Rizal’s stout-hearted mother succeeded about this time in winning permission to visit her son; later came two of his sisters. Their presence revived in him the hope he had once cherished of uniting his family in a spot where, after so much of strife and grief, they might begin life afresh and be free from the friars that were the landlords and rulers of Biñan and Calamba. He could see no reason why Mindanao should not be well adapted to their needs. Government could not urge against such a plan the objection it used against the North Borneo project; Mindanao was Philippine territory. He wrote to Despujol asking for the necessary permits and received a chilly answer reminding him that he was an exile and an outcast and in no position to seek favors of his Government. Steady persistence in the face of whatever rebuff was one of Rizal’s strongest traits; the man seemed as incapable of discouragement as George Washington was; and the philosophical reader of history may well consider the appearance of this quality in three men that founded three nations, William the Silent, Washington, and Rizal, and inquire whether in value to the world this possession did not overtop all others. With one cherished hope crushed, he turned to another. He set himself to improve agriculture in the region where he had been marooned; he showed the farmers how they could raise better crops and get better prices for them. From the United States, where in his travels he had observed with interest the latest agricultural inventions, he imported modern farm machinery, using it upon his own place and teaching its use to others. It has been the lot of few men to lead lives of such varied use to their fellows. He seemed to go through the world with eyes observing whatever was done around him and mind considering how it could be done better. Meantime, in Manila great changes had been at work, of which he knew nothing. The discontent of the people, always growing, had begun to find a new expression. Another leader had arisen, in all ways different from Rizal except in this that he, too, was an inevitable product of the attempt to force upon a people a distasteful sovereignty. It has been much the fashion, particularly with writers of a scholastic bent or reactionary sympathy (which is probably the same thing), to speak ill of Andrés Bonifacio. If we desire a just estimate of the forces that worked in diverse ways for Philippine freedom, we are not to dismiss this man lightly [194] nor to speak of him with disrespect. Successful revolutions demand the man that thinks and the man that acts, Mazzinis and Garibaldis, Jeffersons and Washingtons. Rizal was the Mazzini of the Philippine struggle; Bonifacio was its Garibaldi.