These delegates should therefore really be credited to the Ilocanos.
If the individual relationships of the several members are considered, the result is even more striking.

Of the thirty-eight delegates assigned to the non-Christian provinces, one only, good old Lino Abaya of Tiagan, was a non-Christian.

Many of the non-Christian _comandancias_ were given a number of delegates wholly disproportionate to their population, and in this way the congress was stuffed full of Tagalogs.
Think of Filipe Buencamino, of Aguinaldo's cabinet, representing the Moros of Zamboanga; of the mild, scholarly botanist Leon Guerrero representing the Moros, Bagobos, Mandayas and Manobos of Davao; of Jose M.Lerma, the unscrupulous politician of the province of Bataan, just across the bay from Manila, representing the wild Moros of Cotabato; of Juan Tuason, a timid Chinese _mestizo_ Manila business man, representing the Yacan and Samal Moros of Basilan; of my good friend Benito Legarda, since a member of the Philippine Commission, and a resident delegate from the Philippines to the congress of the United States, representing the bloody Moros of Jolo! Yet they appear as representatives of these several regions.
Few, indeed, of the delegates from non-Christian territory had ever set foot in the provinces or _comandancias_ from which they were appointed, or would have been able to so much as name the wild tribe or tribes inhabiting them.
I have been furnished a list, made up with all possible care by competent persons, from which it appears that there were eighty-five delegates actually present at the opening of congress, of whom fifty-nine were Tagalogs, five Bicols, three Pampangans, two Visayans, and one a Zambalan.

For the others there are no data available.

Yet it has been claimed that this was a representative body! It was a Tagalog body, without enough representatives of any other one of the numerous Philippine peoples to be worth mentioning.
With a congress thus organized, Aguinaldo should have had no difficulty in obtaining any legislation he desired.
The committee of congress appointed to draw up a constitution set to work promptly, and by October 16,1898, had proceeded so far with their work that Buencamino was able to write to Aguinaldo that while he had been of the opinion that it would have been best for him to continue as a dictator aided by a committee of able men, yet it would now be a blow to the prestige of congress to suspend its sessions.