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MOST EXCELLENT SIR:

Teodora Alonzo de Rizal, resident of Calamba and native of Sta. Cruz, Manila, to Your Excellency, with due respect and reverence, has the honor to state:

That her son José Rizal y Mercado having been sentenced to death by the Council of War for the crime attributed to him of rebellion against the Mother Country, a crime, which in conscience and at most in justice has not been proven in a conclusive manner; whereas the absolute innocence of her unfortunate son is evident to the one who has the honor to resort to Your Excellency; therefore, she is constrained to entreat your kind heart and upright justice to deign to turn your glance on and consider the tribulations of an unhappy mother, who in the last years of her life and at the advanced age of seventy-one, is going to have the greatest and the most poignant of sorrows, which is that of witnessing the death of her unfortunate son, a victim only of fatality and unfortunate circumstances which have surrounded him.

Most Excellent Sir, my unfortunate son José Rizal, suffering with humility and resignation his banishment by order of the Superior Authority of this Archipelago, appears to me in an evident manner as innocent of the grave crime imputed to him and for which he has been sentenced to death. It is not my intention, Most Excellent Sir, either to censure or question in any way the legality of the decision of a fair Court, but on account of unfortunate and fatal circumstances, it has apparently made my unhappy son responsible for the most infamous of crimes, when in fact he is innocent.

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This is another Rizal document presented by the Spanish government to the Philippine government in 1953. See letter No. 223. ante.