n and recalcitration to accept a defined
legal or illegal status. Consequently many of the common people went to
swell the roving bands of outlaws, whilst those who had a greater love
for home, or property at stake, remained within the prescribed limits,
in discontented, sullen compliance with the inevitable. The system
interrupted the people's usual occupations, retarded agriculture,
and produced general dissatisfaction. The Insular Government then
had recourse to an extreme measure which practically implied the
imposition of compulsory military service on every male American,
foreign, or native inhabitant between the ages of eighteen to fifty
years, with the exception of certain professions specified in the
Philippine Commission Act No. 1309, dated March 22, 1905. Under this
law the native mayor of a town can compel any able-bodied American
(not exempted under the Act) to give five days a month service in
hunting down brigands, under a maximum penalty of P100 fine and three
months' imprisonment. And, subject to the same penalty for refusal,
any proprietor or tenant (white, coloured, or native) residing in any
municipality, or ward, must report, within 24 hours, to the municipal
authority, the name, residence, and description of _any_ person (not
being a resident) to whom he gave assistance or lodging. In no colony
where the value of the white man's prestige is appreciated would such
a law have been promulgated.

The proceedings of the constabulary in the disturbed provinces
having been publicly impugned in a long series of articles and
reports published in the Manila newspaper _El Renacimiento,_ the
editors of that public organ were brought to trial on a charge of
libel in July, 1905. The substance of the published allegations
was that peaceable citizens were molested in their homes and were
coerced into performing constabulary and military duties by becoming
unwilling brigand-hunters. Among other witnesses who appeared at the
trial was Emilio Aguinaldo, who testified that he had been forced to
leave his home and present himself to a constabulary officer, who,
he affirmed, bullied and insulted him because he refused to leave his
daily occupations and risk his life in brigand-hunting. In view of
the peculiar position of Aguinaldo as a fallen foe, perhaps it would
have been better not to have disturbed him in his peaceful life as
a law-abiding citizen, lest the world should misconstrue the intention.

Confined to Pang