Note 4 — Chapter VIII · Did We Destroy a Republic?

Blount truly says4 that the educated Filipinos, admittedly very few in number, absolutely control the masses. He adds5 that presidentes of pueblos are as absolute bosses as is Murphy in Tammany Hall, and that the towns taken collectively constitute the provinces. The first statement is true, and the second, which is tantamount to a declaration that the presidentes control every square foot of the provinces and every man in them, is not so far from the truth as it might be. I have been old-fashioned enough to retain the idea that a republic is “a state in which the sovereign power resides in the whole body of the people, and is exercised by representatives elected by them.”