Evangelista v. Earnshaw, G.R. No. 36453, September 28, 1932

SEDITIOUS SPEECH


Evangelista v. Earnshaw, G.R. No. 36453, September 28, 1932

Evangelista, the President of the Communist Party of the Philippines, applied for a permit to hold a rally, before the Office of Mayor of Manila. This was refused by the Mayor, which prompted Evangelista to file a petition for mandamus before the Court.
Instead of being condemned or criticised, the respondent mayor should be praised and commended for having taken a prompt, courageous, and firm stand towards the said Communist Party of the Philippines before the latter could do more damage by its revolutionary propaganda, and by the seditious speeches and utterances of its members. In the case of Gitlow vs. New York (268 U. S., 652), the Supreme Court of the United States said:

Such utterances, by their very nature, involve danger to the public peace and to the security of the state. They threaten breaches of the peace and ultimate revolution. And the immediate danger is none the less real and substantial because the effect of the given utterance cannot be accurately foreseen. The state cannot reasonably be required to measure the danger from every such utterance in the nice balance of a jeweler's scale. A single revolutionary spark may kindle a fire that, smoldering for a time, may burst into a sweeping and destructive conflagration. It cannot be said that the state is acting arbitrarily on unreasonably when, in the exercise of its judgment as to the measures necessary to protect the public peace and safety, it seeks to extinguish the spark without waiting until it has enkindled the flame or blazed into the conflagration. It cannot reasonably be required to defer the adoption of measures for its own peace and safety until the revolutionary utterances lead to actual disturbances of the public peace or imminent and immediate danger of its own destruction; but it may, in the exercise of its judgment, suppress the threatened danger in its incipiency. In People vs. Lloyd, supra, p. 35 (136 N. E., 505)., it was aptly said: "Manifestly, the legislature has authority to forbid the advocacy of a doctrine designed and intended to overthrow the government without waiting until there is a present and imminent danger of the success of the plan advocated. If the state were compelled to wait until the apprehended danger became certain, then its right to protect itself would come into being simultaneously with the overthrow of the government, when there would be neither prosecuting officers nor courts for the enforcement of the law."

At any rate, the right of peaceful assemblage is not an absolute one. In the case of People vs. Perez (45 Phil., 599, 605), this court said:

. . . when the intention and effect of the act is seditious, the constitutional guaranties of freedom of speech and press and of assembly and petition must yield to punitive measures designed to maintain the prestige of constituted authority, the supremacy of the constitution and the laws, and the existence of the State. (Citing III Wharton's Criminal Law, pp. 2127 et seq.; U. S. vs. Apurado [1907], 7 Phil., 422; People vs. Perfecto [1922], 43 Phil., 887.)


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