The people of the Philippines, their religious progress and preparation for spiritual leadership in the Far East,

THE SPANISH REGIME

89

throne in 1814, abolished the constitution, and renewed the
Inquisition. The immediate effect in the Philippines was a
revolt in Ilocos Norte, in which churches were burned and
many of the wealthy people robbed and killed.
Six years later (1820) the constitution was renewed and
four Filipinos went to sit in the Spanish Cortes. In 1837 the
fickle Cortes again excluded Filipinos. It was toying with the
most sacred flame in human hearts. Better for Spain if she
had never given the Filipinos that taste of representation. He
who once eats of the fruits of democracy shall never be satisfied
with tyranny again. The ancient edifice of benevolent autocracy was beginning to tremble. Even then there were prophets
who foresaw that Spain could not always enjoy her Eden,
unmolested.
ABUSES IN THE FRIAR SYSTEM
From this point the plot thickens, and events move swiftly
to their climax. Before we enter upon them we must have
patience to look into the heart of the friar system and examine
what were the abuses against which the Filipinos were ere long
to revolt.
"The student must frankly premise that abuses were sure
to arise among associations of men into whose hands was
entrusted power of so colossal a nature as that given to the
religious orders. History cannot disprove the fact that in the
Philippines the evils which befell the Islands during the Spanish
administration arose in part from unbridled power." 16 The
power over the souls of men is always an awful and perilous
responsibility, but when exerted over an ignorant, subject, and
superstitious people, and when bulwarked by the force of law
and armies, it becomes a source of such temptation that the
majority of men cannot resist it.
"Ambition, both corporative and personal, urged the friars
forward, but after they had become firmly established in the
land, that ambition too often took on a material tinge from
which the purely religious suffered grievously-a by no means
"Robertson, Catholic Historical Review, Vol. III, p. 380.