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.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SECTION 211

The form of government adopted by the new country matters little. The different forms of government which history
records have their respective merits and disadvantages: the
Monarchy, the government of the past, may easily change into
despotism; the Aristocracy, the government of the present, may
degenerate into oligarchy; and the Democracy, that luminous
form of the government of the future on which depend the
most legitimate hopes of all the countries, may degenerate and
change into ochlocracy, still more dangerous than despotism,
being in the hands of inexpert men, led by hatred and thirsty
of revenge.
It may be said, however, that the most stable, happy, and
durable government which may be established in a definite'
country is that which has for its basis the free-will, the complete
liberty which all countries should have of choosing the sovereignty to which they wish to subject themselves and the form
of government which they wish to adopt; in accordance with
their creative intellect, psychology, and historical antecedents.
This will of a country may establish and help itself in natural
and artificial reasons and ties. If the foundation is the nationality which implies community of blood, religion, idiom, laws
and institutions, a common past with the same aspirations,
happiness, tribulations, fortified by uniform and general culture,
the political unity will coincide with the same moral unity
as that of France, Belgium, or Italy. If being free is man's
natural right, as the great thinkers say and affirm, then it cannot
be denied that that right is also the patrimony of all countries
and inherent in them. Thus declared the illustrious founders
of the Great North American Republic and thus proclaimed all
the great thinkers who have ever served the cause of the entire
humanity.
The diversity of races, religions, idioms, laws, institutions
and customs, however, are not obstacles to the formation of a
great free, and prosperous state so long as its basis be liberty.
The ties that bind actually the 120,000,000 inhabitants of
the vast territories of the United States of America cannot
be more artificial-men belonging to all races professing an
infinity of religious and political creeds, subject to diverse sys