Nor did they pay heavily for these blessings.  The system of government was inexpensive, and the religious establishment was mainly supported by the landed estates of the orders.  Church fees may have been at times excessive, but the occasions for such fees were infrequent.  The tenants of the church estates found the friars easy landlords.  Zuniga describes a great estate of the Augustinians near Manila of which the annual rental was not over $1,500, while the annual produce was estimated to be not less than $70,000, for it supported about four thousand people. [143] The position of women was fully as good among the Christian Indians of the Philippines as among the Christian people of Europe.  But conspicuous among the achievements of the conquest and conversion of the islands in the field of humanitarian progress, when we consider the conditions in other European tropical colonies, have been the prohibition of slavery and the unremitting efforts to eradicate its disguised forms.  These alone are a sufficient proof that the dominating motives in the Spanish and clerical policies were humane and not commercial.  Not less striking proof of the comfortable prosperity of the natives on the whole under the old Spanish rule has been the steady growth of the population.  At the time of the conquest the population in all probability did not exceed a half-million.  In the first half of the eighteenth century according to the historian of the Franciscans, San Antonio, the Christian population was about 830,000.  At the opening of the nineteenth century Zuniga estimated the total at a million and a half as over 300,000 tributes were paid.  The official estimate in 1819 was just short of 2,600,000; by 1845 Buzeta calculates the number at a little short of four millions.  In the next half century it nearly doubled. [144]

In view of all these facts one must readily accord assent to Zuniga’s simple tribute to the work of Spain.  “The Spanish rule has imposed very few burdens upon these Indians, and has delivered them from many misfortunes which they suffered from the constant warfare waged by one district with another, whereby many died, and others lived wretched lives as slaves.  For this reason the population increased very slowly, as is now the case with the infidels of the mountain regions who do not acknowledge subjection to the King of Spain.  Since the conquest there has been an increase in well-being and in population.  Subjection to the King of Spain has been very advantageous in all that concerns the body.  I will not speak of the advantage of knowledge of the true God, and of the opportunity to obtain eternal happiness for the soul, for I write not as a missionary but as a philosopher.” [145]