Philippine Commission

Also known as: Taft Commission — the popular name for the commission under its first president · Second Philippine Commission — its formal designation, distinguishing it from the Schurman Commission of 1899 · The Commission — its styling as the upper house of the Philippine Legislature, 1907–1916

Government

Definition

The Philippine Commission was the body appointed by U.S. President William McKinley to legislate for, and then help administer, the Philippines under American rule. Created as the Second Philippine Commission on March 16, 1900, on the recommendation of the First (Schurman) Commission and headed by Judge William Howard Taft, it is popularly known as the Taft Commission. McKinley’s written instructions of April 7, 1900 directed that, from September 1, 1900, the commission exercise “that part of the power of government in the Philippine Islands which is legislative,” with authority to appoint judicial and civil officers, and that government be conducted not for American satisfaction but “for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of the people of the Philippine Islands.” (Wikipedia — Taft Commission, Wikisource — McKinley’s instructions to the Philippine Commission, Wikipedia — Philippine Commission)

Between September 1900 and August 1902 the commission issued 499 laws, creating a judiciary with a Supreme Court, a civil service, and the municipal and provincial codes that introduced elected local government. After the transition to civil government on July 4, 1901 — when Taft became the first civil governor — the commission doubled as the archipelago’s cabinet, its members heading executive departments while continuing to legislate; Filipino members, starting with Benito Legarda, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, and José Ruiz de Luzuriaga on September 1, 1901, sat beside the Americans. Under the Philippine Organic Act of 1902 it served as the upper house of the Philippine Legislature beside the elected Philippine Assembly from 1907, and the Jones Law of August 29, 1916 replaced it with an elected Senate. (Wikipedia — Taft Commission, Wikipedia — Philippine Organic Act (1902), Wikipedia — Philippine Assembly, Wikipedia — Benito Legarda)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	Philippine Commission
Wikidata	Philippine Commission (Q2253627)
DBpedia	Philippine_Commission
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	Philippine Commission Taft Commission 1900 civil government municipal code Philippine Assembly upper house Jones Law 1916
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Taft Commission — the popular name for the commission under its first president
Second Philippine Commission — its formal designation, distinguishing it from the Schurman Commission of 1899
The Commission — its styling as the upper house of the Philippine Legislature, 1907–1916

Examples and Analogies

A legislature that became a cabinet: after July 4, 1901 the commissioners worked like a board of directors who are also the legislature — each heading an executive department (finance and justice, interior, commerce and police, public instruction) by day and passing laws as a collective upper chamber, with the governor-general as their presiding officer. (Wikipedia — Philippine Commission)
Half a government appointed, half elected: from 1907 the arrangement resembled a condominium with one owner-resident and one absentee landlord’s agent — the elected Assembly answered to voters, while the appointed Commission above it answered to Washington, and only the lower chamber’s consent could complete legislation. (Wikipedia — Philippine Assembly, Wikipedia — Philippine Organic Act (1902))
Verified foundational data:
Created: March 16, 1900, by President William McKinley, on the First Philippine Commission’s recommendation
Chairman: William Howard Taft; original membership of five
Instructions: issued April 7, 1900, from the Executive Mansion — legislative power to pass to the commission on September 1, 1900
Legislative record: 499 laws between September 1900 and August 1902; public sessions held Wednesdays and Fridays
Key acts: Civil Service Act (Act No. 5, September 19, 1900); Education Act (Act No. 74, January 21, 1901); Municipal Code (Act No. 82, January 31, 1901); provincial government act (Act No. 83, February 6, 1901)
Civil government: July 4, 1901, Taft becoming civil governor and serving until January 31, 1904
Filipino members: Benito Legarda (1901–1907), Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera (1901–1909), José Ruiz de Luzuriaga (1901–1913), Rafael Palma (1908–1916), Juan Sumulong (1909–1913), Gregorio S. Araneta
Governors-general from the commission’s ranks: Taft (1901–1904), Luke E. Wright (1904–1905), Henry C. Ide (1905–1906), James F. Smith (1906–1909), W. Cameron Forbes (1909–1913), Francis Burton Harrison (1913–1916)
End: abolished by the Jones Law, August 29, 1916; the elected Senate that replaced it was chosen on October 3, 1916

Usage Scenarios

1. Studying the Legislation of the Early American Period

The commission’s statute books — 499 acts in its first two years, over seventy percent of the first 157 on local government and bureaucracy — are the primary source for how the insular government built courts, schools, municipalities, and provinces from the ground up. (Wikipedia — Taft Commission)

2. Tracing Filipino Participation in Insular Government

The Filipino commissioners supply the case studies in colonial-era Filipino office-holding: Legarda’s tenure 1901–1907 and Tavera’s 1901–1909 are documented in this wiki’s entries on those two men, with Tavera succeeded on March 1, 1909 by Juan Sumulong and Legarda resigning in December 1907 to become one of the first Resident Commissioners in Washington. (Wikipedia — Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Wikipedia — Benito Legarda)

3. Analyzing Tutelage Bicameralism

The 1907–1916 legislature — elected Assembly below, appointed Commission above — is the standard case study of colonial legislative tutelage, examined alongside this wiki’s Philippine Assembly entry from the lower house’s side. (Wikipedia — Philippine Assembly, Wikipedia — Philippine Organic Act (1902))

4. Examining the Friar Lands Settlement

The commission’s November 30, 1900 report urging the purchase of the religious orders’ haciendas, completed in December 1903 for $7,239,784.66 over some 166,000 hectares resold to tenants, is cited as the first modern land-reform measure in the Philippines. (Wikipedia — Taft Commission)

5. Comparing Commissions across the Colonial Transition

The First and Second Commissions bracket the shift from military to civil government — the sequence used to teach how sovereignty was surveyed, then administered, between 1899 and 1916. (Wikipedia — Philippine Commission, Wikipedia — Jones Law (Philippines))

Strategies

Codification before politics: building the civil service, court system, and municipal code in the first two years gave the regime legal furniture that survived every later constitutional change. (Wikipedia — Taft Commission)
Legislating tutelage in stages: the commission’s own structure — appointive first, upper house second, abolished third — made it the deliberate instrument of a staged transition to the elected legislature of 1916. (Wikipedia — Jones Law (Philippines))
Co-opting the ilustrado elite: seating Federalista leaders like Tavera and Legarda converted the most prominent collaborators of 1900 into stakeholders of the insular government — the patronage strategy this wiki’s Federalista Party entry documents from the party’s side. (Wikipedia — Benito Legarda, Wikipedia — Trinidad Pardo de Tavera)
Buying out the friar estates: purchasing the religious orders’ lands and reselling them to tenants addressed both the revolutionary grievance of 1896–1898 and American anti-friar politics. (Wikipedia — Taft Commission)
Keeping the non-Christian provinces separate: legislating alone for the Moro and other non-Christian areas after 1907 preserved an administrative distinction that shaped regional policy long after. (Wikipedia — Philippine Organic Act (1902))

Security and Safety Measures

Governing amid continuing resistance: the commission began legislating in September 1900 under presidential war powers while the Philippine–American War’s guerrilla phase continued — its authority resting until the 1901 Spooner Amendment on the commander-in-chief’s wartime powers. (Wikipedia — Taft Commission)
Legalizing the occupation by statute: the Spooner Amendment’s transfer of governing authority to congressional sanction, and the Organic Act’s entrenchment of it in statute, answered the legality question shadowing every commission act. (Wikipedia — Taft Commission, Wikipedia — Philippine Organic Act (1902))
Screening the transition to an elected chamber: the Organic Act’s conditions for convening the Assembly — certified peace, census, two further years of quiet — postponed elected national legislation until the insular government judged the islands stable. (Wikipedia — Philippine Organic Act (1902))
For researchers: the commission’s annual reports are at once the best record of its work and advocacy for it; standard practice weighs them against the scholarship on the era’s restricted franchise, as this wiki’s Philippine Assembly entry cautions. (Wikipedia — Philippine Commission, Wikipedia — Philippine Assembly)

Historical Context

McKinley created the Second Philippine Commission in March 1900, a year after the First Commission under Jacob Gould Schurman had surveyed the islands and recommended a civilian administration. Taft’s five-member body received its famous instructions on April 7, 1900 — the document directing it to legislate from September 1, 1900 “for the happiness, peace, and prosperity of the people of the Philippine Islands” — and set to work passing laws twice a week, among them the acts that created the civil service, the school system, and elected municipal government. On July 4, 1901, with the Spooner Amendment giving Congress’s sanction to civil rule, Taft was sworn in as civil governor, and the commission became at once the legislature and the cabinet, its members distributing the executive departments among themselves. (Wikipedia — Taft Commission, Wikisource — McKinley’s instructions to the Philippine Commission, Wikipedia — Philippine Commission)

The Organic Act of 1902 made the arrangement permanent and presaged its own supersession: a bicameral Philippine Legislature was created with the commission as upper house, pending the peace conditions that allowed the Philippine Assembly to be elected on July 30, 1907 — the moment when the Federalista appointees Legarda and Tavera found themselves the upper chamber of a legislature whose lower house the Nacionalistas had just captured, as this wiki’s entries on the Assembly, the Federalista Party, and both commissioners record. Filipino membership widened under Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison after 1913 — Rafael Palma serving from July 6, 1908 to the commission’s very end — until the Jones Law of August 29, 1916 abolished the body; its elected successor Senate was chosen on October 3, 1916, and the fully Filipino-elected Fourth Philippine Legislature convened on October 16, 1916. (Wikipedia — Philippine Organic Act (1902), Wikipedia — Philippine Assembly, Wikipedia — Rafael Palma, Wikipedia — Jones Law (Philippines))

Challenges and Controversies

Tutelage or Self-Rule

The commission embodied the ambivalence of American policy: McKinley’s instructions promised government for Filipino welfare and eventual self-government, while the commission’s appointive character and its retained upper-house veto meant Filipinos legislated only at American sufferance. The same disagreement divided American contemporaries — Taft’s preparation-for-independence reading against the “experiment” caution — that this wiki’s Philippine Assembly entry documents on the Assembly’s side. (Wikisource — McKinley’s instructions to the Philippine Commission, Wikipedia — Philippine Assembly)

The Accommodationist Commissioners

The Filipino members’ tenure draws the same divided verdict as their Federalista Party: whether Tavera’s 1901–1909 and Legarda’s 1901–1907 service was realism that secured Filipino participation in government or collaboration that lent the occupation legitimacy — the debate this wiki’s entries on both men and on the Federalista Party set out in full. (Wikipedia — Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Wikipedia — Benito Legarda)

Separate Rule for the Non-Christian Provinces

The commission’s reserved power to legislate alone for the Moro and other non-Christian peoples after 1907 institutionalized a separate administrative track — defended at the time as protection for minority peoples, criticized since as the foundation of a differential colonial treatment whose consequences reached into the Moro conflicts of the late twentieth century. (Wikipedia — Philippine Organic Act (1902))

Representativeness of an Appointed Upper House

In the 1907–1916 legislature every law required the consent of a chamber no Filipino electorate had chosen — the structural critique behind the Jones Law’s fully elected replacement, and the reason the commission era is treated as tutelage rather than self-government in Philippine constitutional history. (Wikipedia — Jones Law (Philippines), Wikipedia — Philippine Assembly)