The Philippines: Past and Present Volume II Part 27

"It was to be carried out in conjunction with the towns of Imus and others of the province; the people were to enter by the Porta Vaga (the main gate of Cavite) and uniting into groups, were to a.s.sault, kill and rob all the Spaniards. The deponent was in charge of this affair. The jailer of the prison was to distribute daggers among the prisoners and then release them. When the plot was discovered, some of these arms had been distributed. The object of the rebellion was to a.s.sa.s.sinate all the Spaniards, then to rape the women, and cut their throats, as well as those of their children, even the smallest." [140]

On June 26, 1896, there was issued an order for an uprising in Manila, which contained the following provisions, among others:--

"Fourth. While the attack is being made on the Captain-General and other Spanish authorities, the men who are loyal will attack the convents and behead their infamous inhabitants. As for the riches contained in said convents, they will be taken over by the commissioners appointed by this G. R. Log. for the purpose, and, none of our brothers will be permitted to take possession of that which justly belongs to the treasury of the G. N. F. [Grand Philippine Nation?--Tr.].

"Fifth. Those who violate the provisions of the preceding paragraph will be considered malefactors, and will be subjected to exemplary punishment by this G. R. Log. [Grand Regional Lodge?].

"Sixth. On the following day the brothers designated will bury the bodies of all the hateful oppressors, in the field of Bagumbayan, as well as those of their wives and children. Later a monument commemorating the independence of the G. N. F. (Grand Philippine Nation?) will be erected on that site.

"Seventh. The bodies of the friars will not be buried, but will be burned in just payment for the crimes which during their lives they committed against the n.o.ble Filipinos, for three centuries of hateful domination." [141]

As much is said, in the very numerous orders for a.s.sa.s.sinations, of trials by courts of most summary procedure, especial importance attaches to Taylor's statement that there is an almost complete absence of records of trials or legal proceedings among the two hundred and fifty thousand doc.u.ments on which his work was based. He says that "there are probably less than twenty-five records of trials among these papers, and not above one or two records of military courts of summary procedure. Law was the will of the official who would force obedience to his desire. If he wanted to kill he killed." [142]

General MacArthur is credited by Blount with the following statement:--

"The cohesion of Filipino society in behalf of insurgent interests is most emphatically ill.u.s.trated by the fact that a.s.sa.s.sination, which was extensively employed, was generally accepted as a legitimate expression of insurgent governmental authority. The individuals marked for death would not appeal to American protection, although condemned exclusively on account of supposed pro-Americanism." [143]

As a matter of fact, plenty of people appealed to the Americans for protection and got it. I have seen doc.u.ment after doc.u.ment each recommending some individual to American officers everywhere as worthy of protection, and as needing it on account of services rendered to Americans. Relative to this matter, Taylor says:--

"Among the papers of the insurgents there are a few letters to American officers asking for protection against the insurgents. They represent a protest against conditions which were rapidly becoming unbearable; but most of them must have been sent without copies, for in case they fell into the hands of the guerillas they would have served as death warrants for the men who signed them. From early in 1900, they were much more frequent all over the archipelago than the number which have survived, either in the official records of the American army in the Philippines, or among the papers of the insurgents, would lead the investigator to believe. Those which were sent to the commanders of American detachments were not kept as a rule, for a small detachment has few records. As early as March, 1900, the head of the town of Pa.s.si, Panay, asked American protection against robbers and insurgents." [144]

General MacArthur had a fixed idea that all Filipinos were against us, but he was wrong. [145]

In very many cases our efforts to furnish protection were necessarily futile. It is easy enough to protect a town from an open attack. It is often excessively difficult to protect an individual against an a.s.sa.s.sin who proffers him one hand in a.s.sumed friends.h.i.+p and stabs him with the other.

We shall never know how many men were murdered in accordance with the orders which I have cited, and other similar ones.

On February 10, 1900, General P. Garcia wrote to General Isidoro Torres advising him to inform the inhabitants of Bulacan, among whom it was understood that the Americans were about to establish munic.i.p.al governments, "of what occurred in the Island of Negros where two hundred men have been shot and forty more have been cast into the water for having accepted the American sovereignty, and because they were suspected of not being adherents of the cause of the independence of our country." [146]

In reviewing the sentence of the Taytay murderers, General Adna R. Chaffee, who, as the ranking military officer in the Philippines, was closely in touch with the situation, made the following statement:--

"The number of peaceful men who have been murdered in these islands at the instigation of the chiefs, while impracticable of exact determination, is yet known to be so great that to recount them would const.i.tute one of the most horrible chapters in human history. With respect to these chiefs, the commanding general has, therefore, no other recourse than to invoke the unrelenting execution of the law upon them and to appeal to the intelligent and educated among the Filipino people to aid him by renewed efforts to end a reign of terror of which their own people are the helpless victims." [147]

Taylor has made the following summary of the facts:--

"The justice of the United States was slow in its course; witnesses had to be examined, and before a notorious criminal could be punished it had to be proved that he had committed some particular crime. Unless the crime was proved to the satisfaction of a military commission by witnesses, the greater part of whose testimony had to be translated into English from some native language by an interpreter, who was almost never an American, the man whom a whole village knew to be an a.s.sa.s.sin would escape punishment and would return to avenge himself upon those who had denounced him. The justice of Aguinaldo was a different matter. The Americans might hang for murder, but he would bury alive for serving them. The Americans might send a man to prison for burning a town, only to release him when an error was found in the proceedings. There were no errors in the proceedings of the guerillas. There was usually no summoning of witnesses, no slow taking of testimony and no careful search for laches which would invalidate the finding of the court and inure to the benefit of the accused. It was sufficient for some native to be denounced as in the employment of the Americans, or as an agent, or as a civil officer under the United States, for a summons to be issued for his appearance before a court of summary procedure, which was a court in name only; or for a mandate to be sent ordering that 'the serviceable method of dukut was to be employed in his case.' That meant that he was kidnapped and murdered, usually after a priest had received his confession; or that he was sent back to the town hamstrung and with his tongue out, as a warning to the people that the justice of Aguinaldo was sharp and that his arm was long." [148]

The blood of these men cries out against those who would deceive the American people into believing that the Filipinos were ever united in loyalty toward the Filipino Republic or the leaders who made murder a governmental agency in the Philippine Islands.

Most of the men who wrote the orders and perpetrated the acts which I have cited are alive and active to-day. Were independence granted, they would rule again the country that they ruled before. Is there any reason for believing that their warped intelligences have straightened, or their hard hearts softened? Would the United States care to a.s.sume responsibility for any government which they could set up or would maintain?

CHAPTER XXVII

THE PHILIPPINE LEGISLATURE

From September 1, 1900, to October 16, 1907, the Philippine Commission was the sole legislative body. The Act of Congress of July 1, 1902, temporarily providing for the administration of the affairs of civil government in the Philippine Islands, had provided for the taking of a census after the insurrection should have ceased and a condition of general and complete peace should have been certified to by the commission. It had provided further that two years after the publication of the census, if such condition of peace had continued in the territory not inhabited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes, and was certified to the President by the commission, the President should direct the commission to call, and the commission should call, a general election for the choice of delegates to a popular a.s.sembly to be known as the Philippine a.s.sembly, and that after said a.s.sembly should convene and organize all the legislative power theretofore conferred on the commission in all that part of the islands not inhabited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes should be vested in a legislature consisting of two houses, the Philippine Commission and the Philippine a.s.sembly.

The first of the certificates required of the commission was issued on September 8, 1902. President Roosevelt on September 23, 1902, issued an order for the taking of the census.

On March 28, 1905, Governor-General Wright proclaimed the publication of the census. On March 28, 1907, the commission issued the second of the certificates required of it. [149]

The following day a cablegram was received from the President directing the commission to call a general election for the choice of delegates, and on March 30, 1907, the commission adopted the necessary resolution calling such election to be held on July 30, 1907, in accordance with an election law previously pa.s.sed on January 9 of the same year. This law provided for eighty-one delegates proportioned among thirty-five provinces according to population, except that each province ent.i.tled to representation was allotted at least one delegate, no matter how few people it might have. Cebu, the most populous of all, was given seven. The Mountain Province, the Moro Province, Nueva Vizcaya and Agusan were left without representation because of the predominance of Moros or other non-Christians among their people. On April 1, 1907, the governor-general issued a proclamation embodying the resolution of the commission.

The election was duly held, and on October 16, 1907, the first session of the Philippine Legislature was opened, under authority of the President, by Mr. Taft, then secretary of war, who had returned to the Islands for this and other purposes.

The action of the commission in issuing its second certificate has been criticized on account of conditions which arose subsequent to the publication of the census, in Cavite, La Laguna and Samar. These conditions were referred to in the commission resolution. There was no desire to conceal or misrepresent them. As we have already seen, the trouble in Samar was stirred up by abuses among the hill people. It has been claimed that they were not members of any non-Christian tribe. There are a limited number of genuine wild people in Samar, but the great majority of the so-called pulajanes were in reality remontados [150] or the descendants of remontados.

In La Laguna and Cavite disorder caused by wandering ladrone bands at one time had become so serious that it was deemed advisable temporarily to suspend the writ of habeaus corpus and to authorize the reconcentration of the law-abiding inhabitants of certain regions to the end that they might be adequately protected and to make it easier to distinguish between good citizens, and thieves and murderers.

Whether these occurrences were or were not to be considered as of such a nature as to render it impossible to certify that a condition of "general and complete peace, with recognition of the authority of the United States" had continued to exist in the Philippine territory not occupied by Moros or other non-Christians, was a matter of judgment, and the commission exercised the best judgment it possessed.

During the Spanish days ladronism had always been rampant, affecting every province in the islands and being especially bad in the immediate vicinity of Manila. When we issued our certificate we had little hope of promptly ridding the archipelago of ladrones, as has since been done. On the contrary we expected that a certain amount of ladronism would continue for many years. We did not think that it should be considered public disorder within the meaning of the act of Congress. Furthermore, we were all anxious to encourage the Filipinos and to give them a chance to show what they could do. I for one hoped that by this act of liberality we might win the good-will, and secure the real cooperation, of many of the Filipino politicians. It is always easy to look back and see one's mistakes. I now know that nothing could have been more futile than the hope of gaining the good-will of the men with whom we were dealing by any concessions whatsoever, yet the attempt was worth making. It is the wild men in the hills and the good old taos [151] in the lowland plains who appreciate and are grateful for fair treatment when they realize that they are receiving it.

The politicians of the present day are a hungry lot. The more they are fed, the more their appet.i.tes grow, and the wider their voracious maws open. Most of them are without grat.i.tude or appreciation, and regard concessions as evidences of weakness on the part of those who grant them. Philippine officials and lawmakers might as well make up their minds to do what is right because it is right, and let it go at that. By the same token they should refrain from doing what is questionable in the hope that the good-will resulting will more than counterbalance the possible evil effect of doubtful measures.

It cannot be denied that the issuance by the commission of its certificate of March 30, 1907, was a somewhat doubtful measure, involving a rather strained construction of the words "general and complete peace, with recognition of the authority of the United States"

in the Act of Congress of July 1, 1902. I am now firmly of the opinion that in thus giving the Filipinos the benefit of the doubt we erred, with the result that the Philippine a.s.sembly came at least ten years too soon. Its creation in 1907 has resulted in imposing a heavy financial burden on the country for which there has been no adequate compensating return.

In the Philippine Legislature neither house enjoys any special privileges, and either may originate any bill which the legislature is authorized to pa.s.s. The a.s.sembly has been characterized as "a harmless little debating society" and the government of the Philippines has been called "a toy government" because it was claimed that no real powers were given to the lower house. The commission has exclusive power to legislate for certain non-Christian territory. In all other legislative matters the a.s.sembly and the commission have equal power. The pa.s.sage of legislation requires affirmative action by both houses, a condition which is certainly sufficiently common in legislative bodies composed of two houses, and one that does not ordinarily evoke criticism.

Of late the a.s.sembly has claimed for itself the exclusive right to initiate appropriation bills, but there is not a vestige of legal authority for such a claim, and even the so-called "Jones Bill" does not confer such right on the lower house. It shares, with the upper house, one power of deadly effectiveness. It can prevent legislation on any subject whatsoever. It has not hesitated to employ this power, when occasion arose, to obstruct the pa.s.sage of many important and desirable measures, either in the hope of being able in the end to make a trade and thus securing the pa.s.sage of acts of more than doubtful utility, or because of a purpose to prevent the enactment of laws dealing with the matters in question.

The most striking instance of the blocking of important legislation by the a.s.sembly is afforded by its action in tabling four anti-slavery acts pa.s.sed by the commission at successive legislative sessions. This matter has already been fully discussed. [152]

The history of the Cadastral Survey Act affords an example of the holding up by the a.s.sembly of a measure of undoubted and undenied utility in order to attempt to force the pa.s.sage of positively vicious acts.

The case of the would-be landowner who has occupied land for years under such conditions that he could have completed an unperfected t.i.tle to it, and who finally desires for one reason or another to do so, has been a rather hard one, as the cost of the necessary survey is chargeable to him and when a survey party has to be sent a long distance to measure a little tract of land the ratio of such cost to the value of the land is often very high. Cost of surveys can be materially reduced if all the privately owned land parcels in a given area are surveyed consecutively, and this procedure has the further great advantage of effectively delimitating the public domain in the area in question.

In the interest of small property owners, advantage has been taken of provisions of the Public Land Act which make it possible to compel the survey of private lands under certain conditions in cases of doubt as to owners.h.i.+p. As soon as the people concerned could be made to understand our object in doing this they became enthusiastic about it, but the legal procedure authorized was by no means adequate or satisfactory, and there was great need of the pa.s.sage of a carefully drafted Cadastral Survey Act providing the necessary legal machinery for accomplis.h.i.+ng the desired end with the least possible delay and at the lowest possible expense, and providing further for the distribution of such expense between the insular, provincial and munic.i.p.al governments and the property owners. All are interested parties, the insular government because it learns what land in a given region belongs to the public domain; the provincial and munic.i.p.al governments because the collection of taxes is facilitated, and accurate maps of towns and barrios are made.

Such an act was pa.s.sed by the commission. It was clearly and indisputably designed expressly for the benefit of poor Filipinos. No legitimate objection could be made to it. The treatment accorded it by the Philippine a.s.sembly conclusively demonstrates the irresponsibility of that body, and its unfitness to deal with great questions which vitally affect the common people. Realizing that the commission, and especially the governor-general, were earnestly desirous of securing its pa.s.sage, the a.s.sembly refused to pa.s.s it. It was duly reintroduced at the next session of the legislature.