was afterwards a member of the Filipino junta in Madrid, was chosen a representative of the province; but as he wrote that he was in favour of coming to some agreement with Spain which would permit the development of the Philippines, without abandoning the sovereignty of that country, Aguinaldo promptly disapproved his election [366] and ordered a new one held for the office thus left vacant.  On October 2, 1899, Aguinaldo approved the result of a new election held there because four of the five high officials of the province had absented themselves, while one of them had died.  Of the men who had so absented themselves one had gone abroad, while the other three had remained in Manila or Cavite under the government of the United States. [367]

The people of the provinces obeyed the men who had arms in their hands.  It is not probable that many of them had any conviction concerning the form of government which would be best for the Philippines.  There were no signs of a spontaneous desire for a republic.  Orders came from the group about Aguinaldo, and the people accepted a dictator and a republic as they accepted a president and a republic, without knowing, and probably without caring very much, what it all meant, except that they hoped that taxes would cease with the departure of the friars.  A determined and well-organized minority had succeeded in imposing its will upon an unorganized, heterogeneous, and leaderless majority.

As soon as a province was occupied by the Insurgents it was divided into territorial zones within which command was exerted by military officers.  On July 20, 1898, Cavite had been divided into four zones, and next day Brigadier-General Artemio Ricarte was placed in command of the province and the first zone.

By July 7 Bulacan Province had been divided into six zones, and Nueva Ecija into four zones, with a separate commander for each zone.  These men established the government prescribed by Aguinaldo’s decrees of the middle of June.  Probably by the end of July Aguinaldo’s municipal governments had been established in the greater part of the towns of Luzon.  These governments were not established by the mass of the people.  The mass of the people were not consulted, but they were not in the habit of being consulted in such matters and probably saw no necessity for it in this case.  As an evidence of this we have the fact that from the beginning the acts of election were almost always drawn up in Spanish, although by far the greater portion of the people of the archipelago spoke only the native dialects.

The method of establishing these municipal governments employed in Cavite in June, 1898, was continued to the end of Aguinaldo’s rule.  It was the same in different places and at different times.  Data obtained from reports and documents written in towns far removed from each other follow.  They must be considered together in order to obtain an idea of what this method really was.