This Filipino masonry cast its net far and wide, and in its meshes were
caught many fish of all classes and conditions; some of them men of
money who sought in masonry what money could easily purchase,--honors
and titles, grand crosses and medals; others were men whose pockets
were more or less replete, and whose aims were of a great variety of
natures; whilst others were men whose treasuries were more or less
empty and who sought in masonry what they did not care to earn by
honest labor--a livelihood.
Masonry was imported into the Archipelago, shortly after the Spanish
Revolution, and was, during the first years of its life, confined
to Spaniards; but later on it opened its doors to half-castes and
indians. In 1887 it extended by leaps and bounds; but upon the
coming of Gen. Weyler to the Archipelago, as Governor General, in
1888, it dwindled away almost into nothingness. Gen. Weyler was,
and has ever shown himself, a patriotic Spaniard; and he would not
permit the existence here, under his Governorship, of anything which
tended to the detriment of his country. Well did the masons of the
Philippines and elsewhere know this, and hence the vicious and cruel
campaign they carried on against him both in the Peninsular and Cuba,
but more especially in the U. S. of America.
The Katipunan, the bastard child of filipino masonry, that ungrateful
offspring which was unfaithful even to the mother which brought it
forth, was a society within the bosom of which was redeveloped the
malay instinct which had lain dormant for some three centuries. This
instinct, brutal, savage, intensely ignorant, immoral, ungodly;
an instinct found still among some of the uncivilized tribes of the
mountain fastnesses of Luzon; an instinct once almost blotted out after
many years of most difficult labor and self-sacrifice on the part of
the Religious Orders, once again burst forth in all its strength.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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