quit
the Philippine Islands and not return thereto until so authorized by
the Spanish Government, in consideration whereof the above-mentioned
P800,000 was to be paid as follows:--P400,000 in a draft on Hong-Kong
to be delivered to Aguinaldo on his leaving Biac-na-bato [This draft
was, in fact, delivered to him]; P200,000 payable to Aguinaldo as soon
as he should send a telegram to the revolutionary general in command
at Biac-na-bato, ordering him to hand over the rebels' arms to the
Captain-General's appointed commissioner [This telegram was sent],
and the final P200,000 immediately after the singing of the _Te Deum_
which would signify an official recognition of peace.
_It was further alleged_ that on behalf of the Spanish Government
many radical reforms and conditions were agreed to (outside the
Treaty of Biac-na-bato), almost amounting to a total compliance
with the demands of the rebels. But no evidence whatever has been
adduced to confirm this allegation. Indeed it is a remarkable fact
that neither in the Madrid parliamentary papers (to copies of which
I have referred), nor in the numerous rebel proclamations and edicts,
nor in the published correspondence of Pedro A. Paterno, is even the
full text of the treaty given. It is singular that the rebels should
have abstained from publishing to the world those precise terms which
they say were accepted and not fulfilled by the Spanish Government,
which denies their existence.
Whatever reforms might have been promised would have been purely
governmental matters which required no mediator for their execution;
but as to the money payments to be made, Paterno was to receive them
from the Government and distribute them. An Agreement to this effect
was, therefore, signed by General Primo de Rivera and Pedro A. Paterno
in the following terms, viz.:--
In the peace proposals presented by the sole mediator, Don Pedro
Alejandro Paterno, in the name and on behalf of the rebels in arms,
and in the Peace Protocol which was agreed to and submitted to His
Majesty's Government, _which approved of the same_, there exists
a principal clause relating to the sums of money which were to be
handed over to the rebels and their families as indemnity for the
loss of their goods consequent on the war, which sums amounted to
a total of P1,700,000, which the mediator, Senor Paterno, was to
distribute absolutely at his discretion, but the payment of the
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