He who of old would rend the oak,
Dream'd not of the rebound;
Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke
Alone--how look'd he round?
BYRON.


Reason and moderation in the person of Rizal scorned and banished,
the spirit of Jean Paul Marat and John Brown of Ossawatomie rises
to the fore in the shape of one Andres Bonifacio, warehouse porter,
who sits up o' nights copying all the letters and documents that he
can lay hands on; composing grandiloquent manifestoes in Tagalog;
drawing up magnificent appointments in the names of prominent
persons who would later suffer even to the shedding of their life's
blood through his mania for writing history in advance ; spelling
out Spanish tales of the French Revolution; babbling of Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity; hinting darkly to his confidants that the
President of France had begun life as a blacksmith. Only a few days
after Rizal was so summarily hustled away, Bonifacio gathered together
a crowd of malcontents and ignorant dupes, some of them composing
as choice a gang of cutthroats as ever slit the gullet of a Chinese
or tied mutilated prisoners in ant hills, and solemnly organized
the Kataastaasang Kagalang-galang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan,
"Supreme Select Association of the Sons of the People," for the
extermination of the ruling race and the restoration of the Golden
Age. It was to bring the people into concerted action for a general
revolt on a fixed date, when they would rise simultaneously, take
possession of the city of Manila, and--the rest were better left to