Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/495

Rh earlier residence there the people on the streets stared at him, and some of the boys threw stones or stuck out their tongues at him. He did not, however, care for that, while he expected that the better circles would convince him of the superiority and the innate tact of the lordly race by their more refined behavior. But it did not turn out so. He saw the ladies in the saloons tittering behind their fans and making merry over "the queer man." And then at the table! How plain was the expression of astonishment among the gentlemen of the saloons that the brown man behaved in his eating just as the whites did! They had apparently anticipated that the "black" would act as if he were tearing live pigeons to pieces and swallowing them. The indolence of the Europeans is shown up no less amusingly. Luna finds it apparent in all conditions, prevailing in the highest and the lowest social strata. He asks what would become of the industry and activity of the European peoples if they were suddenly given the climate and the fruitfulness of his native land. These two examples are all we can give. Likewise interesting are the studies of my Tagalog friends Don Marcelo H. del Pilar and Don Mariano Ponce. The former, an advocate from the province of Bulakan, in the island of Luzon, and a descendant of King Lakandola, of Manila, was the leader of the Reformist party and the chief editor of the journal La Solidaridad, published in Madrid, which he directed with a remarkable skill that was recognized by his opponents. He died in Barcelona in the summer of 1896. His compeer, Ponce, is now living in Japan and is no less distinguished than Pilar for his keen wit and his zeal in research.

These two Malay jurists carefully examined the criminal records of Europe. Why? Because, whenever an extraordinary or especially heinous crime was committed in the Philippine Islands, the Spaniards were accustomed to use it to confirm their conclusions as to the innate inferiority of the Malay race. "That could occur only among a people of inferior intelligence," was their standing phrase. Del Pilar and Ponce gathered the accounts of trials from the European journals, and were able to reply to the Spaniards quietly: "No, that is not so. All these crimes occur among you Europeans, and relatively more frequently than with us. Your conclusion is therefore false, or else you too have a defective intelligence such as you ascribe to us." Del Pilar, from his studies of the colonial enterprises of all peoples, came to the conclusion that "the Europeans founded most of their colonies at a time when the holding in vassalage of men of their own race by whites and the slavery of negroes and Indians were not regarded as offenses. If, now, we look at colonies in which, as in the Philippine Islands, agricultural populations are living with a civilization of their own, the