[Curtailing priestly authority.] Such, nevertheless, are the mistaken ideas which, within the last few years, have unhappily led to the adoption of measures, diametrically opposed to the public interest, under the pretext of curtailing the excessive authority of the parish-curates.  The superior government, not satisfied with having deprived the ministers of the faculty of personally prescribing certain correctional punishments, which although of little moment, when applied with discretion, greatly contributed to fortify their ascendency, and consequently, that of the sovereign; but, in order to exclude and divest them of all intervention in the civil administration, a direct attempt has also been made to lower the esteem in which they are held, by awakening the distrust of the Indian, and, as much as possible, removing him to a greater distance from them.  In proof of this, and in order that what has been said may not be deemed an exaggeration, it will suffice to quote the substance of two regulations, remarkable for their obvious tendency to weaken the influence and credit of the spiritual administrators.

By one of these, it is enacted that in order to prevent the abuses and notorious malversation of the funds of the sanctuary, specially applicable to the expenses of the festivities and worship of each parish, and arising out of the real and half for this purpose contributed by each tributary person, and collected and privately administered by the curate, the same shall hereafter be kept in a chest with three keys, and lodged in the head-town of each province.  The keys are to be left, one in possession of the chief magistrate, another in the hands of the governor of the respective town, and the remaining one with the parish-curate.  By the other measure it is declared, as a standing rule, that no Indian, who may lately have been employed in the domestic service of the curate, shall in his own town be considered eligible to any office belonging to the judicial department.

On measures of this kind, comments are unnecessary; their meaning and effect cannot be mistaken.  I shall, therefore, merely observe, that no untimely means could have been devised more injurious to the state, to the propagation of religion, and even to the natives themselves.  It is, in fact, a most strange affair, that such endeavors should have been made to impeach the purity, by at the same time degrading the respectable character of the parish-curates, more particularly at a period when, owing to partality and the scarcity of religious men, it would have seemed more natural to uphold, and by new inducements encourage the zeal and authority of the remaining few.  This step appears the more singular, I repeat, at a moment when, neither by suspending the sending out of missionaries to China, and the almost entire abandonment of the spiritual conquest of the Igorots and other infidel tribes, inhabiting the interior of these islands, have the above Spanish laborers been able to carry