Rizals friends and admirers praised with justifiable pride the Noli Me Tnagere and its author , but

his enemies were equally

loud and bitter in attacking and condemning the same . Perhaps no other work or writing of another Filipino author has , up
to this day, aroused as much acrimonious debate not only among people but also among reactionary foreigner as Rizal’s
Noli Me Tangere . In the Philippines, the hero’s novel was attacked and condemned by a faculty committee of a Manila
University and by the permanent censorship commiccion in 1887 . The committee said that it found the book “heretical,
impious, and Scandalous to the religious order, unpatriotic and subversive to public order, and libelous to the
government of Spain and to its political policies in these islands” while the commission recommended that the
importation , reproduction , and circulation of this permicious book in the islands be absolutely prohibited .
Coming down to our time , during the congressional discussion and hearings on the Rizal ( or Noli-fili) bill in
1956, the proponents and opponents of the bill also engaged in a bitter and long-drawn-out debate that finally ,
resulted in the enactment of a compromise measure , now known as the aforementioned Republic Act No. 1425
or the Rizal Law.

The attacks on Rizals first novel were not confined to the Philippines but were also staged in the Spanish capital.
There, senator Fernando Vida, Deputy and ex-General Luis M. de Pando, and Premier Praxedes Maieo Sagasta were
among those who unjustify lambasted and criticized Rizal and his Noli Me Tangere in the two chambers of the
Spanish Cortes in 1888 and 1889. It is comfortin to learn , however, that about 13 years later, Congressman Henry
Allen Cooper of Wisconcin delivered a eulogy of Rizal and even recited the martyr’s Ulimo Pensamiento on the
floow of the U.S House of Representative To prove the capacity of the Filipinos for self-government. He said in
part. “It has been said that if the American institutions had done nothing else than furnish to the world the character
of George washington, That alone would entitle them to the respect of mankind . So, Sir, I say to all those who
denounce the Filipinos indiscriminately as barbarians and savages, without the possibility of a civilized future, that
this despised race proved itself entitle to their respect and to the respect of mankind when it furnished to the world
the character of Jose Rizal . The result of this appeal of Representative Cooper was the approval of what is popularly
known as the Philippine Bill pf 1902