LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE PHILIPPINES elimination. The preparation of this recom mendation was assigned by general consent to the author of this paper: Our recommendation closed thus: "In conclusion, it is suggested that the gentlemen who constitute the Code Com mission which prepared the present proposed code, were unable to devote all the time to it that they would have liked to devote to work so important. They did this work in addition to their regular duties, by work ing over time. They did it within three or four months, if we are correctly informed. The Spanish Penal Code is the product of the best legal minds in Spain, focussed upon the subject through three or four centuries or more, and from our point of view it can hardly be affirmed that it would be wise to thus undo the work of three or four cen turies in as many months." Of course, moreover, if they did not accept this recommendation, but adopted a new code in toto, they would throw away a wealth of precedent, decisions of the Spanish courts construing the laws, words and phrases of the old code. But both the Commission and the Judiciary were agreed about the necessity for a number of radi cal changes in the punishments fixed by the old Spanish Code. For instance, the great fundamental difference between the Spanish criminal jurisprudence and our own lies in the relative severity with which crimes against life, and crimes against property, are punished. We have Americans now in the Philippine penitentiary serving sentences of nearly twenty years for embezzlement of public funds, such sentences being based upon proof which, in the United States, would probably be punishable with not more than ten years, and in many cases with one-half or one-fourth of that. On the other hand, there are two servant lads now there, sentenced by the undersigned for killing their respective masters, one of the deceased a Spanish tobacco planter, the other deceased an American miner. The
maximum penalty which could be imposed upon these young murderers under the Spanish Penal Code, was seventeen years and four months, and they were given the limit. Both homicides were cold-blooded assassinations. Each of the unfortunate deceased persons was sleeping at the time the murderer crept to his bedside and stabbed him to death; but in both cases the defendant was between the ages of fifteen and eighteen years, and this miti gating circumstance prevented the impo sition of the capital penalty. It will thus be seen that the Anglo-Saxon system of jurisprudence affords better protection to human life than the Spanish. At least it comes nearer to demanding a life for a life — "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." It will also be seen that the Spanish law is unduly severe as to the un lawful taking of the property of another. Let us now turn to the domain of Civil Procedure. The best piece of legal work done in the Philippines since the American occupation is the Code of Civil Procedure, enacted September i, 1901, and called the "Ide Code." It was prepared by the Hon. Henry C. Ide, of -Vermont, then head of the Department of Justice, and later GovernorGeneral of the Islands. It is patterned after the Codes of Vermont, Missouri, California, Georgia, and other states of our Union known to the American pleader as Code-Pleading States. The "Ide Code" contains 796 sections and covers 146 pages of the size and style of printing of the United States Revised Statutes, Edition of 1878. It did away with the tedious and expensive Spanish civil procedure, as Major Young's work had already done away with the old Spanish method of criminal pleading and practice, and was a great boon to the country. Later, Judge Ide also drew up a Land Registration Law, copied mainly from that of Massachusetts. This was duly enacted, and to-day the Torrens' System of register ing land titles prevails in the Philippines.
