692
THE GREEN BAG
This letter of the Junius of Central Luzon concluded: "All these are of course mere generalities. If the Mayor desires me to be more specific, he has only to let me know." [Signed] Evaristo Panganiban. Under the Spanish law, contempt of any constituted authority, executive, legisla tive, municipal or what not, is like contempt of court with us. No matter how righteous the contempt may be, the truth of the insulting matter is no defense. So Evaristo had been tried in the Mayor's Court, con victed of desacato, or contempt of authority and placed in durance vile, pending appeal to the next term of the Circuit Court. Incidentally, he had scribbled all over the proceedings in the Mayor's Court words which in a manner more forcible than elegant demonstrated his total lack of respect for that tribunal. Once in jail, he began, through friends who came to sympathize with and console him, to issue manifestos, written addresses to the people of the province, for which the Spanish word is propaganda. In these addresses he explained to the people what a martyr he was; how there was no more "prestation personal" — enforced personal service — since the flag of haughty Spain had been forever lowered from those blue mountain sides where he was born; how Nueva Viscaya was very far from Manila, but how her darkest corners now stood illuminated by the rays from the torch of the American Goddess of Liberty, the patron saint of the great Western Republic; and how the Mayor was going to come to grief for invading the majesty of personal liberty and encroaching upon the individual right of each of their noble selves to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The point of this story is that about that time the chief constabulary officer of the province, an American, was trying to get men to work for him, and trying to hire a lot of horses. The work he had laid
out was of great importance to the welfare of the province and he was ready and willing to pay good American gold for labor and hire of live-stock. But, alas, the leaven of Panganiban's progaganda had leavened the whole population of the valley. The day of freedom had come, the high noon of the sacredness of individ ual liberty. Panganiban certainly would not dare to be saying these things if they were not true. A man who did not care to work could rest, and the American Goddess of Liberty would look at him benevolently and say Rest, my child, if you wish; pursue happiness, yea, to the centre of the cock-pit and the depths of bankruptcy. Lie on the floor of your shack, and smoke cigarettes, if you want, until you pass off into smoke and become a thing that was — while your wife, scarce emerged from the pains of child-bearing, consoles herself with the joy of nursing, in the intervals of domestic drudgery. Such was the state of affairs that Pan ganiban's propaganda had brought about. It was almost another epoch of bounties such as the forty-acres-and-a-mule period of reconstruction days in the South. The people had been struck blind by the light of American liberty, as it came from the heaven of demagoguery, through the lens of Evaristo 's oratory. The Constabu lary officer had $20,000, in coin down in Manila, which he wanted to get up there on ponies, to be spent for the improvement of the province, besides large quantities of supplies for the schools and various branches of the Government. But he could not get ponies or men for love or money. There was no more prestation personal, you see. People didn't have to work if they didn't want to. The Constabulary would go about in the Barrios and Rancherios, but when ever he hove in sight and hearing of a house, the owner would rope up his ponies and scamper off to the woods. Sometimes the Constabulary would sus pect that the apparent owner was unlaw
