The development of Philippine politics

186 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILIPPINE POLITICS

ment of the country in the interest of its inhabitants will
be constant objects of solicitude and fostering care.
10. Effective provision will be made for the establishment of elementary schools in which the children of the
people shall be educated. Appropriate facilities will also be
provided for higher education.
11. Reforms in all departments of the government, in
all branches of the public service, and in all corporations
closely touching the common life of the people must be undertaken without delay and effected, conformably to right and
justice, in a way that will satisfy the well-founded demands
and the highest sentiments and aspirations of the Philippine
people.
Such is the spirit in which the United States comes to
the people of the Philippine Islands. His Excellency, the
President, has instructed the Commission to make it publicly
known. And in obeying this behest the Commission's desire to
join with his Excellency, the President, in expressing their
own good will toward the Philippine people, and to extend
to their leading and representative men a cordial invitation
to meet them for personal acquaintance and for the exchange
of views and opinions.
Attitude of Mabini's Cabinet
Mabini's cabinet, it may be remembered, was in power;
and Mabini tenaciously held on to the ideal of independence. In fact he was the very personification of that ideal.
His clear mind and indomitable spirit housed in a weak and
paralytic body, was the mirror of his own people —a people
weak beside the great American Republic but determined
to fight to the last for its ideal of independence. The manifesto of the Schurman Commission was answered by Mabini, as President of the Council of Government, to the effect that the title of the United States to the Philippines
was null and void because the people had not been consulted
in it. He therefore urged the continuation of the struggle.
In his manifesto, dated at San Isidro, April 15, 1899, he
said:
What a spectacle it is to see at the end of the century
called the century of enlightenment and civilization, a people
jealous and proud of its own sovereignty employing all its
great powers, the result of its own continued free existence,
to wrest from another people, weak but worthy of a better