Mabini made this vicious and cruel order the subject of bitter protest, writing to Aguinaldo, on March 6, 1899, a letter in which he says that Luna has grossly exceeded his powers, and making the very pertinent inquiry "if an educated man [117] can hardly understand his duties, how will the uneducated one understand his?" He suggests that it would be better to remove Luna. [118] It does not appear that this order was ever modified. I might furnish many similar data, but enough of orders. Any one who is not convinced by these extracts from the official Insurgent records that murder was a duly authorized governmental agency under the Philippine "Republic" is not amenable to reason or influenced by incontrovertible facts. But were these brutal instructions carried out? They were, indeed, with a ferocity and a cold-blooded barbarity which make one shudder. Fortunate indeed was the man who was really shot, like the presidente of Nagcarlan, [119] and it made no difference if innocent bystanders were wounded or killed as well. One of the common methods of procedure with victims of "dukut" was to bury them alive. A number of individuals suffered this fate at Taytay, near Manila. They were taken out at night, made to kneel beside graves already dug, hit over the head with an iron bar and knocked into their last resting places and the earth was shovelled in on to them. They were confessed by a native priest, and people of the town were required to stand by and see them meet their end. An American lawyer who afterward defended some of their murderers when the latter were apprehended and brought to trial, told me that among other grewsome details furnished by his clients, who shamelessly admitted to him their guilt, were the following:-- A victim who watched the murder of others, while awaiting his turn, did not want to be struck on the head and begged that as a special favor the blow from the iron bar be omitted in his case. His request was granted, whereupon he climbed into his grave, lay down, covered his face with his handkerchief, and directed his murderers to proceed. I could cite numerous specific cases in which persons were buried alive, and will do so if my word is called in question. [120] If not, enough of this! Burning alive was occasionally resorted to. [121] More frequently, the victims had their eyes put out, their tongues cut out, and were then turned loose to shift for themselves. Justice Johnson, [122] of the Philippine Supreme Court, has described to me a case in which four policemen of a town which had received him in a friendly manner, were served in this way, and the procedure was a comparatively common one. Taylor gives the following account of certain incidents which occurred in Ilocos Sur:--