was a small mutiny of soldiers and arsenal employes in Cavite, on the evening of January 20, 1872. It is widely charged that the friars themselves "framed" the mutiny. Whether or not they did so, the Filipino people believed they did, and the effect was the same.3

The friars now brought forth the letters they had been opening during the previous year, and the government made wholesale arrests. Dr. Jose Burgus (a Spanish-Filipino), Father Mariano Gomez (a pure Filipino) and Father Jacinto Zamora (a Chinese-Filipino) were tried and garroted.* The friars "are said to have paid a large sum for their condemnation." 5 Whether Dr. Burgus and Father Gomez were implicated in any kind of plot it is impossible to be sure. That the killing of Father Zamora was a case of mistaken identity, seems certain. The word "powder," found in one of his letters, was given a dangerous significance. The evidence against them all was so doubtful that the Roman Catholic Church refused to degrade any of them. The Archbishop, refusing to believe in their guilt, permitted them to wear their priestly robes to the scaffold. "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 others. The whole affair had an ugly look, and the way it was hushed up did not aid the confidence of the people in the justice of the proceedings.'

That execution on the field of Bagumbayan on February 17, 1872, was one of the crucial events in Filipino history. It produced exactly the effect the friars had not sought. It drew the hearts of a hitherto divided and motley people together about their martyred priests. One may see pictures of these three heroes in thousands of Filipino homes. At the moment

Foreman, "The Philippine Islands," p. 697.

The garrote is one of those unspeakable instruments of torture which survived from inquisition days. A screw is slowly turned into the neck until the vertebrae are dislocated.

Letter from Secretary of War, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1901, p. 80.

For the aftermath of the execution of Zamora see Chapter XVIII. 'Austin Craig, "Lineage, Life and Labors of Jose Rizal," p. 83.

of their death they were reincarnated as the "Filipino Cause." This was the conception day of a new nation.8

The other alleged ringleaders of the Cavite uprising were executed, while numbers of supposed accomplices were deported to Guam. These included Don Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, father of the eminent scholar Dr. T. H. Pardo de Tavera, Don Antonio Regidor, Don Pedro Carillo, Don Jose Basa and Don Maximo Molo Paterno, father of Pedro Paterno. The Philippines were placed under military law, and remained so for many years. Suspects became so numerous that the government resorted to wholesale deportations to the Ladrones, to the Carolines, to Mindanao, to Jolo, to Puerta Princesa, to Balabac, to Ceuta, to the Chaferinas, to Fernando Po and to Africa.

The most romantic pages in Philippine history are bound up with these exiles. For the most part they were pure Spaniards or Spanish mestizos, though born in the Philippines; and had relatives in the homeland. 10 Nothing was more natural, therefore, than that they should seek the first opportunity to escape and go to Spain. The Spanish governors of these places of exile, having no interest in the suspicions of the friars in the Philippines, winked while passing ships spirited their prisoners away. Colonies of exiles grew up, especially in Barcelona and Madrid, but also in Paris, London, Berlin, Singapore, and Hongkong.

Most of them became Masons. They urged their sons and relatives to come to Europe for an education. These hotheaded young men, stung by injustices done their exiled relatives, began to feel themselves bearers of a great mission for their native land. They were away from home, desperately homesick, in the most receptive possible mood to learn from

Fifteen years later Rizal dedicated his great novel "El Filibusterismo" to these three priests, saying:

"The church by refusing to degrade you has placed in doubt the crime that has been imputed to you; the government by surrounding your trial with mystery and shadows causes the belief that there is some error, committed in false moments; and all the Philippines, by worshipping your memory and calling you martyrs, in no sense recognized your culpability.'

9

Quoted in Chapter II.

10 But few of the pure Filipinos were as yet "radical"; and if they were there was a cheaper way to dispose of them.

the spirit of Europe an ardent patriotism such as they had not felt while in the Islands. Behind the closed doors of Masonic halls things were said and planned which would have been suicidal in the Philippines.

Spanish and Portuguese Masonry had become common in the Far East. It was first introduced into the Philippines at Cavite, in 1860, under the name "Luz Filipina." Liberal Spaniards and Filipino propagandists in an Independent Grand Lodge in Barcelona directed the organization of lodges in Filipino towns. In Manila many of the wealthy Filipinos were admitted to the Masonic order called "C. Cadosh y Cía." At first confined largely to Spanish liberals in a few centers, Masonry increased rapidly after 1886 and became so active and important that "all secret organizations" were forbidden in 1888. In the Philippines no man dared speak his mind. Dark emissaries of the suspicious government shadowed men with or without cause. In that noxious atmosphere "bootlickers" and informers throve, while free spirits longed for a better day.

Men of principle, if they could afford to do so, went to Spain where they might speak their minds with less peril. One of these men, Graciano Lopez Jaena, started a most important organ called "La Solidaridad," in Barcelona in 1889. A few months later it was taken over by the gifted Marcelo H. del Pilar, who continued it in Madrid until 1895.11 In the beginning del Pilar advocated making the Philippines a province of Spain with all the rights of Spaniards. This he hoped liberal Spaniards might achieve by peaceful means. As months passed he became convinced that nothing would bring the Filipinos their rights save resistance. The liberal government in Spain seemed on the wane. The wealthy classes in the Philippines, too, seemed well satisfied with their present lot. Del Pilar decided to come home and appeal to the masses of his countrymen. While on the way to the Philippines in 1896 he died without having seen the revolution which broke out that same year.

"Pilar had worked ardently for reforms during the days of the liberal Governor-General Terrero, but when in 1889 General Weyler (of bloody fame in Cuba) became Governor-General of the Philippines, Del Pilar fled to Spain.