Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine PatriotCraig, Austin
History
Lineage, Life and Labors of José Rizal, Philippine Patriot
Craig, Austin
Rizal, José, 1861-1896
As soon as Rizal was lodged in his prison, a room in Fort Santiago, the
Governor-General began the composition of one of the most extraordinary
official documents ever issued in this land where the strangest
governmental acts have abounded. It is apology, argument, and attack
all in one and was published in the Official Gazette, where it occupied
most of an entire issue. The effect of the righteous anger it displays
suffers somewhat when one knows how all was planned from the day Rizal
was decoyed from Hongkong under the faithless safe-conduct. Another
enlightening feature is the copy of a later letter, preserved in that
invaluable secret file, wherein Despujol writes Rizal's custodian, as
jailer, to allow the exile in no circumstances to see this number of
the Gazette or to know its contents, and suggests several evasions to
assist the subordinate's power of invention. It is certainly a strange
indignation which fears that its object shall learn the reason for
wrath, nor is it a creditable spectacle when one beholds the chief
of a government giving private lessons in lying.
A copy of the Gazette was sent to the Spanish Consul in Hongkong, also
a cablegram directing him to give it publicity that "Spain's good name
might not suffer" in that colony. By his blunder, not knowing that
the Lusitania Club was really a Portuguese Masonic lodge and full of
Rizal's friends, a copy was sent there and a strong reply was called
forth. The friendly editor of the Hongkong Telegraph devoted columns to
the outrage by which a man whose acquaintance in the scientific world
reflected honor upon his nation, was decoyed to what was intended
to be his death, exiled to "an unhealthful, savage spot," through
"a plot of which the very Borgias would have been ashamed."
The British Consul in Manila, too, mentioned unofficially to
Governor-General Despujol that it seemed a strange way of showing
Spain's often professed friendship for Great Britain thus to disregard
the annoyance to the British colony of North Borneo caused by making
impossible an entirely unexceptionable plan. Likewise, in much the
same respectfully remonstrant tone which the Great Powers are wont
to use in recalling to semi-savage states their obligations to
civilization, he pointed out how Spain's prestige as an advanced
nation would suffer when the educated world, in which Rizal was
Spain's best-known representative, learned that the man whom they
honored had been trapped out of his security under the British flag
and sent into exile without the slightest form of trial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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