The year is 1844. A pair of Spaniards, Don Ramon Alonso de las Heras and Don Pascual del Castillo, arrive in the Philippines. They have with them almost nothing, virtually penniles on their arrival. Soon they get employed, getting appointed as, and thus, starting to discharge the functions of, confidential officials in the Spanish colonial government on the islands, their office being with the general intendancy in the army and treasury of the government.
Fast-forward three months later, they become wealthy, remitting huge amounts of money back to the Peninsula, i.e., in their native Spain.
In the latter part of the year, a huge scandal breaks out. The pair’s names are dragged in the controversy along with another Spaniard, Don Felix D’Olbaverriague y Blanco, who is a private individual.
The prosecutor at the Audiencia de Manila files five criminal charges against the pair and D’Olbaverriague (who has acted in cahoots with them), alleging the following:
(a) their receipt of a thousand pesos from the chief magistrate of Tondo so that he could continue collecting poll tax from the Chinese laborers,
(b) their receipt of 720 ounces of gold from a private individual so that he could be given priority in government payments,
(c) their receipt of about 15% from the government payments given to Spaniard who is in the military,
(d) their receipt of 1,000 pesos, after their demand, from a private individual who has a pending case in the court of the intendancy, and
(e) their receipt of about 1,100 pesos from two people who then got their promotion to become officers in the office of the superintendency.
So alleges the public prosecutor: the totality of the amount or monetary value arising from the acts of thievery and robbery committed by other criminals throughout the year 1844 does not even come close to the total amount of money pocketed by these trio of bribe-takers and racketeers.
The outraged public prosecutor thus asks the Audiencia de Manila that these accused men be punished, compelling them to return back what they have taken equivalent to four times the amount involved plus legal costs, then imprisonment for four years, and if they fail to so return the money then the prison term be lengthened to eight years, and as to the pair of government officials, they should be ousted from their office and pertually disqualified to any other government post.
So a newspaperman wryly makes the following observation:
It pains us deeply that men who are well-born have committed crimes so unworthy of their Spanish name, crimes that reveal the horrendous havoc they have wreaked on our customs by those political innovators who, with their perverse values, are causing the virtues which the most beautified Iberian Peninsula possesses to disappear.
And what is the denouement of this scandalous state of affairs?
a life observer 