The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 12: In MotleyBierce, Ambrose
General
The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 12: In Motley
Bierce, Ambrose
American literature
AG.—I understand this: We Filipinos rebelled against Spain to liberate
our country from oppression. We wrested island after island, city
after city, from her until Manila was virtually all that she had left.
As we were about to deprive her of that and regain the independence
which, through four hundred years of misrule, she had denied us we
experienced a dire mischance. You quarreled with her because she denied
independence to Cuba. Spanish dominion, which we had stabbed, was
already dead, but you arrived just in time to kick the corpse while it
was yet warm, and for this service you propose to administer upon the
estate, keeping the most valuable part for your honesty. You will then
revive the dead, buried and damned and reinstate him in possession of
the remainder!
MCK. (_aside_)—O, will I?
SAG.—Apparently, Señor Presidente, this worthy person is afflicted with
a flow of language. (_Aside_) The Porco Americano has the habit of
blushing.
MCK. (_to Sagasta_)—Yes, the Filipino always has his tongue in his ear.
(_To Aguinaldo_) Proceed with the address.
AG.—It is as if the French, having assisted your forefathers to
independence, had kept Boston and all New England for themselves and
restored the other colonies to Great Britain. If the Good Samaritan,
arriving while the man fallen among thieves was still struggling with
them, had assisted him to beat them off, had then taken his purse and
delivered him to the thieves again you would have had a Scriptural
precedent.
SAG. (_writing in a notebook_)—“At a certain temperature the Porco
Americano can sweat.”
MCK.—My great and good friend, you seem to have your climate with you,
as well as your chin. I must beg you to abridge your oration against
manifest destiny.
AG.—Destiny was a long time manifesting herself, but she has not been
idle since. In the last four months you have torn up the three American
political Holy Scriptures: Washington’s Farewell Address, the Monroe
Doctrine and the Declaration of Independence. You now stand upon the
fragments of the last and declare it an error that governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed. In Hawaii you are
founding a government on the consent of less than three per centum
of the governed. In my country you propose to found one government
and restore another against the unanimous dissent of eight millions
of people whom you cheated into an alliance to that end. You cajoled
them into assisting at the cutting of their own throats. Your only
justification in making this war at all was Spain’s denial in Havana of
the political principle which you now repudiate in Honolulu and Manila.
Señores, we shall resist both the American and the Spanish occupation.
You will be allies—embrace!
[_Exit Sagasta._]
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