This amnesty celebration, like most things attempted by Filipinos alone, turned but a fiasco, the speeches which were to be delivered on the occasion not being in any way in keeping with the oath of allegiance taken by the speakers. The speeches contemplated were in advocation of practically the same thing as that for which the rebels had been keeping up an armed struggle, and so, when the U. S. Commission was invited by Pedro Paterno to be present thereat, it naturally was unable to accept the invitation. The whole celebration was an abortive attempt on the part of its organizers to antagonize the Military and Civil authorities. Mr. Taft, as president of the Commission, at first accepted the invitation extended, supposing the speeches to be given, had been censored by the proper authorities, at that time the military; but on finding that this was not so, he declined in the name of the other members of the Commission, and thus avoided the unpleasantness of being present at a banquet at which both the Military and the Civil authorities would be insulted and the Government of the U. S. defied. On the 28th of July 1900, the day of the banquet, Mr. Taft on behalf of his fellow Commissioners, addressed a letter to Pedro Paterno on the subject. See Appendix J. Pedro Paterno was one of those who for a considerable time refused to take the oath of allegiance; with him were others, Mabini in particular. Maximo Paterno had received from Spain the Cross of Knight of the Royal and American Order of Isabela La Católica. Note 58. And others: Among the names mentioned in many of the documents I have consulted on the subject of the trials of those guilty of treason, I have frequently come across those of Linjap (Mariano), Chidian (Telesforo), Yangco (Luis R.), and others. Of this latter Domingo Franco was asked during his trial, if Luis R. Yangco had assisted at any reunion of the compromisarios, to which he replied that he (Yangco) had not assisted at any session (fols. 1381-1382). As I have already remarked in another note, many of those charged with complicity in the affairs of the revolt were latter on proved to be innocent. That considerable number of the wealthy natives and half-castes sympathised more or less with the idea of greater liberality in government, is undoubtedly true, but that they extended their sympathies to the aims of the hordes of cut-throats led by Bonifacio is absurd.