is any thought given to a present virtue.  However, let it be lacking, we feel that lack immediately, and we seek alter it enviously.  As says Horace:  virtutem incolumen odimus, sublatam ex oculis quaerimus invidi. [103] Spaniards may ask me:  “Who has pacified the country?  Who domesticated the Indians, so that one can go through the whole country with more safety than by the highways of Espana?  For there neither the machine of justice, nor the severe punishments, nor the grave penalties secure any safety.  Nor do the lofty houses, nor their tightly barred doors at all prevent the evils committed by the thief and murderer; for all is open to the execution of their desires.  Here one sleeps with the door open, with entire safety, and just as if many legions of soldiers were watching it.”  And in fact, I do not recall ever having locked a door during my ministry. [104] I ask then, whence proceeds this except from the religious, who are gradually taming these peoples as fathers, and teaching them for temporal interests also?  It there were no religious, how could the tributes be entirely collected?  For the tributes seemed to be only what the chiefs chose to give, without its being possible by any severity to make them give more.  This is proved, because in the encomienda of Dapitan, a district of Mindanao, although tribute was paid to Diego de Ledesma, son of one of the conquistadors, it amounted to nothing, all told being no more than the value of forty pesos.  But at the end of one year after it was given to the fathers of the Society, tribute was collected from more than one thousand Indians.  For, as we have, during the course of the year, made them resort [to church], the chief cannot afterward conceal any of them.

Truly, when I see the duties that we are performing, and at so great danger (for we are the object of the watchfulness and censure of the governors and all the people of the country), if we undertake to defend the Indians, they say that we are usurping the royal jurisdiction—­just as if we were not serving his Majesty the king, our sovereign, with all our strength.  If we make agreements with them as fathers, in order that their suits may not last ten years, they say that we are playing the justice.  If we try to prevent offenses to the Lord, they say that we are interested in the matter.  If we restrain the heavy trading, they say that it is to profit more.  And truly, we might say that spectaculum facti sumus mundi, angelis et hominibus. [105] If love of God and our neighbor did not guide us, of a truth there would be opportunity for some one to say “Pereat dies in qua natus sum, et nox in qua dictum est, ’conceptus est homo?’.” [106] For the accusations and misrepresentations in vogue concerning the religious are innumerable. [107] I knew a venerable old man, by name Fray Juan de Villamayor, [108] whose head and beard contained not one single black hair.  He was prior in Aclan, where some Spaniards of evil life