"To deny that the Filipino people aspire to independence in the future would be to deny the light of the sun in broad day. But in spite of this aspiration, we understand that peoples, like men, in order to be independent must necessarily pass in strictly chronological order, through different stages, which they can not traverse by leaps and bounds. Nor do we fail to realize that the liberty, great or small, which may be granted to a people, must be in direct relation to the state of their culture.
"Our ambition is just and within the bounds of reason and logic. We wish independence through evolution, because we understand that a people, differing from another in race and in its ethnographical and ethnological conditions, can never be governed with justice and equity except by itself; and this, because the pride of superiority will always dominate the governing race to the detriment of the governed, and the latter will never be happy. Some of the congressmen and senators who were here a short time ago have said in Washington that the Filipino people are growing away from the American people. That statement is by no means as clear as it should be.
"The Filipino people, by virtue of being a tropical race, are very sensitive, and with the same impetuosity with which they love and admire a benefactor, they hate and despise a tyrant.
"The American people have brought us in the Philippines many things of great value; they have bestowed upon us many benefits and have granted us many liberties which formerly we did not enjoy; but it is also true that among the good things they have brought some evils; among the benefits there have sprung up like brambles certain unjust abuses, and among the many liberties conceded us petty tyrants have arisen to restrict them. Therefore, the Filipino people have grown away from the bad Americans, but in no way from the American people to whom we owe but gratitude and love.
"We love those who love us and despise those who despise us. However defective our past civilization may have been, it has left in our hearts the feeling of dignity which befits a people of culture.
"Unfortunately, in the Philippines, not all those who are here as Americans possess the noble sentiments of the American people, whom we admire and love, for we would be contemptible did we, through the fault of some bad representatives, come to hate an entire nation which has been and is lending us its aid.