Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

POLITICAL SECTION

139

subscriptions cancelled their quotas and would not send any
further help. The publication of the newspaper "La Solidaridad" had to be suspended. The hope for the realization
of the solicited reforms went into the air completely. Then
came the act that caused greater discouragement than any
other,-the deportation of Rizal, the greatest of all the leaders
of the nationalists.
Andres Bonifacio, the founder of the Katipunan, was a
humble employee who received only a fair education, but with
a keen intelligence and with a strong and fiery character. He
studied the doctrines of Del Pilar and Rizal, and with his
great prejudice against the Spanish government, he came to
believe that those doctrines could not be implanted in the
country without the previous destruction of the Spanish regime.
He therefore founded his association with this object in view.
Men of the same philosophical creed, men who no longer believed in reforms nor in peaceful means, neither in a conciliation
with Spain, immediately responded to his preaching and propaganda. From the year 1892, Andres Bonifacio resolutely
spoke of the necessity of preparing for the day when all the
Filipino patriots should carry bolos and guns that might be
obtained from abroad in order to establish in the country a
regime of independence, liberty, and equality. Just as the
political end of the association was separation from Spain, its
social end was an ideal reign of brotherhood, justice, equality,
mutual helpfulness, elevation of the humble, protection of
women, humiliation of the powerful-a program of human
regeneration that was advanced by the great religious reformers.
Because of his preachings there rallied to Bonifacio not only
politicians who wanted to see the destruction of the regime,
but also the desperate characters, victims of the high rents of
the friars estates, the humble masses that dreamed of their betterment, those persecuted by the government, and in general,
all those who had something for which to avenge themselves.
In these groups of radicals there appeared at once the figure of
a young student of law who was the thinking mind of Bonifacio,' his inseparable companion and counsellor-Emilio
Jacinto.