loor 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.
He 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 Jose 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 Jose College in Manila for some years, and had regularly failed
in passing his examinations because of his outspokenness against
the evils of the 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 which made the mutiny of a
few soldiers and arsenal employes 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
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