The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912Blount, James H. (James Henderson)
History
The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912
Blount, James H. (James Henderson)
Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946; Philippines -- Politics and government -- 1898-1935
Just here I owe it to President Taft, under whose administration
as governor I served as a judge, as well as to myself, to explain
why I have so frequently put the word "civil" in quotations in
referring to the civil government of the Philippines. Broadly
speaking, if "civil" does not imply consent of the governed, it
at least distinctly negatives the idea of a bleeding, prostrate,
and deeply hostile people. And, in that the civil government of the
Philippines founded in 1901 did so negative the actual conditions it
was a kindly humbug. When you go around the country sending people
to the penitentiary by scores for political crimes, and then get
criticised afterwards for "subserviency" to the government you are
thus serving, you get a trifle sensitive about such criticism. Now
the core of the charges made in this country against the Philippine
judiciary in the early days was that they were parties to a humbug,
pliable servants of a government which was trying to produce at home
an incorrect impression of substantial absence of unwillingness on
the part of the governed. I am very sure that the five ex-officers of
the volunteer army above named, who went from the army to the bench,
never did, by act or word, lend themselves to the idea that there was
any "consent" on the part of the governed. Those of us who had been
in Cuba with General Wood had but a little while previously observed
there a civil regime under a military name. We were now, in the
Philippines, serving a military regime under a civil name. We had all
of us doubtless--if there was an exception it is immaterial--served
on military commissions. We therefore felt, without immodesty,
that we could deal out to insurrectos and their political cousins,
the brigands, more even-handed justice, as a military commission
of one, than a board of several officers, booted, spurred, and
travel-stained from some recent man-hunt. Turning, however, from
the more inconspicuous objects of Professor Willis's attacks, [378]
the American trial judges in the Philippines in the pioneer days, to
the now wide-looming historic personage who was his real objective,
I was asked at a public meeting in Boston, rather significantly,
by one of the most eminent lawyers in this country, Mr. Moorfield
Storey, formerly president of the American Bar Association, whether
or not there had been attempts in the Philippines, while I was there,
to make the judiciary subservient to the executive. My answer was, "No,
the lawyers who have been in charge of the Philippine Government have
never been guilty of any unprofessional conduct." But the distinguished
Boston barrister above referred to has a nephew who is now and has been
since 1909, Governor of the Philippines--and who, before he went out
there was a representative of Big Business in Boston--Governor Forbes,
and I have no idea that any judge who during that time has rendered
any decision of importance he did not like has been promoted to the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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