for governments that the symptoms of sickness do for persons. Thus
government and individual alike, when advised in time of something
wrong with the system, can seek out and correct the cause before
serious consequences ensue. But the nation that represses honest
criticism with severity, like the individual who deadens his symptoms
with dangerous drugs, is likely to be lulled into a false security
that may prove fatal. Patriot toward Spain and the Philippines alike,
Rizal tried to impress this view upon the government of his day,
with fatal results to himself, and the disastrous effects of not
heeding him have since justified his position.

The very defenses of Old Manila illustrate how the Philippines have
suffered from lack of such devoted, honest and courageous critics as
José Rizal. The city wall was built some years later than the first
Spanish occupation to keep out Chinese pirates after Li Ma-hong
destroyed the city. The Spaniards sheltered themselves in the old
Tagalog fort till reënforcements could come from the country. No one
had ever dared to quote the proverb about locking the door after the
horse was stolen. The need for the moat, so recently filled in, was
not seen until after the bitter experience of the easy occupation of
Manila by the English, but if public opinion had been allowed free
expression this experience might have been avoided. And the free
space about the walls was cleared of buildings only after these same
buildings had helped to make the same occupation of the city easier,
yet there were many in Manila who foresaw the danger but feared to
foretell it.

Had the people of Spain been free to criticise the Spaniards' way of
waiting to do things until it is too late, that nation, at one time the
largest and richest empire in the world, would probably have been saved