"Who is Plaridel?" Rizal asked Ponce in July 1888. "If you write to Plaridel, tell him that I rejoice with the country and all good countrymen to see us all united into one compact whole so that we can help one another. . . Let this be our only password: For the good of our native land! The day that all think as he and we think, that day we shall have fulfilled our arduous mission, which is the formation of a Fili-pino Nation." Later: "Plaridel's pamphlet has made me very happy ; I can say in the language of Jacob: `now I can die content.' I am sure that the work of my dreams will be completed. Why don't we have a hundred Plaridels?"
Later still to Plaridel himself : "My most ardent desire is that, without our falling out or quarrelling among ourselves, six or seven Filipinos should grow to overshadow me so completely that no one would even remember me."<" Plaridel, Mariano Ponce, José Ma. Panganiban, Dominador Gómez, and, of course, López, the Lunas, the Paternos, Lete---more than six or seven were now in Europe and, although not one of them would ever really overshadow Rizal, and no one would ever make him forgotten, one or two or three at least would jostle him in his scholarly eminente and he would not like it as much as he so generously and sincerely hoped.
The best of them, his only real rival, was Marcelo Hilario del Pilar, who used the anagram of his sur-name for a pseudonym. Del Pilar is perhaps nearest of all his generation to the modern Filipino. Modern in his concept of political activity, modern in his belief in organization, modern in his skillful and efficient use of mass propaganda methods, he was the prototype of the modern politician, lawyer, newspaperman and civic leader. He was born on the 30th August 1850 in Bulakan of the Tagalog province of the same name. The real surname of the- family was Hilario ; del Pilar was added only in obedience to the famous decree of Clavería which added Rizal to the name of the Mercados. It is probable that noble blood ran in del Pilar's veins ; his mother was a Gatmaytan, and the prefix Gat in-dicated her descent from the ancient Tagalog aristocracy. He carne into early conflict with the friars. He was a fourth-year law student at the Dominican University when he quarrelled with the parish priest of San Miguel, Manila, over sorne baptismal fees. He seems to have been so deeply affected by this incident that he interrupted his studies for eight years, during which he worked as a government clerk. When he was finally admitted to the bar he was already thirty years old and married to his cousin, Marciana (Chanay) Hilario del Pilar.
Bef ore leaving the Philippines he had made Malolos, Bulakan, where he had established himself, a strong-hold of resistance against the friars. With the aid, significantly enough, of the Filipino coadjutor, del Pilar and his followers made life unendurable for one Spa-nish parish priest after another ; he matched the friars' traditional strategy of setting off the people and the government against each other, with the simple expedient of setting the liberal government of Terrero against the friars.
His politics were summed up in the title of one of his pamphlets: "Viva España! Viva el Rey! Viva el Ejército! Fuera los Frailes!" That is to say, "Long live Spain ! Long live the King! Long live the Army ! Throw out the friars !" His father had been three times mayor of Bulakan and del Pilar was used to the ways of provincial politics. He maneuvered to have one of his relatives, Manuel Crisóstomo, named mayor of Malolos and, when the latter was relieved on suspicion of subversive activities, to have another relative, Vicente Gatmaytan, appointed in his place. With the benevolent neutrality of the Spanish provincial governor, del Pilar harried the friar parish priests over the tax rolls, which depended on the parish register, and over Quiroga's controversial edict on public exe-quies for victims of contagious diseases.
It was he also who prepared eloquent denunciations and memorials to the Governor General and the Queen Regent herself. But the relief of Terrero and the assumption of office of the Marquess of Tenerife deprived del Pilar of his strongest alijes; a confidential investigation of the Malo-los situation was ordered, and on the 28th October 1888 del Pilar had hurriedly taken ship for Spain as the decree for his banishment from his native province was about to be signed.
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