Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1903-04-29
PHILIPPINE LADRoNIsM.
a Species of Land Piracy That Has
Always FIourished in. the
Malay Islands.

Ladronlsm. which may be defined as
brigandage, land piracy or freeboot-
ing, has always fourished in Malay
lands. The Cagayane is too timid, the
llocano too sensible and the Igorotte
too honest to take to it extensively or
seriously. The Tagalo has it in his
blood. Tradition, vanity, love of in
trigue, Impotence of restraint, love of
change and inability to conceive of and
to conform to impersonal laws, all
drive him to it. Not infrequently, and
especially during the last eight
troubled years, it has been the gateway
to preferment and power, civil and
military. The relationship that
ladronism, the Katipunan and the in
surrection had borne to each other
formed an interesting and curious
study, for which the data at hand is
still to meager to draw trustworthy
conclusion. In country where the
privilege of bearing arms cannot gen.
orally be granted, he who has one can
generally expect the respect of his
neighbors. Too often those who suffer-
heaviest from his cruelty and rapacity
most admire and protect him, says a
recent Washington report.
There are parts of Bulacan, Rial and
Cavite where there is reason to believe
that promising girl would prefer life
as the stolen mistress of ladrone to
that of the wife of man in the class
above her.
In these provinces the disintegra-
ton and rest following prolonged war
and the wide and unusual distribution
of arms incident thereto have aggra-
waited and given an apparently serious
turn to a disease that has always been
chronic.
But there are well-known and specific
remedies at hand which make it's
stamping out only question of time.
The revival of agriculture and COM
merce, the gradual gathering of arms,
ruthless pursuit of those in the field
and prompt and impartial application
of Justice to the survivors, proper and
uniform system of cattle registration,
and, above all, the severe punishment
of those of the upper or principal class
who initiate, connive at it or direct it
through motives of private gain or po-
litical power, will stopit.
Cavite, the mother of ladrones, is a
rich province, but whether it be in the
billy country along the Laguna-Batan-
ga border, the forest land about Palan-
qui and Paliparan, the rich paddles
along the bay or the plateau that sep
arate the latter from Laguna de Bay,
ladronism has existed always.
Whether it be that the Cavitenos are
less responsible, more vindictive and
less scrupulous than other Tagalos, or
that the education received from their
leaders makes them more susceptible
to vicious cant, sugar-coated with high
sounding words, or that nearness to a
metropolitan and not too righteous
seaport has corrupted them, or that
the notoriety and sometimes fame and
fortune gained by leaders sprung from
ladrone lOins,~ or all of these, combine
to bring it about, the title has been
we'll earned. This refers to the upper
or ruling class, not to the lower class,
who, predisposed to honesty and a
quiet life, follow blfndly and resigned
ly tie behests of their leaders. The
latter do the advising; the former take
the suffering. In the many petty Skin
mlshes that have occurred between the
constabulary and ladrones in Cavite
in the last year, not real leader
has exposed himself, but the killed and
wounded among the followers number
many.