The Philippine Commission’s Absolute Authority
An administration dispatch from Washington says that the New Philippine Commission “will sail from San Francisco, April 18,” with “plenary powers. President Taft of the commission will be the personal representative of President McKinley in the Philippine Group; and he and his colleagues will fully represent American sovereignty. The army is to be wholly subordinate to their orders. . . . The new commission is to be the government, just as if the President himself were to go to the Philippines with his cabinet, and exercise control under military law. It is necessary, therefore, that it have absolute authority over all civil government that may be established, and over the army, too.” But if even the President himself were to go there, he would not have absolute authority, unless he went without the Constitution. And if he went without the Constitution, he would have no authority at all; because it is only by the Constitution that he is president at all. And then all the authority he could possibly exercise would be merely personal authority. Consequently the president of the commission in possession of absolute authority, being the “personal representative of the President,” can be only the representative of the person of him who is president, and not of him as president; for as president he has not and never can have absolute authority.