The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
History
The Philippines: Past and Present (Volume 2 of 2)
Worcester, Dean C. (Dean Conant)
Philippines; Philippines -- History -- 1898-1946
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 passed 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 entitled
to representation was allotted at least one delegate, no matter how
few people it might have. Cebú, 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 pulájanes 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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