Still remained for his enemies the necessity of a semblance of charges upon which might be based the semblance of a trial. As a move of obvious desperation they now fell back upon the fantasy that La Liga Filipina was an illegal body and upon the precarious assertion that even if he had no connection with the Katipunan it had been formed as a result of his teachings. Upon these grounds and only these his life was to be sought; the first wholly untrue, the other tenuous and fraught with grave danger to the existence of any system of justice. As for La Liga Filipina, that was as seditious as an average board of trade, and as secret; it had no purposes but economic improvement and Filipino union. But the other charge was a different matter. If it could be held that Rizal’s teachings were such that they instigated an uprising he had always opposed, then any but a paralyzed dumb man could be held responsible for anything that happened anywhere. Suppose, for instance, a British newspaper to criticize severely the British prime minister, and the next day a man attempt the assassination of that minister. Who is to say, if this doctrine be sound, that the newspaper did not instigate the murderous attempt? It is apparent that if such a view were ever deemed valid an end would come to all free discussion or the pretense of a free press; no journal would dare to have an opinion about anything but the weather. The inhibition would never stop with the press; the most ordinary and the most useful activities of organized society would be put into jeopardy. Suppose, for instance, Rizal had opposed and denounced vivisection, and a weak-minded man anywhere, maddened by the loss of his pet dog, should assault the physician that had cut it to pieces. Who could say that Rizal under this doctrine was not the guilty assailant? Even supposing the man that did the deed never to have read Rizal nor heard of him, Rizal’s influence might have been transmitted through many persons and still be his. It is evident that at once we plunge into limitless possibilities for oppression and wrong. Suppose an American reformer to denounce some official grafter and a fanatic to shoot that grafter. The reformer might be hanged, and the assassin go free. Of all places in the civilized circuit the Philippine Islands were then the most perilous in which to introduce such a theory. In the Philippines an evil oligarchy maintained itself by terrorizing the population. Before its need and greed, justice was at best farcical. To admit that any man that criticized its methods might be held responsible for the acts of any revolutionist, murderer, or lunatic whatsoever was to place in the hands of the oligarchy the last and worst of weapons. It would need nothing else to render unassailable and unlimited its already despotic power. The courts would be a hangman’s noose.