the captain-general in command afterwards sent armaments to check his inroads.  On one of these occasions, our troops obliged an army of more than 5,000 Moros, who had closely beset the fortress of Zamboanga, to raise the siege; and also in the years 1731 and 1734, fresh detachments of our men were landed on the Islands of Jolo, Capul and Basilan, and their success was followed by the destruction and ruin of the fortified posts, vessels, and settlements of those perfidious Mahometans.  It is not, however, less certain that at the periods above mentioned, the war was carried on rather from motives of punishment and revenge, and suggested by a sudden and passing zeal, than in conformity to any progressive and well-combined system.  Since then these laudable military enterprises have been entirely neglected, as well on account of the indolence of some of the governors, as the too great confidence placed in the protestations of friendship and treaties of peace with which, from time to time, the Sultans of Jolo and Mindanao have sought to lull them to sleep.  Their want of sincerity is proved by the circumstance of the piracies of their respective subjects not ceasing, the chiefs sometimes feigning they were carried on without their license or knowledge; and, at others, excusing themselves on the plea of their inability to restrain the insolence of the Tirones and other independent tribes.  Nevertheless, it is notorious that the above-mentioned sultans indirectly encouraged the practice of privateering, by affording every aid in their power to those who fitted out vessels, and purchasing from the pirates all the Christians they captured and brought to them.

[A missionary’s appeal.] Father Juan Angeles, superior of the mission established in Jolo, at the request of Sultan Alimudin himself (or Ferdinand I as he was afterwards unworthily called on being made a Christian with no other view than the better to gain the confidence of the Spaniards) in a report he sent to the government from the above Island, under date of September 24, 1748, describing the Sultan’s singular artifices to amuse him and frustrate the object of his mission, fully confirms all that has just been said, and, on closing his report, makes use of the following remarkable words: 

“When is it we shall have had enough of treaties with these Moros, for have we not before us the experience of more than one hundred years, during which period of time, they have not kept a single article in any way burdensome to, or binding on, themselves?  They will never observe the conditions of peace, because their property consists in the possession of slaves, and with them they traffic, the same as other nations do with money.  Sooner will the hawk release his prey from his talons than they will put an end to their piracies.  The cause of their being still unfaithful to Spain arises out of this matter having been taken up by fits and starts, and not in the serious manner it ought to have been done.  To make war on them, in an effectual manner, fleets must not be employed, but they must be attacked on land, and in their posts in the interior; for it is much more advisable at once to spend ten with advantage and in a strenuous manner to attain an important object than to lay out twenty by degrees and without fruit.”