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

98 THE PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES

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.9 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."
Quoted in Chapter II.
10But few of the pure Filipinos were as yet "radical"; and if they were
there was a cheaper way to dispose of them.