without which requisite the statements transmitted by the chief magistrates to the accountant-general’s office are not admitted.  Above all they are bound to affix their signatures to the effective payments made by the magistrate to their parishioners on account of daily labor, and to certify similarly the value of materials employed in public works.  Besides the above, they are continually called upon to draw up circumstantial reports, or declarations, required by the superior tribunals; they receive frequent injunctions to co-operate in the increase of the king’s revenue and the encouragement of agriculture and industry; in a word, there is scarcely a thing to which their attention is not called, and to which it is not expected they should contribute by their influence, directly or indirectly.

[Allowances from treasury.] The royal treasury pays them an annual allowance equal to $180, in kind and money, for each five hundred tributes under their care, and this, added to the emoluments of the church, renders the total proceeds of a curacy generally equivalent to about from six to eight reals for each entire tribute; but from this allowance are to be deducted the expenses of coadjutors, subsistence, servants, horses, and all the other charges arising out of the administration of such wearisome duties; nor are the parishioners under any other obligation than to provide the churches with assistants, or sacristans and singers, and the curates with provisions at tariff prices.

[Need of more European clergy.] Finally, as from what has been above stated it would appear, that as many as five hundred religious persons are necessary for the spiritual administration of the interior towns and districts, besides the number requisite to do the duty and fill the dignities of the respective orders and convents in the capital, independent of which there ought to be a proportionate surplus, applicable to the progressive reduction of the infidel tribes inhabiting the uplands, as well as the preaching of the Gospel in China and Cochinchina, most assuredly, it would be expedient to assemble and keep together a body of no less than seven hundred persons, if it is the wish of the government, on a tolerable scale, to provide for the wants of these remote missions.  At the present moment the number does not exceed three hundred, including superannuated, exempt from service, and lay-brothers, whilst the native clergymen in effective possession of curacies, and including substitutes, coadjutors and weekly preachers, exceed one thousand.  And as the latter, in general unworthy of the priesthood, are rather injurious than really serviceable to the state, it should not be deemed unjust if they were altogether deprived of the dignity of parish curates, and only allowed to exercise their functions in necessary cases, or by attaching them to the curacies in the quality of coadjutors.  By this plan, at the same time that the towns would be provided with suitable and adequate ministers, the native clergymen would be distributed in a proper manner and placed near the religious persons charged to officiate, would acquire the necessary knowledge and decorum, and in the course of time might obtain character and respect among their countrymen.