been asserted; these certainly came from Hongkong and
were not introduced by any archbishop’s nephew on duty at
the custom house, as another tale suggests. On the other
hand, the circular was the merest pretext, and Despujol did
not act in good faith, as many claim that he did.
It may be of interest to reprint the handbill from a facsimile
of an original copy:

Pobres Frailes!
Acaba de suspender sus pages un Banco, acaba de quebrarse el New Oriental.
Grandes pédidas en la India, en la isla Mauricio al sur de Africa, ciclónes y
tempestades acabaron con su podeíro, tragnádose más de 36,000,000 de pesos.
Estos treinta y seis millones representaban las esperanzas, las economías, el
bienestar y el porvenir de numerosos individuos y familias.
Entre los que más han sufrido podemos contar á la Rvda. Corporacion de los P.
P. Dominicos, que pierden en esta quiebra muchos cientos de miles. No se sabe
la cuenta exacta porque tanto dinero se les envía de aquí y tantos depósitos
hacen, que se neçesitarlan muchos contadores para calcular el immense caudal
de que disponen.
Pero, no se aflijan los amigos ni triunfen los enemigos de los santos monjes que
profesan vote de pobreza.

A unos y otros les diremos que pueden estar tranquilos. La Corporacion tiene
aun muchos millones depositados en los Bancos de Hongkong, y aunque todos
quebrasen, y aunque se derrumbasen sus miles de casas de alquiler, siempre
quedarian sus curates y Page 189haciendas, les quedarían los filipinos
dispuestos siempre á ayunar para darles una limosna. ¿Qué son cuatrocientos ó
quinientos mil? Que se tomen la molestia de recorrer los pueblos y pedir
limosna y se resarcirán de esa pérdida. Hace un año que, por la mala
administracion de los cardenales, el Papa perdió 14,000,000 del dinero de San
Pedro; el Papa, para cubrir el déficit, acude á nosotros y nosotros recogemos de
nuestros tampipis el último real, porque sabemos que el Papa tiene muchas
atenciones; hace cosa de cinco años casó á una sobrina suya dotándola de un
palacio y 300,000 francos ademas. Haced un esfuerzo pues, generosos filipinos,
y socorred á los dominicos igualmente!
Además, esos centanares de miles perdidos no son de ellos, segun dicen: ¿cómo
los iban à tener si tienen voto de pobreza? Hay que creerlos pues cuando, para
cubrirse, dicen que son de los huérfanos y de las viudas. Muy seguramente
pertencerían algunos á las viudas y á los huérfanos de Kalamba, y quién sabe si
á los desterrados maridos! y los manejan los virtuosos frailes sólo á título de
depositarios para devolverlos despues religiosamente con todos sus intereses
cuando llegue el día de rendir cuentas! Quién sabe? Quién mejor que ellos podía
encargarse de recoger los pocos haberes mientras las casas ardían, huían las
viudas y los huérfanos sin encontrar hospitalidad, pues se habia prohibido
darles albergue, mientras los hombres estaban presos ó perseguidos? ¿Quién
mejor que los dominicos para tener tanto valor, tanta audacia y tanta
humanidad?
Pero, ahora el diablo se ha llevado el dinero de los huérfanos y de las viudas, y
es de temer que se lleve tambien el resto, pues cuando el diablo la empieza la ha
de acabar. Tendría ese dinero mala procedencia?
Si asl sucediese, nosotros los recomendaríamos á los dominicos que dijesen con
Job: Desnudo salí del vientre de mi madre (España), y desnudo volveré allá; lo
dió el diablo, el diablo se lo llevó; bendito sea el nombre del Señor!
Fr. Jacinto.
Manila: Imprenta de los Amigos del Pais.

Page 190

Chapter IX

The Deportation to Dapitan

As soon as Rizal was lodged in his prison, a room in Fort
Santiago, the Governor-General began the composition of
one of the most extraordinary official documents ever
issued in this land where the strangest governmental acts
have abounded. It is apology, argument, and attack all in
one and was published in the Official Gazette, where it
occupied most of an entire issue. The effect of the righteous
anger it displays suffers somewhat when one knows how all
was planned from the day Rizal was decoyed from
Hongkong under the faithless safe-conduct. Another
enlightening feature is the copy of a later letter, preserved in
that invaluable secret file, wherein Despujol writes Rizal’s
custodian, as jailer, to allow the exile in no circumstances to
see this number of the Gazette or to know its contents, and
suggests several evasions to assist the subordinate’s power
of invention. It is certainly a strange indignation which fears
that its object shall learn the reason for wrath, nor is it a
creditable spectacle when one beholds the chief of a
government giving private lessons in lying.
A copy of the Gazette was sent to the Spanish Consul in
Hongkong, also a cablegram directing him to give it

publicity that “Spain’s good name might not suffer” in that
colony. By his blunder, not knowing that the Lusitania Club
was really a Portuguese Masonic lodge and full of Rizal’s
friends, a copy was sent there and a strong reply was called
forth. The friendly editor of the Hongkong Telegraph
devoted columns to the outrage by which a man whose
acquaintance in the scientific world reflected honor upon
his nation, was decoyed to what was intended to be his
death, exiled to “an unhealthful, savage Page 191Page 192spot,”
through “a plot of which the very Borgias would have been
ashamed.”

Regulations of La Liga Filipina in Rizal’s handwriting.
(Facsimile.)
The British Consul in Manila, too, mentioned unofficially to
Governor-General Despujol that it seemed a strange way of
showing Spain’s often professed friendship for Great
Britain thus to disregard the annoyance to the British colony
of North Borneo caused by making impossible an entirely

unexceptionable plan. Likewise, in much the same
respectfully remonstrant tone which the Great Powers are
wont to use in recalling to semi-savage states their
obligations to civilization, he pointed out how Spain’s
prestige as an advanced nation would suffer when the
educated world, in which Rizal was Spain’s best-known
representative, learned that the man whom they honored
had been trapped out of his security under the British flag
and sent into exile without the slightest form of trial.
Almost the last act of Rizal while at liberty was the
establishment of the “Liga Filipina,” a league or association
seeking to unite all Filipinos of good character for
concerted action toward the economic advancement of their
country, for a higher standard of manhood, and to assure
opportunities for education and development to talented
Filipino youth. Resistance to oppression by lawful means
was also urged, for Rizal believed that no one could fairly
complain of bad government until he had exhausted and
found unavailing all the legal resources provided for his
protection. This was another expression of his constant
teaching that slaves, those who toadied to power, and men
without self-respect made possible and fostered tyranny,
abuses and disregard of the rights of others.

The Calle Ilaya monument to Rizal and his associates of La
Liga Filipina.
The character test was also a step forward, for the
profession of patriotism has often been made to cloak moral
shortcomings in the Philippines as well as elsewhere. Page
193Rizal urged that those who would offer themselves on the
altar of their fatherland must conform to the standard of old,
and, like the sacrificial lamb, be spotless and without
blemish. Therefore, no one who had justifiably Page 194been

prosecuted for any infamous crime was eligible to
membership in the new organization.
The plan, suggested by a Spanish Masonic society called C.
Kadosch y Cia., originated with José Maria Basa, at whose
instance Rizal drafted the constitution and regulations.
Possibly all the members were Freemasons of the educated
and better-to-do class, and most of them adhered to the
doctrine that peaceably obtained reforms and progress by
education are surest and best.
Rizal’s arrest discouraged those of this higher faith, for the
peaceable policy seemed hopeless, while the radical
element, freed from Rizal’s restraining influence and
deeming the time for action come, formed a new and
revolutionary society which preached force of arms as the
only argument left to them, and sought its membership
among the less-enlightened and poorer class.
Their inspiration was Andrés Bonifacio, a shipping clerk for
a foreign firm, who had read and re-read accounts of the
French Revolution till he had come to believe that blood
alone could wipe out the wrongs of a country. His
organization, The Sons of the Country, more commonly
called the Katipunan, was, however, far from being as
bloodthirsty as most Spanish accounts, and those of many
credulous writers who have got their ideas from them, have
asserted. To enlist others in their defense, those who knew
that they were the cause of dissatisfaction spread the report
that a race war was in progress and that the Katipuneros

were planning the massacre of all of the white race. It was a
sufficiently absurd statement, but it was made even more
ridiculous by its “proof,” for this was the discovery of an
apron with a severed head, a hand holding it by the hair and
another grasping the dagger which had done the bloody
work. This emblem, handed down from ancient days as an
object lesson of faithfulness even to death, has been Page
195known in many lands besides the Philippines, but only
here has it ever been considered anything but an ancient
symbol. As reasonably might the paintings of martyrdoms
in the convents be taken as evidence of evil intentions upon
the part of their occupants, but prejudice looks for pretexts
rather than reasons, and this served as well as any other for
the excesses of which the government in its frenzy of fear
was later guilty.
In talking of the Katipunan one must distinguish the first
society, limited in its membership, from the organization of
the days of the Aguinaldo “republic,” so called, when
throughout the Tagalog provinces, and in the chief towns of
other provinces as well, adherence to the revolutionary
government entailed membership in the revolutionary
society. And neither of these two Katipunans bore any
relation, except in name and emblems, to the robber bands
whose valor was displayed after the war had ceased and
whose patriotism consisted in wronging and robbing their
own defenseless countrymen and countrywomen, while
carefully avoiding encounters with any able to defend
themselves.

Rizal’s arrest had put an end to all hope of progress under
Governor-General Despujol. It had left the political field in
possession of those countrymen who had not been in
sympathy with his campaign of education. It had caused the
succession of the revolutionary Katipunan to the economic
Liga Filipina, with talk of independence supplanting Rizal’s
ambition for the return of the Philippines to their former
status under the Constitution of Cadiz. But the victim of the
arrest was at peace as he had not been in years. The
sacrifice for country and for family had been made, but it
was not to cost him life, and he was human enough to wish
to live. A visitor’s room in the Fort and books from the
military library made his detention comfortable, for he did
not worry Page 196about the Spanish sentries without his door
who were placed there under orders to shoot anyone who
might attempt to signal to him from the plaza.
One night the Governor-General’s nephew-aide came again
to the Fort and Rizal embarked on the steamer which was to
take him to his place of exile, but closely as he was guarded
he risked dropping a note which a Filipino found and took,
as it directed, to Mrs. Rizal’s cousin, Vicenta Leyba, who
lived in Calle José, Trozo. Thus the family were advised of
his departure; this incident shows Rizal’s perfect confidence
in his countrymen and the extent to which it was justified;
he could risk a chance finder to take so dangerous a letter to
its address.
On the steamer he occupied an officer’s cabin and also
found a Filipino quartermaster, of whom he requested a life

preserver for his stateroom; evidently he was not entirely
confident that there were no hostile designs against him.
Accidents had rid the Philippines of troublesome persons
before his time, and he was determined that if he sacrificed
his life for his country, it should be openly. He realized that
the tree of Liberty is often watered with the blood of secret
as well as open martyrs.
The same boat carried some soldier prisoners, one of whom
was to be executed in Mindanao, and their case was not
particularly creditable to Spanish ideas of justice. A Spanish
officer had dishonorably interfered with the domestic
relations of a sergeant, also Spanish, and the aggrieved
party had inflicted punishment upon his superior, with the
help of some other soldiers. For allowing himself to be
punished, not for his own disgraceful act, the officer was
dismissed from the service, but the sergeant was to go to the
scene of his alleged “crime,” there to suffer death, while his
companions who had assisted him in protecting their homes
were to be witnesses of this “justice” and then to be
imprisoned.
Page 197After an uneventful trip the steamer reached Dapitan,
in the northeast of the large island of Mindanao, on a dark
and rainy evening. The officer in charge of the expedition
took Doctor Rizal ashore with some papers relating to him
and delivered all to the commandant, Ricardo Carnicero.
The receipt taken was briefed “One countryman and two
packages.” At the same time learned men in Europe were
beginning to hear of this outrage worthy of the Dark Ages

and were remarking that Spain had stopped the work of the
man who was practically her only representative in modern
science, for the Castilian language has not been the medium
through which any considerable additions have been made
to the world’s store of scientific knowledge.
Rizal was to reside either with the commandant or with the
Jesuit parish priest, if the latter would take him into the
convento. But while the exile had learned with pleasure that
he was to meet priests who were refined and learned, as
well as associated with his happier school days, he did not
know that these priests were planning to restore him to his
childhood faith and had mapped out a plan of action which
should first make him feel his loneliness. So he was denied
residence with the priest unless he would declare himself
genuinely in sympathy with Spain.
On his previous brief visit to the Islands he had been
repelled from the Ateneo with the statement that till he
ceased to be anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish he would not be
welcome. Padre Faura, the famous meteorologist, was his
former instructor and Rizal was his favorite pupil; he had
tearfully predicted that the young man would come to the
scaffold at last unless he mended his ways. But Rizal,
confident in the clearness of his own conscience, went out
cheerfully, and when the porter tried to bring back the
memory of his childhood piety by reminding him of the
image of the Sacred Heart which Page 198he had carved years
before, Rizal answered, “Other times, other customs,
Brother. I do not believe that way any more.”

So Rizal, a good Catholic, was compelled to board with the
commandant instead of with the priest because he was
unwilling to make hypocritical professions of admiration
for Spain. The commandant and Rizal soon became good
friends, but in order to retain his position Carnicero had to
write to the Governor-General in a different strain.
The correspondence tells the facts in the main, but of course
they are colored throughout to conform to Despujol’s
character. The commandant is always represented as
deceiving his prisoner and gaining his confidence only to
betray him, but Rizal seems never to have experienced
anything but straightforward dealing.
Rizal’s earliest letter from Dapitan speaks almost
enthusiastically of the place, describing the climate as
exceptional for the tropics, his situation as agreeable, and
saying that he could be quite content if his family and his
books were there.
Shortly after occurred the anniversary of Carnicero’s arrival
in the town, and Rizal celebrated the event with a Spanish
poem reciting the improvements made since his coming,
written in the style of the Malay loa, and as though it were
by the children of Dapitan.
Next Rizal acquired a piece of property at Talisay, a little
bay close to Dapitan, and at once became interested in his
farm. Soon he built a house and moved into it, gathering a
number of boy assistants about him, and before long he had
a school. A hospital also was put up for his patients and

these in time became a source of revenue, as people from a
distance came to the oculist for treatment and paid liberally.

Three new Species discovered by Rizal and named after
him.
One five-hundred-peso fee from a rich Englishman was Page
199devoted by Rizal to lighting the town, and the
community benefited in this way by his charity in addition
to the free treatment given its poor. Page 200

Specimens collected by Rizal and Father Sanchez, now in
the Jesuit Museum.
The little settlement at Talisay kept growing and those who
lived there were constantly improving it. When Father
Obach, the Jesuit priest, fell through the bamboo stairway in
the principal house, Rizal and his boys burned shells, made
mortar, and soon built a fine stone stairway. They also did
another piece of masonry work in the Page 201shape of a dam
for storing water that was piped to the houses and poultry
yard; the overflow from the dam was made to fill a
swimming tank.

The mother’s revenge. Statuette modelled by Rizal in 1894.
The school, including the house servants, numbered about
twenty and was taught without books by Rizal, who
conducted his recitations from a hammock. Considerable
importance was given to mathematics, and in languages
English was taught as well as Spanish, the entire waking
period being devoted to the language allotted for the day,
and whoever so far forgot as to utter a word in any other
tongue was punished by having to wear a rattan handcuff.
The use and meaning of this modern police device had to be
explained to the boys, for Spain still tied her prisoners with
rope.
Nature study consisted in helping the
Doctor gather specimens of flowers,
shells, insects and reptiles which
were prepared and shipped to
German museums. Rizal was paid for
these specimens by scientific books
and material. The director of the
Royal Zoölogical and
Anthropological Museum in Dresden,
Saxony, Doctor Karl von Heller, was Father Sanchez, S. J.
a great friend and admirer of Doctor
Rizal. Doctor Heller’s father was
tutor to the late King Alfonso XII and had many friends at
the Court of Spain. Evidently Doctor Heller and other of his
European friends did not consider Rizal a Spanish

insurrectionary, but treated him rather as a reformer seeking
progress by peaceful means.

Facsimile of Rizal’s drawings of fishes caught at Dapitan.
Doctor Rizal remunerated his pupils’ work with gifts Page
202Page 203of clothing, books and other useful remembrances.
Sometimes the rewards were cartidges, and those who had
accumulated enough were permitted to accompany him in

his hunting expeditions. The dignity of labor was practically
inculcated by requiring everyone to make himself useful,
and this was really the first school of the type, combining
the use of English, nature study and industrial instruction.

Plan of the waterworks for Dapitan constructed by Dr. Rizal
and the Jesuit lay brother Juan Costa. Rizal’s name was
omitted for political reasons.
On one occasion in the year 1894 some of his schoolboys
secretly went into the town in a banca; a puppy which tried
to follow them was eaten by a crocodile. Rizal tired to
impress the evil effects of disobedience upon the youngsters
by Page 204pointing out to them the sorrow which the
mother-dog felt at the loss of her young one, and
emphasized the lesson by modeling a statuette called “The
Mother’s Revenge,” wherein she is represented, in revenge,
as devouring the cayman. It is said to be a good likeness of
the animal which was Doctor Rizal’s favorite companion in
his many pedestrian excursions around Dapitan.

Father Francisco Sanchez, Rizal’s instructor in rhetoric in
the Ateneo, made a long visit to Dapitan and brought with
him some surveyor’s instruments, which his former pupil
was delighted to assist him in using. Together they ran the
levels for a water system for the the town, which was later,
with the aid of the lay Jesuit, Brother Tildot, carried to
completion. This same water system is now being restored
and enlarged with artesian wells by the present insular,
provincial and municipal governments jointly, as part of the
memorial to Rizal in this place of his exile.

Jewelry of earliest Moro converts found by Father
Sanchez and Rizal.

A visit to a not distant mountain and some digging in a spot
supposed by the people of the region to be haunted brought
to light curious relics of the first Christian converts among
the early Moros.
The state of his mind at about this period of his career is
indicated by the verses written in his home in Talisay,
entitled “My Retreat,” of which the following translation

has been made by Mr. Charles Derbyshire. The scene that
inspired this poem has been converted by the government
into a public park to the memory of Rizal. Page 205

Sketch by Rizal of the hill and excavations where the
jewelry was found.
Page 206

My Retreat

By the spreading beach where the sands are soft
and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green,
I have built my hut in the pleasant grove’s
confine;
From the forest seeking peace and a calmness
divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my
sorrow keen.

Its roof the frail palm-leaf and its floor the cane,
Its beams and posts of the unhewn wood;
Little there is of value in this hut so plain,
And better by far in the lap of the mount to
have lain,
By the song and the murmur of the high sea’s
flood.

A purling brook from the woodland glade
Drops down o’er the stones and around it
sweeps,
Whence a fresh stream is drawn by the rough
cane’s aid;
That in the still night its murmur has made,
And in the day’s heat a crystal fountain leaps.

When the sky is serene how gently it flows,
And its zither unseen ceaselessly plays;
But when the rains fall a torrent it goes
Boiling and foaming through the rocky close,
Roaring uncheck’d to the sea’s wide ways.

The howl of the dog and the song of the bird,
And only the kalao’s hoarse call resound;
Nor is the voice of vain man to be heard,
My mind to harass or my steps to begird;
The woodlands alone and the sea wrap me
round.

The sea, ah, the sea! for me it is all,
As it massively sweeps from the worlds apart;
Its smile in the morn to my soul is a call,
And when in the even my fath seems to pall,
It breathes with its sadness an echo to my heart.

Page 207

By night an arcanum; when translucent it
glows,
All spangled over with its millions of lights,
And the bright sky above resplendent shows;
While the waves with their sighs tell of their

woes—
Tales that are lost as they roll to the heights.

They tell of the world when the first dawn
broke,
And the sunlight over their surface played;
When thousands of beings from nothingness
woke,
To people the depths and the heights to cloak,
Wherever its life-giving kiss was laid.

But when in the night the wild winds awake,
And the waves in their fury begin to leap,
Through the air rush the cries that my mind
shake;
Voices that pray, songs and moans that partake
Of laments from the souls sunk down in the
deep.

Then from their heights the mountains groan,
And the trees shiver tremulous from great unto
least;
The groves rustle plaintive and the herds utter
moan,
For they say that the ghosts of the folk that are
gone

Are calling them down to their death’s merry
feast.

In terror and confusion whispers the night,
While blue and green flames flit over the deep;
But calm reigns again with the morning’s light,
And soon the bold fisherman comes into sight,
As his bark rushes on and the waves sink to
sleep.

So onward glide the days in my lonely abode;
Driven forth from the world where once I was
known,
I muse o’er the fate upon me bestow’d;
A fragment forgotten that the moss will corrode,
To hide from mankind the world in me shown.

Page 208

I live in the thought of the lov’d ones left,
And oft their names to my mind are borne;
Some have forsaken me and some by death are
reft;
But now ’tis all one, as through the past I drift,
That past which from me can never be torn.

For it is the friend that is with me always,
That ever in sorrow keeps the faith in my soul;
While through the still night it watches and
prays,
As here in my exile in my lone hut it stays,
To strengthen my faith when doubts o’er me
roll.

That faith I keep and I hope to see shine
The day when the Idea prevails over might;
When after the fray and death’s slow decline,
Some other voice sounds, far happier than
mine,
To raise the glad song of the triumph of right.

I see the sky glow, refulgent and clear,
As when it forced on me my first dear illusion;
I feel the same wind kiss my forehead sere,
And the fire is the same that is burning here
To stir up youth’s blood in boiling confusion.

I breathe here the winds that perchance have
pass’d
O’er the fields and the rivers of my own natal
shore;

And mayhap they will bring on the returning
blast
The sighs that lov’d being upon them has cast—
Messages sweet from the love I first bore.

To see the same moon, all silver’d as of yore,
I feel the sad thoughts within me arise;
The fond recollections of the troth we swore,
Of the field and the bower and the wide
seashore,
The blushes of joy, with the silence and sighs.

Page 209

A butterfly seeking the flowers and the light,
Of other lands dreaming, of vaster extent;
Scarce a youth, from home and love I took
flight,
To wander unheeding, free from doubt or
affright—
So in foreign lands were my brightest days
spent.

And when like a languishing bird I was fain
To the home of my fathers and my love to
return,
Of a sudden the fierce tempest roar’d amain;

So I saw my wings shatter’d and no home
remain,
My trust sold to others and wrecks round me
burn.

Hurl’d out into exile from the land I adore,
My future all dark and no refuge to seek;
My roseate dreams hover round me once more,
Sole treasures of all that life to me bore;
The faiths of youth that with sincerity speak.

But not as of old, full of life and of grace,
Do you hold out hopes of undying reward;
Sadder I find you; on your lov’d face,
Though still sincere, the pale lines trace
The marks of the faith it is yours to guard.

You offer now, dreams, my gloom to appease,
And the years of my youth again to disclose;
So I thank you, O storm, and heaven-born
breeze,
That you knew of the hour my wild flight to
ease,
To cast me back down to the soil whence I rose.

By the spreading beach where the sands are soft
and fine,
At the foot of the mount in its mantle of green;
I have found a home in the pleasant grove’s
confine,
In the shady woods, that peace and calmness
divine,
Rest for the weary brain and silence to my
sorrow keen.

Page 210

One of the lists of ethnographical material collected at
Dapitan by Rizal for the Dresden Museum.
Page 211The Church benefited by the presence of the exile,
for he drew the design for an elaborate curtain to adorn the
sanctuary at Easter time, and an artist Sister of Charity of
the school there did the oil painting under his direction. In
this line he must have been proficient, for once in Spain,
where he traveled out of his way to Saragossa to visit one of
his former teachers of the Ateneo, who he had heard was

there, Rizal offered his assistance in making some altar
paintings, and the Jesuit says that his skill and taste were
much appreciated.
T
h
e
h
o

The blind Mr. Taufer who had adopted Josefina Bracken.

me of the Sisters had a private chapel, for which the
teachers were preparing an image of the Virgin. For the sake
of economy the head only was procured from abroad, the
vestments concealing all the rest of the figure except the
feet, which rested upon a globe encircled by a snake in
whose mouth is an apple. The beauty of the countenance, a
real work of art, appealed to Rizal, and he modeled the
more prominent right foot, the apple and the serpent’s head,
while the artist Sister assisted by doing the minor work.
Both curtain and image, twenty years after their making, are
still in use.
On Sundays, Father Sanchez and Rizal conducted a school
for the people after mass. As part of this education it was
intended to make raised maps in the plaza of the chief city

of the eight principal islands of the Philippines, but on
account of Father Sanchez’s being called away, only one.
Mindanao, was completed; it has been Page 212restored with
a concrete sidewalk and balustrade about it, while the plaza
is a national park.
Among Rizal’s patients was a blind American named
Taufer, fairly well to do, who had been engineer of the
pumping plant of the Hongkong Fire Department. He was a
man of bravery, for he held a diploma for helping to rescue
five Spaniards from a shipwreck in Hongkong harbor. And
he was not less kind-hearted, for he and his wife, a
Portuguese, had adopted and brought up as their own the
infant daughter of a poor Irish woman who had died in
Hongkong, leaving a considerable family to her husband, a
corporal in the British Army on service there.
The little girl had been educated in
the Italian convent after the first Mrs.
Taufer died, and upon Mr. Taufer’s
remarriage, to another Portuguese,
the adopted daughter and Mr.
Taufer’s own child were equally
Rizal’s father-in-law. sharers of his home.
This girl had known Rizal, “the
Spanish doctor,” as he was called there, in Hongkong, and
persuaded her adopted father that possibly the Dapitan exile
might restore his lost eyesight. So with the two girls and his
wife, Mr. Taufer set out for Mindanao. At Manila his own

daughter fell in love with a Filipino engineer, a Mr. Sunico,
now owner of a foundry in Manila, and, marrying, remained
there. But the party reached Dapitan with its original
number, for they were joined by a good-looking mestiza
from the South who was unofficially connected with one of
the canons of the Manila cathedral.
Josefina Bracken, the Irish girl, was lively, capable and of
congenial temperament, and as there no longer existed any
reason against his marriage, for Rizal considered his Page
213political days over, they agreed to become husband and
wife.
The priest was asked to
perform the ceremony, but
said the Bishop of Cebu must
give his consent, and offered
to write him. Rizal at first
feared that some political
retraction would be asked,
but when assured that only
his religious beliefs would be
investigated, promptly
submitted a statement which
Father Obach says covered
about the same ground as the
earliest published of the Carving of Josefina Bracken.
retractions said to have been
made on the eve of Rizal’s
death.

This document, inclosed with the priest’s letter, was ready
for the mail when Rizal came hurrying in to reclaim it. The
marriage was off, for Mr. Taufer had taken his family and
gone to Manila.
The explanation of this sudden departure was that, after the
blind man had been told of the impossibility of anything
being done for his eyes, he was informed of the proposed
marriage. The trip had already cost him one daughter, he
had found that his blindness was incurable, and now his
only remaining daughter, who had for seventeen years been
like his own child, was planning to leave him. He would
have to return to Hongkong hopeless Page 214and
accompanied only by a wife he had never seen, one who
really was merely a servant. In his despair he said he had
nothing to live for, and, seizing his razor, would have ended
his life had not Rizal seized him just in time and held him,
with the firm grasp his athletic training had given him, till
the commandant came and calmed the excited blind man.

Josefina Bracken’s baptismal certificate proving her Irish
parentage.
It resulted in Josefina returning to Manila with him, but
after a while Mr Taufer listened to reason and she went back
to Dapitan, after a short stay in Manila with Rizal’s family,
to whom she had carried his letter of introduction, taking
considerable housekeeping furniture with her.
Further consideration changed Rizal’s opinion as to
marriage, possibly because the second time the priest may
not have been so liberal in his requirements. The mother,
too, seems to have suggested that as Spanish law had
established civil marriage in the Philippines, and as the
local government had not provided any way for people Page
215to avail themselves of the right, because the governor-
general had pigeon-holed the royal decree, it would be less
sinful for the two to consider themselves civilly married
than for Rizal to do violence to his conscience by making
any sort of political retraction. Any marriage so bought
would be just as little a sacrament as an absolutely civil
marriage, and the latter was free from hypocrisy.

Josefina Bracken, afterwards Mrs. José Rizal—from a
photograph.
So as man and wife Rizal and Josefina lived together Page
216in Talisay. Father Obach sought to prejudice public
feeling in the town against the exile for the “scandal,”
though other scandals happenings with less reason were
going on unrebuked. The pages of “Dapitan”, which some
have considered to be the first chapter of an unfinished
novel, may reasonably be considered no more than Rizal’s
rejoinder to Father Obach, written in sarcastic vein and
primarily for Carnicero’s amusement, unless some date of
writing earlier than this should hereafter be found for them.

Josefina was bright, vivacious, and a welcome addition to
the little colony at Talisay, but at times Rizal had misgivings
as to how it came that this foreigner should be permitted by
a suspicious and absolute government to join him, when
Filipinos, over whom the authorities could have exercised
complete control, were kept away. Josefina’s frequent visits
to the convento once brought this suspicion to an open
declaration of his misgivings by Rizal, but two days of
weeping upon her part caused him to avoid the subject
thereafter. Could the exile have seen the confidential
correspondence in the secret archives the plan would have
been plain to him, for there it is suggested that his
impressionable character could best be reached through the
sufferings of his family, and that only his mother and sisters
should be allowed to visit him. Steps in this plot were the
gradual pardoning and returning of the members of his
family to their homes.
Josefina must remain a mystery to us as she was to Rizal.
While she was in a delicate condition Rizal played a prank
on her, harmless in itself, which startled her so that she
sprang forward and struck against an iron stand. Though it
was pure accident and Rizal was scarcely at fault, he
blamed himself for it, and his later devotion seems largely
to have been trying to make amends.
Page 217The “burial of the son of Rizal,” sometimes referred
to as occurring at Dapitan, has for its foundation the
consequences of this accident. A sketch hastily penciled in
one of his medical books depicts an unusual condition

apparent in the infant which, had it regularly made its
appearance in the world some months later, would have
been cherished by both parents; this loss was a great and
common grief which banished thereafter all distrust upon
his part and all occasion for it upon hers.
Rizal’s mother and several of his sisters, the latter changing
from time to time, had been present during this critical
period. Another operation had been performed upon Mrs.
Rizal’s eyes, but she was restive and disregarded the
ordinary precautions, and the son was in despair. A letter to
his brother-in-law, Manuel Hidalgo, who was inclined
toward medical studies, says, “I now realize the reason why
physicians are directed not to practice in their own
families.”
A story of his mother and Rizal, necessary to understand his
peculiar attitude toward her, may serve as the transition
from the hero’s sad (later) married experience to the real
romance of his life. Mrs. Rizal’s talents commanded her
son’s admiration, as her care for him demanded his
gratitude, but, despite the common opinion, he never had
that sense of companionship with her that he enjoyed with
his father. Mrs. Rizal was a strict disciplinarian and a
woman of unexceptionable character, but she arrogated to
herself an infallibility which at times was trying to those
about her, and she foretold bitter fates for those who dared
dispute her.

Just before José went abroad to study, while engaged to his
cousin, Leonora Rivera, Mrs. Rivera and her daughter
visited their relatives in Kalamba. Naturally the young man
wished the guests to have the best of everything; one day
when they visited a bathing place Page 218near by he used the
family’s newest carriage. Though this had not been
forbidden, his mother spoke rather sharply about it; José
ventured to remind her that guests were present and that it
would be better to discuss the matter in private. Angry
because one of her children ventured to dispute her, she
replied: “You are an undutiful son. You will never
accomplish anything which you undertake. All your plans
will result in failure.” These words could not be forgotten,
as succeeding events seemed to make their prophecy come
true, and there is pathos in one of Rizal’s letters in which he
reminds his mother that she had foretold his fate.
His thoughts of an early
marriage were
overruled because his
unmarried sisters did
not desire to have a
sister-in-law in their
home who would add to
the household cares but
Pencil sketch of Leonora by Rizal. was not trained to bear
her share of them, and
even Paciano, who was
in his favor, thought that his younger brother would mar his
career by marrying early.

So, with fervent promises and high hopes, Rizal had sailed
away to make the fortune which should allow him to marry
his cousin Leonora. She was constantly in his thoughts and
his long letters were mailed with regular frequency during
all his first years in Europe; but only a few of the earliest
ever reached her, and as few replies came into his hands,
though she was equally faithful as a correspondent.
Leonora’s mother had been told that it was for the good of
her daughter’s soul and in the interest of her Page
219happiness that she should not become the wife of a man
like Rizal, who was obnoxious to the Church and in
disfavor with the government. So, by advice, Mrs. Rivera
gradually withheld more and more of the correspondence
upon both sides, until finally it ceased. And she constantly
suggested to the unhappy girl that her youthful lover had
forgotten her amid the distractions and gayeties of Europe.
Then the same influence which had advised breaking off the
correspondence found a person whom the mother and others
joined in urging upon her as a husband, till at last, in the
belief that she owed obedience to her mother, she
reluctantly consented. Strangely like the proposed husband
of the Maria Clara of “Noli Me Tangere,” in which book
Rizal had prophetically pictured her, this husband was “one
whose children should rule ”—an English engineer whose
position had been found for him to make the match more
desirable. Their marriage took place, and when Rizal
returned to the Philippines she learned how she had been
deceived. Then she asked for the letters that had been

withheld, and when told that as a wife she might not keep
love letters from any but her husband, she pleaded that they
be burned and the ashes given her. This was done, and the
silver box with the blackened bits of paper upon her dresser
seemed to be a consolation during the few months of life
which she knew would remain to her.

Leonora Rivera. Rizal’s cousin and fiancée at the age of 15.

Another great disappointment to Rizal was the action of
Despujol when he first arrived in Dapitan, for he still
believed in the Governor-General’s good faith and thought
in that fertile but sparsely settled region he might plant his
“New Kalamba” without the objection that had been urged
against the British North Borneo project. All seemed to be
going on favorably for the assembling of his relatives and
neighbors in what then would be no Page 220Page 221longer
exile, when most insultingly, the Governor-General refused
the permission which Rizal had had reason to rely upon his
granting. The exile was reminded of his deportation and
taunted with trying to make himself a king. Though he did
not know it, this was part of the plan which was to break his
spirit, so that when he was touched with the sufferings of
his family he would yield to the influences of his youth and
make complete political retraction; thus would be removed
the most reasonable, and therefore the most formidable,
opponent of the unnatural conditions Philippines and of the
selfish interests which were profiting by them. But the
plotters failed in their plan; they had mistaken their man.

Letter to his nephew Mauricio Cruz written from Dapitan
by Rizal.

During all this time Rizal had repeated chances to escape,
and persons high in authority seem to have urged flight
upon him. Running away, however, seemed to him a
confession of guilt; the opportunities of doing so always
unsettled him, for each time the battle of self-sacrifice had
to be fought over again; but he remained firm in his
purpose. To meet death bravely is one thing; to seek it is
another and harder thing; but to refuse life and choose death
over and over again during many years is the rarest kind of
heroism.
Rizal used to make long trips, sometimes cruising for a
week in his explorations of the Mindanao coast, and some
of his friends proposed to charter a steamer in Singapore
and, passing near Dapitan, pick him up on one Page 222of
these trips. Another Philippine steamer going to Borneo
suggested taking him on board as a rescue at sea and then
landing him at their destination, where he would be free
from Spanish power. Either of these schemes would have
been feasible, but he refused both.
Plans, which materialized, to benefit the fishing industry by
improved nets imported from his Laguna home, and to find
a market for the abaka of Dapitan, were joined with the
introduction of American machinery, for which Rizal acted
as agent, among planters of neighboring islands. It was a
busy, useful life, and in the economic advancement of his

country the exile believed he was as patriotic as when he
was working politically.
Rizal personally had been fortunate, for in company with
the commandant and a Spaniard, originally deported for
political reasons from the Peninsula, he had gained one of
the richer prizes in the government lottery. These funds
came most opportunely, for the land troubles and
succeeding litigation had almost stripped the family of all
its possessions. The account of the first news in Dapitan of
the good fortune of the three is interestingly told in an
official report to the Governor-General from the
commandant. The official saw the infrequent mail steamer
arriving with flying bunting and at once imagined some
high authority was aboard; he hastened to the beach with a
band of music to assist in the welcome, but was agreeably
disappointed with the news of the luck which had befallen
his prisoner and himself.
Not all of Dapitan life was profitable and prosperous. Yet in
spite of this Rizal stayed in the town. This was pure self-
sacrifice, for he refused to make any effort for his own
release by invoking influences which could have brought
pressure to bear upon the Spanish home government. He
feared to act lest obstacles might be put in the way of the
reforms that were apparently making Page 223headway
through Despujol’s initiative, and was content to wait rather
than to jeopardize the prospects of others.

Ethnographical material collected by Rizal for the Royal
Zoölogical Museum in Dresden, Saxony.
A plan for his transfer to the North, in the Ilokano country,
had been deferred and had met with obstacles Page 224which
Rizal believed were placed in its way through some of his
own countrymen in the Peninsula who feared his influence
upon the revenue with which politics was furnishing them.
Another proposal was to appoint Rizal district health officer
for Dapitan, but this was merely a covert government bribe.
While the exile expressed his willingness to accept the

position, he did not make the “unequivocally Spanish”
professions that were needed to secure this appointment.
Yet the government could have been satisfied of Rizal’s
innocence of any treasonable designs against Spain’s
sovereignty in the Islands had it known how the exile had
declined an opportunity to head the movement which had
been initiated on the eve of his deportation. His name had
been used to gather the members together and his portrait
hung in each Katipunan lodge hall, but all this was without
Rizal’s consent or even his knowledge.
The members, who had been paying faithfully for four
years, felt that it was time that something besides collecting
money was done. Their restiveness and suspicions led
Andrés Bonifacio, its head, to resort to Rizal, feeling that a
word from the exile, who had religiously held aloof from all
politics since his deportation, would give the Katipunan
leaders more time to mature their plans. So he sent a
messenger to Dapitan, Pio Valenzuela, a doctor, who to
conceal his mission took with him a blind man. Thus the
doctor and his patient appeared as on a professional visit to
the exiled oculist. But though the interview was
successfully secured in this way, its results were far from
satisfactory.
Far from feeling grateful for the consideration for the
possible consequences to him which Valenzuela pretended
had prompted the visit, Rizal indignantly insisted that the
country came first. He cited the Spanish Page 225republics of

South America, with their alternating revolutions and
despotisms, as a warning against embarking on a change of
government for which the people were not prepared.
Education, he declared, was first necessary, and in his
opinion general enlightenment was the only road to
progress. Valenzuela cut short his trip, glad to escape
without anyone realizing that Rizal and he had quarreled.
Bonifacio called Rizal a coward when he heard his
emissary’s report, and enjoined Valenzuela to say nothing of
his trip. But the truth leaked out, and there was a falling
away in Katipunan membership.
Doctor Rizal’s own statement respecting the rebellion and
Valenzuela’s visit may fitly be quoted here:
“I had no notice at all of what was being planned until the
first or second of July, in 1896, when Pio Valenzuela came
to see me, saying that an uprising was being arranged. I told
him that it was absurd, etc., etc., and he answered me that
they could bear no more. I advised him that they should
have patience, etc., etc. He added then that he had been sent
because they had compassion on my life and that probably
it would compromise me. I replied that they should have
patience and that if anything happened to me I would then
prove my innocence. ‘Besides,’ said I, ‘don’t consider me,
but our country, which is the one that will suffer.’ I went on
to show how absurd was the movement.—This, later, Pio
Valenzuela testified.—He did not tell me that my name was

being used, neither did he suggest that I was its chief, or
anything of that sort.
“Those who testify that I am the chief (which I do not
know, nor do I know of having ever treated with them),
what proofs do they present of my having accepted this
chiefship or that I was in relations with them or with their
society? Either they have made use of my Page 226name for
their own purposes or they have been deceived by others
who have. Where is the chief who dictates no order and
makes no arrangement, who is not consulted in anything
about so important an enterprise until the last moment, and
then when he decides against it is disobeyed? Since the
seventh of July of 1892 I have entirely ceased political
activity. It seems some have wished to avail themselves of
my name for their own ends.”
This was Rizal’s second temptation to engage in politics,
the first having been a trap laid by his enemies. A man had
come to see Rizal in his earlier days in Dapitan, claiming to
be a relative and seeking letters to prominent Filipinos. The
deceit was too plain and Rizal denounced the envoy to the
commandant, whose investigations speedily disclosed the
source of the plot. Further prosecution, of course, ceased at
once.
The visit of some image vendors from Laguna who never
before had visited that region, and who seemed more intent
on escaping notice than interested in business, appeared

suspicious, but upon report of the Jesuits the matter was
investigated and nothing really suspicious was found.
Rizal’s charm of manner and attraction for every one he met
is best shown by his relations with the successive
commandants at Dapitan, all of whom, except Carnicero,
were naturally predisposed against him, but every one
became his friend and champion. One even asked relief on
the ground of this growing favorable impression upon his
part toward his prisoner.
At times there were rumors of Rizal’s speedy pardon, and
he would think of going regularly into scientific work,
collecting for those European museums which had made
him proposals that assured ample livelihood and congenial
work.
Then Doctor Blumentritt wrote to him of the ravages Page
227of disease among the Spanish soldiers in Cuba and the
scarcity of surgeons to attend them. Here was a labor
“eminently humanitarian,” to quote Rizal’s words of his
own profession, and it made so strong an appeal to him that,
through the new governor-general, for Despujol had been
replaced by Blanco, he volunteered his services. The
minister of war of that time, General Azcarraga, was
Philippine born. Blanco considered the time favorable for
granting Rizal’s petition and thus lifting the decree of
deportation without the embarrassment of having the
popular prisoner remain in the Islands.

The thought of resuming his travels evidently inspired the
following poem, which was written at about this time. The
translation is by Arthur P. Ferguson:

The Song of the Traveler

Like to a leaf that is fallen and withered,
Tossed by the tempest from pole unto pole;
Thus roams the pilgrim abroad without purpose,
Roams without love, without country or soul.

Following anxiously treacherous fortune,
Fortune which e’en as he grasps at it flees;
Vain though the hopes that his yearning is
seeking,
Yet does the pilgrim embark on the seas!

Ever impelled by invisible power,
Destined to roam from the East to the West;
Oft he remembers the faces of loved ones,
Dreams of the day when he, too, was at rest.

Chance may assign him a tomb on the desert,
Grant him a final asylum of peace;

Soon by the world and his country forgotten,
God rest his soul when his wanderings cease!

Page 228

Often the sorrowful pilgrim is envied,
Circling the globe like a sea-gull above;
Little, ah, little they know what a void
Saddens his soul by the absence of love.

Home may the pilgrim return in the future,
Back to his loved ones his footsteps he bends;
Naught will he find but the snow and the ruins,
Ashes of love and the tomb of his friends.

Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter.
Stranger thou art in the land of thy birth;
Others may sing of their love while rejoicing,
Thou once again must roam o’er the earth.

Pilgrim, begone! Nor return more hereafter,
Dry are the tears that a while for thee ran;
Pilgrim, begone! And forget thy affliction,
Loud laughs the world at the sorrows of man.
Page 229

Chapter X

“Consummatum Est”

Notice of the granting of his request came to Rizal just
when repeated disappointments had caused him to prepare
for staying in Dapitan. Immediately he disposed of his
salable possessions, including a Japanese tea set and large
mirror now among the Rizal relics preserved by the
government, and a piece of outlying land, the deed for
which is also among the Rizalana in the Philippines library.
Some half-finished busts were thrown into the pool behind
the dam. Despite the short notice all was ready for the trip
in time, and, attended by some of his schoolboys as well as
by Josefina and Rizal’s niece, the daughter of his youngest
sister, Soledad, whom Josefina wished to adopt, the party
set out for Manila.
The journey was not an uneventful one; at Dumaguete Rizal
was the guest of a Spanish judge at dinner; in Cebu he
operated successfully upon the eyes of a foreign merchant;
and in Iloilo the local newspaper made much of his
presence.
The steamer from Dapitan reached Manila a little too late
for the mail boat for Spain, and Rizal obtained permission
to await the next sailing on board the cruiser Castilla, in the

bay. Here he was treated like a guest and more than once
the Spanish captain invited members of Rizal’s family to be
his guests at dinner—Josefina with little Maria Luisa, the
niece and the schoolboys, for whom positions had been
obtained, in Manila.
The alleged uprising of the Katipunan occurred during this
time. A Tondo curate, with an eye to promotion, professed
to have discovered a gigantic conspiracy. Incited by him,
the lower class of Spaniards in Manila made demonstrations
against Blanco and tried to force that Page 230ordinarily
sensible and humane executive into bloodthirsty measures,
which should terrorize the Filipinos. Blanco had known of
the Katipunan but realized that so long as interested parties
were using it as a source of revenue, its activities would not
go much beyond speechmaking. The rabble was not so far-
seeing, and from high authorities came advice that the
country was in a fever and could only be saved by blood-
letting.
Wholesale arrests filled every possible place for prisoners in
Manila. The guilt of one suspect consisted in having visited
the American consul to secure the address of a New York
medical journal, and other charges were just as frivolous.
There was a reign of terror in Luzon and, to save
themselves, members of the Katipunan resorted to that open
warfare which, had Blanco’s prudent counsels been
regarded, would probably have been avoided.

While the excitement was at its height, with a number of
executions failing to satisfy the blood-hunger, Rizal sailed
for Spain, bearing letters of recommendation from Blanco.
These vouched for his exemplary conduct during his exile
and stated that he had in no way been implicated in the
conspiracies then disturbing the Islands.
The Spanish mail boat upon which Rizal finally sailed had
among its passengers a sick Jesuit, to whose care Rizal
devoted himself, and though most of the passengers were
openly hostile to one whom they supposed responsible for
the existing outbreak, his professional skill led several to
avail themselves of his services. These were given with a
deference to the ship’s doctor which made that official an
admirer and champion of his colleague.
Three only of the passengers, however, were really friendly
—one Juan Utor y Fernandez, a prominent Mason and
republican, another ex-official in the Philippines Page 231who
shared Utor’s liberal views, and a young man whose father
was republican.
But if Rizal’s chief adversaries were content that he should
go where he would not molest them or longer jeopardize
their interests, the rabble that had been excited by the hired
newspaper advocates was not so easily calmed. Every one
who felt that his picture had been painted among the lower
Spanish types portrayed in “Noli Me Tangere” was loud for
revenge. The clamor grew so great that it seemed possible

to take advantage of it to displace General Blanco, who was
not a convenient tool for the interests.
So his promotion was bought, it is said, to get one
Polavieja, a willing tool, in his place. As soon as this
scheme was arranged, a cablegram ordering Rizal’s arrest
was sent; it overtook the steamer at Suez. Thus as a prisoner
he completed his journey.
But this had not been entirely unforeseen, for when the
steamer reached Singapore, Rizal’s companion on board,
the Filipino millionaire Pedro P. Roxas, had deserted the
ship, urging the ex-exile to follow his example. Rizal
demurred, and said such flight would be considered
confession of guilt, but he was not fully satisfied in his
mind that he was safe. At each port of call his uncertainty as
to what course to pursue manifested itself, for though he
considered his duty to his country already done, and his life
now his own, he would do nothing that suggested an uneasy
conscience despite his lack of confidence in Spanish justice.
At first, not knowing the course of events in Manila, he
very naturally blamed Governor-General Blanco for bad
faith, and spoke rather harshly of him in a letter to Doctor
Blumentritt, an opinion which he changed later when the
truth was revealed to him in Manila.
Upon the arrival of the steamer in Barcelona the prisoner
Page 232was transferred to Montjuich Castle, a political
prison associated with many cruelties, there to await the
sailing that very day of the Philippine mail boat. The

Captain-General was the same Despujol who had decoyed
Rizal into the power of the Spaniards four years before. An
interesting interview of some hours’ duration took place
between the governor and the prisoner, in which the clear
conscience of the latter seems to have stirred some sense of
shame in the man who had so dishonorably deceived him.
He never heard of the effort of London friends to deliver
him at Singapore by means of habeas-corpus proceedings.
Mr. Regidor furnished the legal inspiration and Mr.
Baustead the funds for getting an opinion as to Rizal’s
status as a prisoner when in British waters, from Sir Edward
Clarke, ex-solicitor-general of Great Britain. Captain
Camus, a Filipino living in Singapore, was cabled to,
money was made available in the Chartered Bank of
Singapore, as Mr. Baustead’s father’s firm was in business
in that city, and a lawyer, now Sir Hugh Fort, K.C., of
London, was retained. Secretly, in order that the attempt, if
unsuccessful, might not jeopardize the prisoner, a petition
was presented to the Supreme Court of the Straits
Settlements reciting the facts that Doctor José Rizal,
according to the Philippine practice of punishing
Freemasons without trial, was being deprived of his liberty
without warrant of law upon a ship then within the
jurisdiction of the court.
According to Spanish law Rizal was being illegally held on
the Spanish mail steamer Colon, for the Constitution of
Spain forbade detention except on a judge’s order, but like
most Spanish laws the Constitution was not much respected

by Spanish officials. Rizal had never had a hearing before
any judge, nor had any charge yet been placed against him.
The writ of habeas corpus was justified, Page 233provided the
Colon were a merchant ship that would be subject to British
law when in British port, but the mail steamer that carried
Rizal also had on board Spanish soldiers and flew the royal
flag as if it were a national transport. No one was willing to
deny that this condition made the ship floating Spanish
territory, and the judge declined to issue the writ.

Cell in which Rizal was imprisoned, and dungeon where he
was incomunicado, Fort Santiago.
Rizal reached Manila on November 3 and was at once
transferred to Fort Santiago, at first being held in a dungeon
“incomunicado” and later occupying a small cell on the
ground floor. Its furnishings had to be supplied by himself
and they consisted of a small rattan table, a high-backed

chair, a steamer chair of the same material, and a cot of the
kind used by Spanish officers—Page 234canvas top and
collapsible frame which closed up lengthwise. His meals
were sent in by his family, being carried by one of his
former pupils at Dapitan, and such cooking or heating as
was necessary was done on an alcohol lamp which had been
presented to him in Paris by Mrs. Tavera.
An unsuccessful effort had been made earlier to get
evidence against Rizal by torturing his brother Paciano. For
hours the elder brother had been seated at a table in the
headquarters of the political police, a thumbscrew on one
hand and pen in the other, while before him was a
confession which would implicate José Rizal in the
Katipunan uprising. The paper remained unsigned, though
Paciano was hung up by the elbows till he was insensible,
and then cut down that the fall might revive him. Three
days of this maltreatment made him so ill that there was no
possibility of his signing anything, and he was carted home.
It would not be strictly accurate to say that at the close of
the nineteenth century the Spaniards of Manila were using
the same tortures that had made their name abhorrent in
Europe three centuries earlier, for there was some progress;
electricity was employed at times as an improved method of
causing anguish, and the thumbscrews were much more
neatly finished than those used by the Dons of the Dark
Ages.

Rizal did not approve of the rebellion and desired to issue a
manifesto to those of his countrymen who had been
deceived into believing that he was their leader. But the
proclamation was not politic, for it contained none of those
fulsomely flattering phrases which passed for patriotism in
the feverish days of 1896. The address was not allowed to
be made public but it was passed on to the prosecutor to
form another count in the indictment of José Rizal for not
esteeming Spanish civilization.
Page 235The following address to some Filipinos shows more
clearly and unmistakably than any words of mine exactly
what was the state of Rizal’s mind in this matter.

Countrymen:
On my return from Spain I learned that my name had been in use, among some
who were in arms, as a war-cry. The news came as a painful surprise, but,
believing it already closed, I kept silent over an incident which I considered
irremediable. Now I notice indications of the disturbances continuing and if any
still, in good or bad faith, are availing themselves of my name, to stop this abuse
and undeceive the unwary I hasten to address you these lines that the truth may
be known.
From the very beginning, when I first had notice of what was being planned, I
opposed it, fought it, and demonstrated its absolute impossibility. This is the
fact, and witnesses to my words are now living. I was convinced that the
scheme was utterly absurd, and, what was worse, would bring great suffering.
I did even more. When later, against my advice, the movement materialized, of
my own accord I offered not alone my good offices, but my very life, and even
my name, to be used in whatever way might seem best, toward stifling the
rebellion; for, convinced of the ills which it would bring, I considered myself
fortunate if, at any sacrifice, I could prevent such useless misfortunes. This
equally is of record. My countrymen, I have given proofs that I am one most
anxious for liberties for our country, and I am still desirous of them. But I place
as a prior condition the education of the people, that by means of instruction
and industry our country may have an individuality of its own and make itself
worthy of these liberties. I have recommended in my writings the study of the
civic virtues, without which there is no redemption. Page 236I have written
likewise (and I repeat my words) that reforms, to be beneficial, must come from
above, that those which come from below are irregularly gained and uncertain.
Holding these ideas, I cannot do less than condemn, and I do condemn this
uprising—as absurd, savage, and plotted behind my back—which dishonors us
Filipinos and discredits those who could plead our cause. I abhor its criminal
methods and disclaim all part in it, pitying from the bottom of my heart the
unwary who have been deceived.
Return, then, to your homes, and may God pardon those who have worked in
bad faith!
José Rizal.
Fort Santiago, December 15, 1896.

Cuartel de España, scene of Rizal’s military trial.
Finally a court-martial was convened for Rizal’s trial, in the
Cuartel de España. No trained counsel was allowed to
defend him, but a list of young army officers was presented
from which he might select a nominal defender. Among the
names was one which was familiar, Luis Taviel de Andrade,
and he proved to be the brother of Rizal’s companion during
his visit to the Philippines in Page 2371887–88. The young
man did his best and risked unpopularity in order to be loyal
to his client. His defense reads pitiably weak in these days
but it was risky then to say even so much.
The judge advocate in a ridiculously bombastic effusion
gave an alleged sketch of Rizal’s life which showed
ignorance of almost every material event, and then
formulated the first precise charge against the prisoner,
which was that he had founded an illegal society, alleging
that the Liga Filipina had for its sole object to commit the
crime of rebellion.
The second charge was that Rizal was responsible for the
existing rebellion, having caused it, bringing it on by his

unceasing labors. An aggravating
circumstance was found in the
prisoner’s being a native of the
Philippines.
The penalty of death was asked of the
court, and in the event of pardon being
granted by the crown, the prisoner
should at least remain under Luis T. de Andrade.
surveillance for the rest of his life and
pay as damages 20,000 pesos.
The arguments are so absurd, the bias of the court so
palpable, that it is not worth while to discuss them. The
parallel proceedings in the military trial and execution of
Francisco Ferret in Barcelona in 1909 caused worldwide
indignation, and the illegality of almost every step,
according to Spanish law, was shown in numerous articles
in the European and American press. Rizal’s case was even
more brazenly unfair, but Manila was too remote and the
news too carefully censored for the facts to become known.
Page 238The prisoner’s arms were tied, corded from elbow to
elbow behind his back, and thus he sat through the weary
trial while the public jeered him and clamored for his
condemnation as the bloodthirsty crowds jeered and
clamored in the French Reign of terror.
Then came the verdict and the prisoner was invited to
acknowledge the regularity of the proceedings in the

farcical trial by signing the record. To this Rizal demurred,
but after a vain protest, affixed his signature.
He was at once transferred to the Fort chapel, there to pass
the last twenty-four hours of his life in preparing for death.
The military chaplain offered his services, which were
courteously declined, but when the Jesuits came, those
instructors of his youth were eagerly welcomed.
Rizal’s trial had awakened great interest and accounts of
everything about the prisoner were cabled by eager
correspondents to the Madrid newspapers. One of the
newspaper men who visited Rizal in his cell mentions the
courtesy of his reception, and relates how the prisoner
played the host and insisted on showing his visitor those
attentions which Spanish politeness considers due to a
guest, saying that these must be permitted, for he was in his
own home. The interviewer found the prisoner perfectly
calm and natural, serious of course, but not at all
overwhelmed by the near prospect of death, and in
discussing his career Rizal displayed that dispassionate
attitude toward his own doings that was characteristic of
him. Almost as though speaking of a stranger he mentioned
that if Archbishop Nozaleda’s sane view had been taken and
“Noli Me Tangere” not preached against, he would not have
been in prison, and perhaps the rebellion would never have
occurred. It is easy for us to recognize that the author
referred to the misconception of his novel, which had arisen
from the publication of the censor’s Page 239extracts, which
consisted of whatever could be construed into coming under

one of the three headings of attacks on religion, attacks on
government, and reflections on Spanish character, without
the slightest regard to the context.
But the interviewer, quite honestly, reported Rizal to be
regretting his novel instead of regretting its
miscomprehension, and he seems to have been equally in
error in the way he mistook Rizal’s meaning about the
republicans in Spain having led him astray.
Rizal’s exact words are not given in the newspaper account,
but it is not likely that a man would make admissions in a
newspaper interview, which if made formally, would have
saved his life. Rizal’s memory has one safeguard against the
misrepresentations which the absence of any witnesses
favorable to him make possible regarding his last moments:
a political retraction would have prevented his execution,
and since the execution did take place, it is reasonable to
believe that Rizal died holding the views for which he had
expressed himself willing to suffer martyrdom.
Yet this view does not reflect upon the good faith of the
reporter. It is probable that the prisoner was calling attention
to the illogical result that, though he had disregarded the
advice of the radical Spaniards who urged him to violent
measures, his peaceable agitation had been misunderstood
and brought him to the same situation as though he had
actually headed a rebellion by arms. His slighting opinion
of his great novel was the view he had always held, for like
all men who do really great things, he was the reverse of a

braggart, and in his remark that he had attempted to do great
things without the capacity for gaining success, one
recognizes his remembrance of his mother’s angry prophecy
foretelling failure in all he undertook.
Page 240His family waited long outside the Governor-
General’s place to ask a pardon, but in vain; General
Polavieja had to pay the price of his appointment and
refused to see them.

Interior of the cell in which Rizal’s farewell verses were
written.

The mother and sisters, however, were permitted to say
farewell to Rizal in the chapel, under the eyes of the death-
watch. The prisoner had been given the unusual privilege of
not being tied, but he was not allowed to approach near his
relatives, really for fear that he might pass some writing to

them—the pretext was made that Rizal might thus obtain
the means for committing suicide.
To his sister Trinidad Rizal spoke of having nothing to give
her by way of remembrance except the alcohol cooking
lamp which he had been using, a gift, as he mentioned, from
Mrs. Tavera. Then he added quickly, in English, so that the
listening guard would not understand, “There is something
inside.”
The other events of Rizal’s last twenty-four hours, for he
went in to the chapel at seven in the morning of the day
preceding his execution, are perplexing. What purported to
be a detailed account was promptly published in Barcelona,
on Jesuit authority, but one must not forget that Spaniards
are not of the phlegmatic disposition which makes for
accuracy in minute matters and even when writing history
they are dramatically inclined. So while the truthfulness,
that is the intent to be fair, may not be questioned, it would
not be strange if those who wrote of Page 241what happened
in the chapel in Fort Santiago during Rizal’s last hours did
not escape entirely from the influence of the national
characteristics. In the main their narrative is to be accepted,
but the possibility of unconscious coloring should not be
disregarded.

Rizal’s wedding gift to his wife.
In substance it is alleged that Rizal greeted his old
instructors and other past acquaintances in a friendly way.
He asked for copies of the Gospels and the writings of
Thomas-à-Kempis, desired to be formally married to
Josefina, and asked to be allowed to confess. The Jesuits
responded that first it would be necessary to investigate Page
242how far his beliefs conformed to the Roman Catholic
teachings. Their catechizing convinced them that he was not
orthodox and a religious debate ensued in which Rizal, after
advancing all known arguments, was completely
vanquished. His marriage was made contingent upon his
signing a retraction of his published heresies.

The Archbishop had prepared a form which the Jesuits
believed Rizal would be little likely to sign, and they
secured permission to substitute a shorter one of their own
which included only the absolute essentials for
reconciliation with the Church, and avoided all political
references. They say that Rizal objected only to a disavowal
of Freemasonry, stating that in England, where he held his
membership, the Masonic institution was not hostile to the
Church. After some argument, he waived this point and
wrote out, at a Jesuit’s dictation, the needed retraction,
adding some words to strengthen it in parts, indicating his
Catholic education and that the act was of his own free will
and accord.
The prisoner, the priests, and all the Spanish officials
present knelt at the altar, at Rizal’s suggestion, while he
read his retraction aloud. Afterwards he put on a blue
scapular, kissed the image of the Sacred Heart he had
carved years before, heard mass as when a student in the
Ateneo, took communion, and read his à-Kempis or prayed
in the intervals. He took breakfast with the Spanish officers,
who now regarded him very differently. At six Josefina
entered and was married to him by Father Balanguer.
Now in this narrative there are some apparent discrepancies.
Mention is made of Rizal having in an access of devotion
signed in a devotionary all the acts of faith, and it is said
that this book was given to one of his sisters. His chapel
gifts to his family have been examined, but though there is a
book of devotion, “The Anchor of Page 243Faith,” it contains

no other signature than the presentation on a flyleaf. As to
the religious controversy: while in Dapitan Rizal carried on
with Father Pio Pi, the Jesuit superior, a lengthy discussion
involving the interchange of many letters, but he succeeded
in fairly maintaining his views, and these views would
hardly have caused him to be called Protestant in the
Roman Catholic churches of America. Then the theatrical
reading aloud of his retraction before the altar does not
conform to Rizal’s known character. As to the anti-Masonic
arguments, these appear to be from a work by Monsignor
Dupanloup and therefore were not new to Rizal;
furthermore, the book was in his own library.
Again, it seems strange that Rizal should have asserted that
his Masonic membership was in London when in visiting
St. John’s Lodge, Scotch Constitution, in Hongkong in
November of 1891, since which date he had not been in
London, he registered as from “Temple du honneur de les
amis français,” an old-established Paris lodge.
Also the sister Lucia, who was said to have been a witness
of the marriage, is not positive that it occurred, having only
seen the priest at the altar in his vestments. The record of
the marriage has been stated to be in the Manila Cathedral,
but it is not there, and as the Jesuit in officiating would have
been representing the military chaplain, the entry should
have been in the Fort register, now in Madrid. Rizal’s
burial, too, does not indicate that he died in the faith, yet it
with the marriage has been used as an argument for proving
that the retraction must have been made.

The retraction itself appears in two versions, with slight
differences. No one outside the Spanish faction has ever
seen the original, though the family nearly got into trouble
by their persistence in trying to get sight of it after its first
publication.
Page 244The foregoing might suggest some disbelief, but in
fact they are only proofs of the remarks already made about
the Spanish carelessness in details and liking for the
dramatic.
The writer believes Rizal made a retraction, was married
canonically, and was given what was intended to be
Christian burial.
The grounds for this belief rest upon the fact that he seems
never to have been estranged in faith from the Roman
Catholic Church, but he objected only to certain political
and mercenary abuses. The first retraction is written in his
style and it certainly contains nothing he could not have
signed in Dapitan. In fact, Father Obach says that when he
wanted to marry Josefina on her first arrival there, Rizal
prepared a practically similar statement. Possibly the report
of that priest aided in outlining the draft which the Jesuits
substituted for the Archbishop’s form. There is no mention
of evasions or mental reservations and Rizal’s renunciation
of Masonry might have been qualified by the quibble that it
was “the Masonry which was an enemy of the Church” that
he was renouncing. Then since his association (not

affiliation) had been with Masons not hostile to religion, he
was not abandoning these.
The possibility of this line of thought having suggested
itself to him appears in his evasions on the witness-stand at
his trial. Though he answered with absolute frankness
whatever concerned himself and in everyday life was
almost quixotically truthful, when cross-examined about
others who would be jeopardized by admitting his
acquaintance with them, he used the subterfuge of the
symbolic names of his Masonic acquaintances. Thus he
would say, “I know no one by that name,” since care was
always taken to employ the symbolic names in
introductions and conversations. Page 245

A pamphlet bearing Rizal’s symbolic name in Masonry,
“Dimas Alang.”
Rizal’s own symbolic name was “Dimas Alang”—Tagalog
for “Noli Me Tangere”—and his nom de plume in some of
his controversial publications. The use of that name by one
of his companions on the railroad trip to Tarlac entirely
mystified a station master, as appears in the secret report of
the espionage of that trip, which just preceded his
deportation to Dapitan. Another Page 246possible explanation
is that, since Freemasonry professes not to disturb the duties
which its members owe to God, their country or their
families, he may have considered himself as a good Mason

under obligation to do whatever was demanded by these
superior interests, all three of which were at this time
involved.
The argument that it was his pride that restrained him
suggested to Rizal the possibility of his being unconsciously
under an influence which during his whole life he had been
combating, and he may have considered that his duty
toward God required the sacrifice of this pride.
For his country his sacrifice would have been blemished
were any religious stigma to attach to it. He himself had
always been careful of his own good name, and as we have
said elsewhere, he told his companions that in their
country’s cause whatever they offered on the altars of
patriotism must be as spotless as the sacrificial lambs of
Levitical law.
Furthermore, his work for a tranquil future for his family
would be unfulfilled were he to die outside the Church.
Josefina’s anomalous status, justifiable when all the facts
were known, would be sure to bring criticism upon her
unless corrected by the better defined position of a wife by
a church marriage. Then the aged parents and the numerous
children of his sisters would by his act be saved the scandal
that in a country so mediævally pious as the Philippines
would come from having their relative die “an unrepentant
heretic.”
Rizal had received from the Jesuits, while in prison, several
religious books and pictures, which he used as

remembrances for members of his family, writing brief
dedications upon them. Then he said good-by to Josefina,
asking in a low voice some question to which she answered
in English, “Yes, yes,” and aloud inquiring how she would
be able to gain a living, since all his property had Page
247been seized by the Spanish government to satisfy the
20,000 pesetas costs which was included in the sentence of
death against him. Her reply was that she could earn money
giving lessons in English.
The journey from the Fort to the place of execution, then
Bagumbayan Field, now called the Luneta, was on foot. His
arms were tied tightly behind his back, and he was
surrounded by a heavy guard. The Jesuits accompanied him
and some of his Dapitan schoolboys were in the crowd,
while one friendly voice, that of a Scotch merchant still
resident in Manila, called out in English, “Good-by, Rizal.”
The route was along the Malecon
Drive where as a college student he
had walked with his fiancée,
Leonora. Above the city walls
showed the twin towers of the
Ateneo, and when he asked about
them, for they were not there in his
boyhood days, he spoke of the The wife of José Rizal.
happy years that he had spent in
the old school. The beauty of the
morning, too, appealed to him, and may have recalled an
experience of his ’87 visit when he said to a friend whom he

met on the beach during an early morning walk: “Do you
know that I have a sort of foreboding that some such
sunshiny morning as this I shall be out here facing a firing
squad?”
Troops held back the crowds and left a large square for the
tragedy, while artillery behind them was ready for
suppressing any attempt at rescuing the prisoner. None
came, however, for though Rizal’s brother Paciano had
joined the insurrectionary forces in Cavite when the death
sentence showed there was no more hope for José, he had
discouraged the demonstration that had been planned as Page
248soon as he learned how scantily the insurgents were
armed, hardly a score of serviceable firearms being in the
possession of their entire “army.”
The firing squad was of Filipino soldiers, while behind
them, better armed, were Spaniards in case these tried to
evade the fratricidal part assigned them. Rizal’s composure
aroused the curiosity of a Spanish military surgeon standing
by and he asked, “Colleague, may I feel your pulse?”
Without other reply the prisoner twisted one of his hands as
far from his body as the cords which bound him allowed, so
that the other doctor could place his fingers on the wrist.
The beats were steady and showed neither excitement nor
fear, was the report made later.
His request to be allowed to face his executioners was
denied as being out of the power of the commanding officer
to grant, though Rizal declared that he did not deserve such

a death, for he was no traitor to Spain. It was promised,
however, that his head should be respected, and as
unblindfolded and erect Rizal turned his back to receive
their bullets, he twisted a hand to indicate under the
shoulder where the soldiers should aim so as to reach his
heart. Then as the volley came, with a last supreme effort of
will power, he turned and fell face upwards, thus receiving
the subsequent “shots of grace” which ended his life, so that
in form as well as fact he did not die a traitor’s death.
The Spanish national air was played, that march of Cadiz
which should have recalled a violated constitution, for by
the laws of Spain itself Rizal was illegally executed.
Vivas, laughter and applause were heard, for it had been the
social event of the day, with breakfasting parties on the
walls and on the carriages, full of interested Page
249onlookers of both sexes, lined up conveniently near for
the sightseeing.

Execution of Rizal, from a photograph.

The troops defiled past the dead body, as though reviewed
by it, for the most commanding figure of all was that which
lay lifeless, but the center of all eyes. An officer, realizing
the decency due to death, drew his handkerchief from the
dead man’s pocket and spread the silk over the calm face. A
crimson stain soon marked the whiteness emblematic of the
pure life that had just ended, and with the glorious blue
overhead, the tricolor of Liberty, which had just claimed
another martyr, was revealed in its richest beauty.
Sir Hugh Clifford (now Governor of Ceylon), in
Blackwood’s Magazine, “The Story of José Rizal, the
Filipino; A Fragment of Recent Asiatic History,” comments
as follows on the disgraceful doing of that day:
“It was,” he writes, “early morning, December 30, 1896, and the bright sunshine
of the tropics streamed down upon the open space, casting hard fantastic
shadows, and drenching with its splendor two crowds of sightseers. The one
was composed of Filipinos, cowed, melancholy, sullen, gazing through hopeless
eyes at the final Page 250scene in the life of their great countryman—the man
who had dared to champion their cause, and to tell the world the story of their
miseries; the other was blithe of air, gay with the uniforms of officers and the
bright dresses of Spanish ladies, the men jesting and laughing, the women
shamelessly applauding with waving handkerchiefs and clapping palms, all
alike triumphing openly in the death of the hated ‘Indian,’ the ‘brother of the
water-buffalo,’ whose insolence had wounded their pride.
* * * Turning away, sick at heart, from the contemplation of this bitter tragedy,
it is with a thrill of almost vindictive satisfaction that one remembers that less
than eighteen months later the Luneta echoed once more to the sound of a
mightier fusillade—the roar of the great guns with which the battle of Manila
Bay was fought and won.
* * * And if in the moment of his last supreme agony the power to probe the
future had been vouchsafed to José Rizal, would he not have died happy in the
knowledge that the land he loved so dearly was very soon to be transferred into
such safekeeping?”

Page 251

Chapter XI

The After-Life in Memory

An hour or so after the shooting a dead-wagon from San
Juan de Diós Hospital took Rizal’s body to Paco Cemetery.
The civil governor of Manila was in charge and there also
were present the members of a Church society whose duty it
was to attend executions.
Rizal had been wearing a black suit which he had obtained
for his European trip, and a derby hat, not only appropriate
for a funeral occasion because of their somber color, but
also more desirable than white both for the full day’s wear,
since they had to be put on before the twenty-four hours in
the chapel, and for the lying on the ground which would
follow the execution of the sentence. A plain box inclosed
the remains thus dressed, for even the hat was picked up
and encoffined.
No visitors were admitted to the cemetery while the
interment was going on, and for several weeks after guards
watched over the grave, lest Filipinos might come by night
to steal away the body and apportion the clothing among
themselves as relics of a martyr. Even the exact spot of the
interment was intended to be unknown, but friends of the
family were among the attendants at the burial and dropped

into the grave a marble slab which had been furnished them,
bearing the initials of the full baptismal name, José Protasio
Rizal, in reversed order.
The entry of the burial, like that of three of his followers of
the Liga Filipina who were among the dozen executed a
fortnight later, was on the back flyleaf of the cemetery
register, with three or four words of explanation later erased
and now unknown. On the previous page was the entry of a
suicide’s death, and following it is that of the British Consul
who died on the Page 252eve of Manila’s surrender and
whose body, by the Archbishop’s permission, was stored in
a Paco niche till it could be removed to the Protestant
(foreigners’) cemetery at San Pedro Macati.

Burial record of Rizal in the Paco register.
(Facsimile.)
The day of Rizal’s execution, the day of his birth and the
day of his first leaving his native land was a Wednesday. All
that night, and the next day, the celebration continued the
volunteers, who were particularly responsible, like their
fellows in Cuba, for the atrocities which disgraced Spain’s

rule in the Philippines, being especially in evidence. It was
their clamor that had made the bringing back of Rizal
possible, their demands for his death had been most
prominent in his so-called trial, and now they were praising
themselves for their “patriotism.” The landlords had
objected to having their land titles questioned and their
taxes raised. The other friar orders, as well as these, were
opposed to a campaign which sought their transfer from
profitable parishes to self-sacrificing missionary labors. But
probably none of them as organizations desired Rizal’s
death.
Rizal’s old teachers wished for the restoration of their
former pupil to the faith of his childhood, from which they
believed he had departed. Through Despujol they Page
253seem to have worked for an opportunity for influencing
him, yet his death was certainly not in their plans.
Some Filipinos, to save themselves, tried to complicate
Rizal with the Katipunan uprising by palpable falsehoods.
But not every man is heroic and these can hardly be blamed,
for if all the alleged confessions were not secured by actual
torture, they were made through fear of it, since in 1896
there was in Manila the legal practice of causing bodily
suffering by mediæval methods supplemented by torments
devised by modern science.
Among the Spaniards in Manila then, reënforced by those
whom the uprising had frightened out of the provinces,
were a few who realized that they belonged among the

classes caricatured in Rizal’s novels—some incompetent,
others dishonest, cruel ones, the illiterate, wretched
specimens that had married outside their race to get money
and find wives who would not know them for what they
were, or drunken husbands of viragoes. They came to the
Philippines because they were below the standard of their
homeland. These talked the loudest and thus dominated the
undisciplined volunteers. With nothing divine about them,
since they had not forgotten, they did not forgive. So when
the Tondo “discoverer” of the Katipunan fancied he saw
opportunity for promotion in fanning their flame of wrath,
they claimed their victims, and neither the panic-stricken
populace nor the weak-kneed government could withstand
them.
Once more it must be repeated that Spain has no monopoly
of bad characters, nor suffers in the comparison of her
honorable citizenship with that of other nationalities, but
her system in the Philippines permitted abuses which good
governments seek to avoid or, in the rare occasions when
this is impossible, aim to punish. Here was the Spanish
shortcoming, for these were the defects Page 254which made
possible so strange a story as this biography unfolds. “José
Rizal,” said a recent Spanish writer, “was the living
indictment of Spain’s wretched colonial system.”

Grave of Rizal in Paco cemetery, Manila. The remains are
now preserved in an urn.
Rizal’s family were scattered among the homes of friends
brave enough to risk the popular resentment against
everyone in any way identified with the victim of their
prejudice.
As New Year’s eve approached, the bands ceased playing
and the marchers stopped parading. Their enthusiasm had
worn itself out in the two continuous days of celebration,
and there was a lessening of the hospitality with which
these “heroes” who had “saved the fatherland” at first had
been entertained. Their great day of the year became of
more interest than further remembrance of the bloody
occurrence on Bagumbayan Field. To those who mourned a
son and a brother the change must have come as a welcome
relief, for even sorrow has Page 255its degrees, and the
exultation over the death embittered their grief.

The alcohol lamp in which the farewell poem was hidden.

To the remote and humble home where Rizal’s widow and
the sister to whom he had promised a parting gift were
sheltered, the Dapitan schoolboy who had attended his
imprisoned teacher brought an alcohol cooking-lamp. It was
midnight before they dared seek the “something” which
Rizal had said was inside. The alcohol was emptied from
the tank and, with a convenient hairpin, a tightly folded and
doubled piece of paper was dislodged from where it had
been wedged in, out of sight, so that its rattling might not
betray it.

Facsimile of the opening lines of Rizal’s last verses.
It was a single sheet of notepaper bearing verses in Rizal’s
well-known handwriting and familiar style. Hastily the
young boy copied them, making some minor mistakes
owing to his agitation and unfamiliarity with the language,

and the copy, without explanation, was mailed to Mr. Basa
in Hongkong. Then the original was taken by the two
women with their few possessions and they fled to join the
insurgents in Cavite.
The following translation of these verses was made by
Charles Derbyshire: Page 256

My Last Farewell

Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun
caress’d,
Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life’s
best,
And were it brighter, fresher, or more blest,
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.

On the field of battle, ’mid the frenzy of fight,
Others have given their lives, without doubt or
heed;
The place matters not—cypress or laurel or lily
white,
Scaffold of open plain, combat or martyrdom’s
plight,
’Tis ever the same, to serve our home and
country’s need.