We, the Filipinos, would have received said commission, as honourable agents of the great America, with demonstrations of true kindness and entire adhesion.

The commissioners would have toured over all our provinces, seeing and observing at close range order and tranquillity, in the whole of our territory.

They would have seen the fields tilled and planted.

They would have examined our Constitution and public administration, in perfect peace, and they would have experienced and enjoyed that ineffable charm of our Oriental manner, a mixture of abandon and solicitude, of warmth and of frigidity, of confidence and of suspiciousness, which makes our relations with foreigners change into a thousand colours, agreeable to the utmost.
"Ah! but this landscape suited neither General Otis nor the Imperialists! For their criminal intention it was better that the American commissioners should find war and desolation in the Philippines, perceiving from the day of their arrival the fetid stench emitted by the mingled corpses of Americans and Filipinos.

For their purposes it was better that that gentleman, Mr.Schurman, President of the Commission, could not leave Manila, limiting himself to listen to the few Filipinos, who, having yielded to the reasonings of gold, were partisans of the Imperialists.