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THE MALOLOS CONSTITUTION.

Salient Features The Parliamentary System of government was adopted as best suited to the needs of the archipelago. Sovereignty was to reside in the people through their duly elected representatives. The aim throughout was to adopt a government and a social order essentially democratic, without those privileges of caste or classes which were the determinant causes of the revolution. The popular assembly was to be the directing power.

The following progressive principles were enunciated:

(1) That no one should be tried in courts created by private laws or by special tribunals; (2) that throughout the republic there should not be more than one kind of court for all citizens both in civil, criminal, and military actions; (3) that no person or corporation should be given emoluments that were not as compensation for public service fixed by law; (4) there shall be no primogeniture nor should decorations and titles of nobility be accepted; (5) that every Filipino citizen shall enjoy the right of meeting, association, petition, and liberty of the press; (6) freedom of religious worship throughout the land and inviolability of domicile, correspondence, and property; (7) the right of habeas corpus; (8) gratuitous and compulsory public instruction; (9) taxes to be in proportion to the income of the taxpayers.