This might easily be. At the time Rizal was studying abroad, many cities such as London, Paris, Hong-Kong, Macao, as well as Madrid, contained small colonies of Filipinos, being chiefly the exiles of 1872 and Cavite. Among them it was customary to circulate pamphlets breathing out destruction to Spanish rule in the Philippines, and so on. These the authors were usually wise enough not to sign, the chief purpose of their labors being, apparently, not so much to launch expeditions for the overthrow of the citadel of oppression as to cheer the hearts of exile with verbal fireworks. One of these came out in March, 1889, in Hong-Kong, but widely circulated wherever there were Filipinos. It is a race that, like the others, has good men and bad, men that go erect and those that crawl. One of the latter species, a creature of Weyler of the Red Hands, was then living in Hong-Kong and felt called upon to answer the inflammatory appeals of his countrymen. Perhaps he was not much of a Filipino; perhaps he was, in the bulk, Spaniard. At least he said in his document that Spain’s rule in the Philippines was the grandest specimen of colonial wisdom ever known and replete with good things for the people. As to the friars, he said that no possible objection existed to them, for they were kind, gentle, fond of the people, and wholly given to good works. So he warned his countrymen to pay no attention to ribald persons that wrote otherwise, for they but walked the straight road to destruction. Copies of this unique production made their way to Europe and in the end to Paris, where Rizal was then living. In October of that year, 1889, appeared in Paris a rejoinder to sycophancy that set on edge the teeth of every Filipino in Europe. It was unsigned, but to the colonies the authorship seemed unmistakable. Only one Filipino could write like that; only one Filipino could wither with such disdainful sarcasm the apologist for the wrongers of his country. The manifesto closes with this paragraph: When a people is torn asunder, when its dignity, its honor, and all its liberties are trodden underfoot; when now no legal recourse remains against the tyranny of its oppressors; when its complaints, its supplications, and its groans are not listened to; when it is not even allowed to cry; when its last hope is torn from its heart ... then ... then ... then! ... there remains no other remedy but to snatch with delirious hand, from the accursed altars, the bloody and suicidal dagger of revolution! Cæsar, we, who are about to die, salute thee! [121] The judgment of the Filipinos in Europe could hardly have been wrong. There is every reason to hold with them that the writer of this fierce cry of warning was Rizal. CHAPTER X FILIPINO INDOLENCE