The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898; Volume 50 / Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

by Unknown

THIRD ABUSE

It is an abuse that since the regulars have possessed the curacies for so many years and with so many troubles [ensuing therefrom], they have not, although the country is so wealthy and their fees and parish dues are so heavy, thought of relieving the king of the hard and intolerable burden of paying them a stipend in money, with rice, wine for the mass, and oil; and, in those curacies which they call missions, even the escorts for the guard of the father—who runs no risk and for that reason is not accustomed to have any escort, although the king always pays for them.[10]

What vassal who has even the most lukewarm regard and respect for his king could keep still when the curacies of Binondo, Santa Cruz, and the Parian (which are under the cannon of Manila), and that of Tondo, which are, with but little difference, worth to the regulars, the first, six or seven thousand pesos in obventions, and the others but little less, nevertheless draw from the king the stipend in the things mentioned above?

Remedy for this evil

To create a university, as has been said, to send clergy for its beginning, and to make current the tithes—of which hitherto in Manila it is only known that they are inserted in corpore juris,[11] nothing more. By this just provision the king will save three hundred thousand pesos; the army will find that they can be supported with that amount; and the difference between these two investments will be evident, since the soldiers defend the king, and the regulars are his enemies, of which the past war was a good example.