Local government in the Philippine islands,

304 LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN THE PHILIPPINES

that even without any express provision of law to that effect, a judicial tribunal may and will declare void any
ordinance of a municipal council for whose adoption there
is no statutory authority, whenever the validity of such
an ordinance is involved in a cause before such a tribunal.
Our present law, therefore, does nothing more than to
provide a more expeditious and less expensive way of having the illegal ordinances of a municipal council annulled.
The people are assured of the validity of ordinances without resorting to the courts or spending their time and
money in litigations, unless of course they so desire.
While municipalities have great powers with reference to local affairs, the Insular authorities, however, exact from such governmental entities definite responsibility for all administrative acts and judges the efficiency
of municipal officials by the results. They hold the local
governments to business-like methods and to the standards of promptness and efficiency. It may generally be
stated that the surveillance now exercised is advantageous
rather than prejudicial and has proved to be a wholesome
preventive of lax and irregular methods.
When in 1919 the Wood-Forbes Mission came to the
Philippines to investigate conditions here, it was the privilege of the Philippine Columbian Association- whose
members are mostly young men educated in the United
States and abroad-to entertain the members thereof. The
Philippine Question was freely discussed and a suggestion
incidentally made by one of the club members that the
stability of the Philippine Government might well be
founded upon the successful administration of our local
governments by Filipino officials. And the question would
have been: Have they really succeeded? The same question may now be asked.
Our provinces and municipalities asseverate that,
tested by their accomplishments during the last two decades, their ability to conduct and maintain a responsible
and creditable government can not be challenged. The
mere fact that both during the life of the Philippine Commission and later with the cooperation of the direct representatives of the Filipino people-the Philippine Assembly-and still later under the Jones Law, with the
Philippine Senate and House of Representatives constituting the legislative bodies of the nation, laws have been
enacted extending popular control, is evidence that the Filipinos are not only eager, but ready to assume, and in