Such protection was not given the subjects of Spain, but still, with
all the laxity of the Spanish law, and even if all the charges had been
true, which they were far from being, no case was made out against
Doctor Rizal at his trial. According to the laws then in effect, he
was unfairly convicted and he should be considered innocent; for this
reason his life will be studied to see what kind of hero he was, and
no attempt need be made to plead good character and honest intentions
in extenuation of illegal acts. Rizal was ever the advocate of law,
and it will be found, too, that he was always consistently law-abiding.

Though they are in the Orient, the Filipinos are not of it. Rizal once
said, upon hearing of plans for a Philippine exhibit at a European
World's Fair, that the people of Europe would have a chance to see
themselves as they were in the Middle Ages. With allowances for the
changes due to climate and for the character of the country, this
statement can hardly be called exaggerated. The Filipinos in the
last half of the nineteenth century were not Orientals but mediaeval
Europeans--to the credit of the early Castilians but to the discredit
of the later Spaniards.

The Filipinos of the remoter Christian barrios, whom Rizal had in mind
particularly, were in customs, beliefs and advancement substantially
what the descendants of Legaspi's followers might have been had these
been shipwrecked on the sparsely inhabited islands of the Archipelago
and had their settlement remained shut off from the rest of the world.

Except where foreign influence had accidentally crept in at the
ports, it could truthfully be said that scarcely perceptible advance
had been made in three hundred years. Succeeding Spaniards by their
misrule not only added little to the glorious achievement of their