I was a member of the commission conference committee appointed to meet a similar committee from the assembly and discuss it. The assembly committee informed us at the outset that a sine qua non for the discussion of the bill was that we should agree to an amendment which would admit, without examination, to the work of making public land surveys Filipino so-called surveyors, known to be utterly incompetent, who could not make correct surveys under the most favourable circumstances. But this was not all. It was generally understood that an additional requirement was to be an amendment to the Judiciary Act providing for a number of new judges. The commission committee believed that they were unnecessary, and were asked for with a view to making places for political appointees. Needless to say, the Cadastral Survey Act failed in conference. In the session of 1912–1913 it finally passed, with practically all of these objectionable features eliminated, but it is at present much less useful than it might be for the reason that an act amending the Judiciary Act so as to provide more judges in the Court of Land Registration, where they are badly needed, instead of for courts of first instance, where no such necessity exists, was killed in the assembly.
As it will take the Court of Land Registration something like three years to finish hearing the cases already in hand, the preparation of a large additional number for it, as a result of the application of the Cadastral Act, will not materially help the present situation unless the number of its judges is increased. There is reason to fear that future attempts to bring this about will be met by demands that there be more judges of first instance, and that they be given jurisdiction in land cases, which should be decided by specially trained and qualified men.
One who examined only the laws actually passed by the legislature might gain the impression that the assembly had done good work. It should be remembered that 312 acts passed by that body have been disapproved by the commission. Had they become laws there would have been a very different story to tell. One hundred and seven acts passed by the commission have been disapproved by the assembly. A careful study of these two groups of acts will be found worth while, but in order to make the picture complete it should be supplemented by detailed consideration of the amendments to assembly bills made by the commission before they have been passed, which have sometimes involved the striking out of everything after title, and the insertion of practically new provisions. It should further be remembered that many really good measures, which have apparently originated as assembly bills, have been drafted by members of the commission, or under their direction, and then first presented in the assembly in order to facilitate their passage.
Had some one of the several gentlemen who have made brief visits to the Philippines and then expressed their views as to the fitness of the Filipinos for early independence devoted himself to the line of study above outlined, he would have gained valuable information on their present fitness to legislate, and we should perhaps now be profiting by the practical results of an experiment already made, instead of embarking on a new and dangerous one.
I cannot here do more than briefly call attention to the nature of a few of the bills killed by the commission and the assembly respectively. For convenience of reference, I refer to these bills by session and number.
First Legislature
Inaugural Session
Assembly Bill 117 was “An Act to extend the period within which provincial boards organized under the Provincial Government Act may remit the collection of the land tax in their respective provinces.”
This was the first of a very long series of assembly measures designed to abolish or reduce existing taxes, or indefinitely to postpone the time for their collection. Provincial boards, with a majority of their members elective, were very amenable to influence in the matter of “postponing” the collection of the land tax.
The per capita rate of taxation is lower in the Philippines than in any other civilized country. Money is badly needed for education, health work and the improvement of means of communication, and all of these measures were ill-advised.