Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/474

 THE FOUNDING OF GOVERNMENT Ickis, of Iowa, 36th Infantry, U. S. V., now dead; Lieut. George P. Whitsitt, of Missouri, 32nd Infantry, U. S. V.; and the writer. We waited over in Manila to see the Taft inauguration ceremonies on July 4, and thereafter made ready to proceed to our respective districts. Before parting, how.ever, we decided, the four of us, to go in and pay our respects to Governor Taft and say good-by. Judge Carson, being an Irishman, could talk better than the rest of us, and he, by common tacit consent, acted as spokesman for the party. He said: "Governor, besides saying good-by, it might be well to ask if you have any suggestions that might help us. We have been under mili tary orders so long that, while, of course, we don't expect any orders from you as to administering the duties of our offices, we would like to hear any suggestions that may occur to you as opportune." The governor replied: "Well, gentlemen, we have often been told that the courts of our predecessors in sovereignty operated rather to delay justice than to dispense it. You are Americans. All I can suggest is that you proceed at once to your respective districts and get to work" — which we did. The first province I went to work in was Ilocos Norte. The judiciary laws con templated that in each province there should be two regular terms of court held each year. The midsummer term of the Court of First Instance for the province of Ilocos Norte was fixed by law for the first Tuesday in July, and that for the next adjoining province of the First Judicial District, viz., the province of Cagayan, for the third Tuesday in August. I went to work to clear up the Ilocos Norte docket in time to open court in Cagayan on the date fixed by law. There was a large criminal docket — a jail containing more than a hundred prisoners — and also a consider able civil docket. I recollect disposing one

day of a lawsuit about some land which had actually been pending in that court for more than a hundred years. As the third Tuesday in August ap proached I was getting the docket pretty well cleaned up, and began to cast about for some means of transportation to Tuguegarao, capital of Cagayan province aforesaid. About that time a message came that the Philippine Commission would visit Laoag on Tuesday. August 20, for the purpose of establishing civil government in the province of Ilocos Norte, and would sail the same day for Cagayan province. So I determined to wait and see the pro ceedings, and also ask the commission to take me along with them to Cagayan province. Tuesday, Aug. 20, 1901, was a great day in Laoag, the capital of the Province of Ilocos Norte. We had been advised by telegram that the commission would arrive off the port of Laoag, which is some three or four miles from the town, at seven o'clock in the morning, Tuesday. At five that morning the writer rose, took his morning's exercise, slashed around in the commodious tiled bath-room of our Laoag residence, a most elegant house of masonry costing the mod erate rental of fifteen dollars per month, shaved, donned the immaculate white cloth ing and straw hat worn by nearly all Euro peans and Americans in Hawaii, the Philip pines and other tropical countries, and sallied forth at six-thirty to breakfast. This dis posed of with the relish lent by the exercise aforesaid, he proceeded to the court room for the purpose of signing certain papers, the last official documents to be signed during that term of Laoag court, which had been left over from the evening before because it had not been possible to finish them up. Then all the lawyers, court employees, Mr. Brower, stenographer for the district, and I, got into conveyances and went to meet the dignitaries. We met them on the road. They had already disembarked.