Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

124 INDEPENDENCE CONGRESS PROCEEDINGS

can be no right and no security of life and property, hence there
is no tranquillity and social peace and the people are at the
mercy of the mightiest.
The causes of disturbances of the public order are many and
varied in all parts of the world. Such are unjust laws, corrup-
tion of the government or its officials, who fail to perform
their duty of properly directing the collective or national life
and of protecting the rights of the governed, especially those
of peacefully assembling and petitioning, and the individual
interests. It must not be forgotten that disturbances, insurrections, and revolutions, which are the immediate causes of
the disturbance of the public order, are the effects of other
original causes, such as despotism, injustice, excessive taxation,
the exploitation of the poor rrasses'by the favored classes, corruption in the administration of justice; in short, incompetency
on the part of those in authority to promote the public welfare
on the basis of justice and right.
There was not a little of this in the old times in our country,
and if we consider the tenacious resistance offered by various
elements of the population distributed throughout the vast
extent of the Archipelago, on islands and in sections cut off
from each other by the sea or mountain fastnesses, we shall
realize that the maintenance of public order in these Islands
presented many and great difficulties. That resistance, which
was passive in some sections for centuries, was constantly
active as regards the acknowledgment of the authority of Spain
on the part of the Mohammedan Filipinos inhabiting Mindanao, Sulu, Palawan, and islands adjacent to Mindanao and
Sulu. The piratical raids of the Moros in the territory inhabited by the Filipinos who recognized the sovereignty of Spain
and accepted the new civilization brought by it, were really
one of the greatest obstacles to the material and moral progress
of the Christian communities of the Philippines for over two
centuries, because these Moslems were powerful enemies which
the Christians who made up the principal mass of the population and were the nucleus around which the Philippine nation
was forming, had to combat in order that the public order
might be maintained: The history of those heroic days in
which the Filipinos who resolutely opposed foreign dominion'