(Translation)
To the Powers:—
The Revolutionary Government of the Philippines, on being constituted, explained, by means of a message of the 23rd June last, the real causes of the Philippine Revolution, and went on to show that this popular movement is the result of those laws which regulate the life of a nation ardently desiring progress, and the attainment of perfection by the only possible road of liberty.
The Revolution, at the present moment, is predominant in the provinces of Cavite, Batangas, Mindoro, Tayabas, La Laguna, Mórong, Bulacan, Bataán, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Tárlac, Pangasinán, La Union, La Infanta, and Zambales, and is besieging the capital, Manila. In these provinces the most perfect order and tranquillity reign; they are administered by the authorities elected by themselves in conformity with the decrees of the 18th and 23rd of June last.
Moreover, the Revolution has about 9,000 prisoners of war, who are treated with the same consideration observed by cultured nations, agreeably with the sentiments of humanity, and a regular organized army of more than 30,000 men fully equipped on a war footing.
Under these circumstances the representatives of the townships comprised within the provinces above mentioned, interpreting the popular will of those who have elected them, have proclaimed the Independence of the Philippines, and requested the Revolutionary Government to petition and solicit of the foreign Powers an acknowledgment of their belligerency and independence, under the conviction that the Philippine nation has arrived at that state in which it can and ought to govern itself. As a consequence, the annexed document has been signed by the said representatives. Wherefore the undersigned, using the faculties reserved to him as President of the Revolutionary Government of the Philippines, and in the name and representation of the Philippine nation, implores the protection of all the Powers of the civilized world, and beseeches them formally to recognize the belligerency, the Revolutionary Government, and the Independence of the Philippines, because these Powers are the bulwarks designated by Providence to maintain the equilibrium amongst nations by sustaining the weak and restraining the ambitions of the more powerful, in order that the most faultless justice may illuminate and render effective indefinitely the progress of humanity.
Given under my hand and seal in Bacoor, in the Province of Cavite, this 6th day of August 1898.
Emilio Aguinaldo,
The President of the Revolutionary Government.
The accompanying Act of Independence, dated August 1, 1898, and couched in the flowery language of the preceding edicts and proclamations, was signed by those Filipinos who had been appointed local presidents of the townships in the provinces referred to. The allusion to “the ambitions of the more powerful” could well be understood to signify an invitation to intervene in and counteract Americaʼs projects, which might, hereafter, clash with the Aguinaldo partyʼs aspirations. At the same time a group of agitators, financed by the priests in and out of the Islands, was straining every nerve to disseminate false reports and create discord between the rebels and the Americans, in the hope of frustrating their coalition. But, even then, with a hostile host before Manila, and the city inevitably doomed to fall, the fate of Spanish sovereignty depended more on politicians than on warriors.