Читать книгу The Philippine Islands - Ramon Reyes Lala - Страница 20

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Perhaps no feature of Colonial life is fraught with more evil and is so disgusting, as the process of the courts. The Supreme Court of the early years of the colony was modeled after the one in Majorca, and on several occasions when the Governorship has been left vacant, it has assumed the functions of the executive—pro-tem.

There are two Supreme Law Courts in the colony: one in Manila; the other in Cebú. The President of the one in Manila has a salary of $7,000 a year; that of Cebú, $6,000. There are also 41 Superior Courts, of various degrees of importance, the salary of the judges ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 per annum. The department of Justice alone costs the colony about $350,000 a year.

The dilatoriness of the courts has become proverbial. It is, in fact, years before a case can be brought to a close. Meantime, the litigant has been fleeced out of an amount perhaps a hundred times the value of the article under litigation. The islands are full of native pettifoggers from the law schools of Manila, who have learned too well the meaning of the Spanish mañana. A suit can never be considered as disposed of; for another judge, scenting the faint possibility of a fee, may again have it retried. Thus I have seen the lives of acquitted persons again brought into jeopardy by the meddlesome officiousness and the grasping greed of a new judge. He that goes to court in the Philippines must not do so without reckoning the cost.

A Business Street in Old Manila.

Commenting on this, a recent English traveler says: “Availing one self of the dilatoriness of the Spanish law, it is possible for a man to occupy a house, pay no rent, and refuse to quit on legal grounds during a couple of years or more.” A person who has not a cent to lose can persecute another by means of a trumped up accusation, until he is ruined by an “informacion de pobreza”—a declaration of poverty—which enables the persecutor to keep the case going as long as he chooses, without needing money for fees.