560
THE GREEN BAG
times that gave them birth. Such offenses are pretty much a matter of history in the Philippines. They cannot be classed as crimes dangerous to the general public wel fare for the reason that they do not occur within the pale of organized society. They were of a seditious nature and have virtu ally ceased where law prevails. They were committed during the upheaval of society following the insurrection and ended upon the restoration of civil institutions. They are likely to be perpetrated in any country, civilized or uncivilized, during the unsettled period following war. The crime committed by Aniceto is likely to occur at any time and in any community. Living in a state of concubinage is of common occurrence in this country. Anger, jealousy, hatred, all the evil passions arising from such condi tions, are likely to inflame the excitable Fili pino and cause him to draw the ever ready bolo and set forth in search of his rival, or in the case of Aniceto, the girl who refused to listen to his solicitations to continue an evil life, and the brother whose persuasions had induced the sister to abandon her illicit relations with him. There are or have been two classes of crim inals in the Philippines, the seditious criminal, whose deeds have been given undue notice in the press, and the ordinary crimi nal. The former has brought reproach on the country and created in the United States
an exaggerated impression of the criminality of the Filipino people. The crimes com mitted by the seditious class are not inher ently as bad as those perpetrated by the ordinary criminal, nor are they as dangerous to society. In provinces like the one from which I write seditious offenses are a thing of the past, as in numerous other provinces of the Archipelago. Crime has decreased during the past three years, as shown by the court dockets; notorious crimes are compar atively of rare occurrence, and what may be termed the ordinary offenses are becoming more and more infrequent. There is good reason to believe that the work of American courts, schools, missions, and the various agencies of the government is exerting so salutary an influence that the conditions giving rise to much of the ordinary crime among the mass of the population will dis appear, and the volume of such crime very materially decrease. As before stated, ex traordinary crimes have well-nigh disap peared from the criminal dockets of the country, excepting in certain provinces populated by a semi-savage people, among •whom, however, courts have been estab lished, and it is merely a question of brief time when crimes of a seditious nature will have passed with all other remnants of the insurrection and days of Filipino ladronism. CAPIZ, PANAY, July, 1906.
