Part of this work became afterward an invaluable legacy to his countrymen and literature. In his youth he had heard of a wonderful book, of which only two or three copies existed in all the world, a book written in 1607 [103] about the Philippine Islands and their people as they were then. A blunt, honest old Spaniard, Antonio de Morga, had written it, apparently with no purpose except to tell the truth, an impulse that in itself for his times was enough to confer distinction. Other Spanish writers of that day had written to create desired impressions, to justify theories or to excuse the Spanish aggression, whereby the lies had dripped like oil from their pens. De Morga had as good a chance as anybody else to know the Islands; he had accompanied one of the earliest of the Spanish expeditions and for seven years had been a part of its exploits. One of the few copies of his book, “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas,” was in the British Museum. Rizal formed the ambitious design to rescue it from oblivion and republish it, annotated and clarified. With some difficulty he ran the barrage so strangely erected around this institution and found the precious volume to be all that had been said in praise of it. De Morga’s observations, evidently unbiased, established what Rizal had long surmised and then asserted, that the Filipinos had been historically wronged. The sea-coast folk, at least, the bulk of the nation, had not been more truly savages when Magellan came than the Spaniards themselves. From de Morga’s accounts it was easy to show that the Filipino’s spirit, activities, and general welfare had been in no way bettered by Spanish rule. Arts, industries, products in the Islands, and even energy, seemed to have been more observable among the people in de Morga’s day than at the close of the nineteenth century. This was a matter of grave importance to the Islanders and so remained long after Rizal’s labors had ceased. The Spanish excused to the world their presence and their cruelties alike on the one ground that the Indio was a savage. Suppose him without European restraint and European inspiration, they said; he would revert to his caves, his raw meat, and his bows and arrows. To learn that he was heir to these centuries of dignity and worth was not only disconcerting but raised a question to which there was no answer. If he was as civilized as the Spaniard, why had he not the Spaniard’s right to be free?