Biarritz
From: Edward Boustead
To: Jose Rizal
Felicitations on the salvation of his family – Aid of the Throne of Grace – May Rizal escape friar intrigues and attain success as a physician – Fire in Manila – Biarritz is very lively – Remembering the excursion with Rizal to St. Jean de Lux – The mumps or orillons – Business from bad to worse – Fall of peseta – Impending financial crisis.
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Biarritz, 21 March 1892
MR. JOSE RIZAL, M.D.
2 REDNAXELA TERRACE
HONG KONG
DEAR FRIEND RIZAL,
How glad we were to receive news about you and your estimable family! You have reason to praise and give thanks to God for having saved your father and other members of your family from their enemies. We have thought a great deal of you and since we heard of the happenings in Kalamba, we have not ceased to commend you through the Throne of Grace asking its aid for you and for those who navigate the seas. Now we can join our praise to the Omnipotent God to yours, thanking Him for you salvation. But my friend, I think the friars are very treacherous and can even do your harm in Hong Kong, for it is known that they have many partisans and other orders (many of them) in Hong Kong and its environs. For this reason, you have to take precautions, my friend. It has been really providential that you left Europe just in time to be of use to your parents and relatives and I am glad that your medical profession serves now to defray their expenses and attend to their needs. I wish you all health and prosperity. I understand that your parents and relatives cannot be very much satisfied with living in Hong Kong as they do not know how to speak the language of the country, but perhaps in time they will have useful occupations which will entertain them. We learned by telegraph that on the 14th instant there was a great fire in Manila and that the best Chines stores have been burnt down and many commercial firms suffered losses. But perhaps for business this may be a boom, the stock in hand will thus be cleared. I say no more because you must be well informed of what has happened.
Friend Ventura left on the 6th and before this reaches you, you would have embraced him already. I hope he will be careful so that they will not lay their hands on him at his arrival in Manila.
This winter has been very likely in Biarritz. All the hotels and private houses are full. More than four hundred English families are here. The weather is magnificent. It is almost a year ago that were went to St. Jean de Lux and we climbed Mount Ruhne together. What a distance separates us now!
For a time I had some bad moments this winter, for everyone in the house was sick of orillons in French, mumps in English, which is papera in Spanish. It started with Adelina, later Nelly, then Dolores, the boy, Isabel and Miss Johnson; the last one had it serious with complications. Fortunately, we had a Mr. Juan on a visit, [a] young physician, now established in Madrid. Some of the servants got it also. I was the only one who did not get it. Now all are well and will know you to appreciate better the blessings of good health. Dolores keeps busy arranging the house; she has made various improvements; but I do not know if we can profit much from them, for we occupy it only when it is cold and I am afraid that this would be of very short duration.
Many are complaining about business, the exchange in Spain is going from bad to worse. Today they say that the peseta has lost from 20 to 21 per cent, so that the commerce between France and Spain is paralyzed, I fear that the ruin may be general in all countries and that we are not far from great events, monetary crisis, anarchy, war, and the like. One has to console himself. When we see everything going badly, we know that God will save His own from the great universal catalyst, separating them from all this.
Your sincere friend and servant who kisses your hand.
E. BOUSTEAD
All join in sending you many regards and give our sympathy to your parents and relatives.
04-715 [Misc.]
1892.3.21 Hong Kong
From: Jose Rizal
To: Governor and Captain General of the Philippine Islands
Rizal’s second letter to the governor general of the Philippines – Reiterates his offer of cooperation to bring about peace and tranquility – Informs him of his Borneo project – Requests permission to change nationality and emigrate for himself and friends.
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Hong Kong, 21 March 1891
2 Rednaxela Terrace
TO THE GOVERNOR GENERAL AND CAPTAIN GENERAL
OF THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
MOST EXCELLENT SIR,
Towards the end of last year I had the honor to write Your Excellency offering you my humble services. Several persons have assured me that Your Excellency, faithful to your courteous habits, has deigned to answer me, but as until this moment I have not received your letter, I have to admit that it must have been lost.
The object of the present letter is to insist on my offer. Since Your Excellency have taken over the reins of government you have known how to win by yourself the sympathy of the people and to buttress the vacillating confidence of the country in the government, so that it can be said that if God gives you three more years of life, for three years the Filipinos will have peace and tranquility. The people besides are very easy to govern; with a little love they forget quickly past grievances and Your Excellency will surely know how to strengthen love for Spain in such a way that, when afterwards bad years come, there shall be no need for squadrons, or armored soldiers, or increasing the contingent of Spanish troops. It will be tough for he people to remember Your Excellence and of your story according to which Filipino rulers would be like canned sardines – alternatively placed in opposite position.
As the thought of my whole life has always been love of my country and her moral and material developments, and as it seems to me now that this development is very well begun under your administration, I consider it my duty not only to respect your administration but also to get, should it be necessary, the adherence to Spain of all the Filipinos. Nevertheless, as there are prepossessions and prejudices in every society, as in every man there are diverse tendencies, distinct ways of thinking, originating in passions, euros, and at times hatred – prepossessions and tendencies that we cannot always resist – I permit myself to make to Your Excellency a proposition.
In my previous letter I declared to you that opinion in the Philippines placed me at the head of the progressive movement – to some “progressive” has a bad connotation, to others it has a good meaning, depending on whether they are enemies or not of progress. I am not going to discuss here either the value or correctness of this opinion, for I almost always avoid defending or praising myself. It is that some consider me a perturber and up to a certain point they are right, for I have perturbed many in their peaceful exploitation of their fellowmen and the laws. Your Excellency perchance share this opinion, because it is not always easy to remove oneself from the influence of one’s environment. I will not be the one to modify your beliefs, only indeed I wish for the good of my country to insure, in so far as it depends upon me, that you may be able to administer it in complete peace. Towards this end I have the intention of founding a colony in North Borneo on the land which that State offers me and where there are already found many Filipinos. If those who can make my country happy believe that my presence and that of my friends and relatives are prejudicial to the peace of the Philippines, so much and oftentimes unjust, such as deportation and exile, we have no inconvenience in exiling ourselves forever, accepting the offer of the English Government. In this case, I request Your Excellency to grant us the necessary permission to change our nationality, to sell our little property that has been left to us by the many disturbances that we have had, and to guarantee the emigration of all those who for some reason or other have incurred the animadversion of more or less powerful persons who will remain in the Philippines even after Your Excellency’s administration. No one will stain his conscience with unjust banishments, no one will be obliged to apply harsh punishment, the people will have fewer occasions to murmur, and the government can say to the discontented: “The doors of the country are always open.”
The just and honorable administration of Your Excellency cannot deny the justice of our petition without bringing discredit upon itself. As no government should prevent its subjects from seeking elsewhere what they cannot find in their own country, much less would the Spanish Government, which permits the emigration of useful and active workers who abandon a free country and the lands that had belonged to their forefathers for thirty centuries to seek others in the madwoman of agitated South America! China and Japan, though they have been most despotic countries now concede on this point ample liberty to their inhabitants. We only ask to live and not disturb the tranquility of the government.
If Your Excellence conceded us this permission, as I have no doubt you would, for justice and honesty which seem to motivate all your acts cannot counsel you otherwise, I am going to the Philippines to pay respects to Your Excellency and to thank you and to sell our few properties, and take along with me persecuted friends and relatives.
In the hope that your courtesy will not deny me a reply, I pray God to preserve your life for the honor of Spain and the welfare of the Philippines.
I am, very respectfully your attentive and faithful servant who kisses your hand,
JOSE RIZAL
03-716 [Reformists]