Note 43 — Chapter VIII · Did We Destroy a Republic?
Reading edition
On January 21, 1899, Aguinaldo sanctioned it and ordered that it should be “kept, complied with and executed in all its parts because it is the sovereign will of the Philippine people.”43 The constitution provided for a government of three coördinate powers, executive, legislative and judicial. Whether it provided for a form of government which would have succeeded in the Philippines was not determined by actual experience. It was never really put in force for war with the United States began in two weeks and the constitution must stand as the expression of the ideas of a certain group of educated natives rather than as the working formula for the actual conduct of the political life of a nation. One proof of this is the fact that not until June 8, 1899, were Aguinaldo’s decrees upon the registration of marriages and upon civil marriage, dated June 20,1898, revoked, and the provisions of the constitution concerning marriage put in effect.44