proved by the Governor.

The Governor has power to suspend the Municipal Captain or any of his
colleagues for a period of three months, and the Governor General can
remove one or all of them from office at will; and "in extraordinary
cases or for reasons of public tranquility, the Governor shall have
power to decree, without any legal process, the abolition of the
Municipal Tribunals." (Article 45.)

In December, 1896, General Polavieja issued a decree, suspending
the elections which were to take place that month for one-third of
the municipal electors, and directed the Governors of Provinces to
send in names of persons suitable for appointment, together with the
recommendations of the village priest in each case.

An examination of this unique scheme of village government shows
that one-half of the electors are to be chosen from persons holding
a subordinate office and appointed by the Governor; that the village
priest must be present at all elections and important meetings; that
the Captain has all the responsibility, and he must also be of the
class holding a subordinate office by appointment of the governor;
that the acts of Municipal Tribunal can be suspended by the Captain
and rescinded by the Governor; and, finally, if the Municipal Tribunal
is offensive to the Governor General he can either remove its members
and appoint others in their place or can abolish it altogether.

Such is the Spanish idea of self-government; the Minister of the
Colonies, in submitting the decree to the Queen Regent, expatiated
on its merits in giving the natives such full control of their local
affairs, and expressed the confident belief that it would prove
"most beneficent to these people whom Providence has confided to the
generous sovereignty of the Spanish monarchs."

This scheme of government by Municipal Tribunals was highly approved
by the natives, except that feature of it which placed so much power
in the hands of the Governor and Governor General. This, however,
was the essence of the matter, from the Spanish standpoint, and these
portions of the Decree were the ones most fully carried out. The
natives complained, on the one hand, of the delay in putting the
Decree into operation, and on the other hand that so much of it
as was established was practically nullified by the action of the
Governors. Seeing that the Tribunals had really no power, the members
soon turned their sessions (which the Decree required to be secret)