Governor Smith—1907–9
Oh, but Honey, dis rabbit dess ’bleeged ter climb dis tree.
Uncle Remus.
“On September 20, 1906,” says the Report of the Philippine Commission for 1907,[1] “the resignation of the Hon. Henry Clay Ide as Governor-General became effective, and on that date the Hon. James F. Smith was inaugurated as Governor-General of the Philippine Islands.”
The year 1907 will be known most prominently to the future history of our Far Eastern possession as the year of the opening of the Philippine Assembly, which momentous event occurred on October 16th. But in the departments both of Politics and Psychology it should be known as the year of the Great Certificate. The Great Certificate was a certificate signed by certain eminent gentlemen on March 28, 1907, which made the preposterous affirmation that a condition of general and complete peace had prevailed throughout the archipelago, except among the non-Christian tribes, for the two years immediately preceding. Taken in its historic setting, that certificate can by no possibility escape responsibility, as “accessory after the fact” at least, to the pretence that a similar condition had prevailed ever since President Roosevelt’s final war-whoop of July 4, 1902, published to the American troops in the Islands on the day named. That war-whoop, it will be remembered, was in the form of a presidential proclamation congratulating General Chaffee and “the gallant officers and men under his command” on some “two thousand combats, great and small,” and declaring, in effect, that Benevolent Assimilation was at last triumphantly vindicated, and that opposition to American rule was at an end. The certificate of March 28, 1907, appears at pages 47–8 of the Report of the Philippine Commission for 1907, part 1. If we consider what is now going on in the Islands as “modern” history, and the days of the early fighting as “ancient” history, this certificate will serve as the connecting link between the two. It furnishes the key-note to all that had happened during the American occupation prior to 1907, and the key-note of all that has happened since. Therefore, though somewhat long, it is deemed indispensable to clearness to submit here in full the text of
THE GREAT CERTIFICATE OF 1907
Whereas the census of the Philippine Islands was completed and published on the twenty-seventh day of March, nineteen hundred and five, which said completion and publication of said census was, on the twenty-eighth day of March, nineteen hundred and five, duly published and proclaimed to the people by the governor-general of the Philippine Islands with the announcement that the President of the United States would direct the Philippine Commission to call a general election for the choice of delegates to a popular assembly, provided that a condition of general and complete peace with recognition of the authority of the United States should be certified by the Philippine Commission to have continued in the territory of the Philippine Islands for a period of two years after said completion and publication of said census; and
Whereas since the completion and publication of said census there have been no serious disturbances of the public order save and except those caused by the noted outlaws and bandit chieftains, Felizardo and Montalon, and their followers in the provinces of Cavite and Batangas, and those caused in the provinces of Samar and Leyte by the non-Christian and fanatical pulahanes resident in the mountain districts of the said provinces and the barrios contiguous thereto; and
Whereas the overwhelming majority of the people of said provinces of Cavite, Batangas, Samar, and Leyte have not taken part in said disturbances and have not aided or abetted the lawless acts of said bandits and pulahanes; and
Whereas the great mass and body of the Filipino people have, during said period of two years, continued to be law-abiding, peaceful, and loyal to the United States, and have continued to recognize and do now recognize the authority and sovereignty of the United States in the territory of said Philippine Islands: Now, therefore, be it