[377] It has often been claimed that Aguinaldo's government controlled at this time the whole archipelago, except the bay and city of Manila and the town of Cavite.

[378] Blount quotes the following statement from the report of the First Philippine Commission:-- "While the Spanish troops now remained quietly in Manila, the Filipino forces made themselves masters of the entire island except that city." [379] I signed that statement, and signed it in good faith; nevertheless, it is untrue.

The Filipino forces never controlled the territory now known as Ifugao, Bontoc, Kalinga or Apayao, much less that occupied by the Negritos on the east coast of Luzon, but this is not all.

There exists among the Insurgent records a very important document, prepared by Mabini, showing that when the call for the first session of the Filipino congress was issued, there were no less than sixty-one provinces and _commandancias_, which the Insurgents, when talking among themselves, did not even claim to control, and twenty-one of these were in or immediately adjacent to Luzon.

[380] The men who composed this congress were among the ablest natives of the archipelago; but representative institutions mean nothing unless they represent the people; if they do not, they are a conscious lie devised either to deceive the people of the country or foreign nations, and it is not possible for any system founded upon a lie to endure.