Let the evil Spaniard be punished; that is but justice: but the good man cannot and ought not to be punished. The fact is that by means of the said laws the father puts all [the Spaniards] on the same footing, and persecutes and punishes all without distinction until he drives them out of the country. In this way, he is left alone in the village, and without witnesses for what only God knows, and the intelligent Catholics weep; and the Indian grows more alien every day, and becomes hostile to the Spaniard through the instruction which he receives from the father.
If the Spaniard is very bad, let him be punished by all means. But, if this is proper, why do they not only not ask the same in regard to the Chinese (who without comparison is worse), but defend, protect, and aid him, on account of trade and whatever else offers?
The Spaniard may be a robber, gambler, and vicious; but he is not an idolater, an apostate, or a traitor, a sodomite, and the father of all deceit, as is the Chinese. Nevertheless, the father keeps still about all this and shelters it, and reserves his hootings only for the poor Spaniard, who many times shames the father missionary himself by the regularity of his conduct.
What consolation can there be for the Spaniard, prohibited so rigorously from entering the domains of his king, when he sees that the Chinese are not only not hindered from such entrance, but also that they are encouraged; and that they rove about, and come and go, with more freedom than in their own country?[23]
Is it possible that we must see laws so harsh against the people of our own nation, and yet, that although the Chinese are foreigners and so perverse in all ways, they have merited a special título in the Recopilación and in article 18, book vi, for their defense, trade, and increase in Manila and the provinces?
Fray Gaspar de San Agustin speaks as follows in his history of the conquest of Filipinas, book ii, folio 373 and verso, when speaking of the Chinese: “They are a race blinded by greed, and self-interest, and when these intervene friendship or relationship counts for nothing; for the son delights more in deceiving his father than the foreigner.” He continues, and after noting that they are atheists, and that only by a miracle will it be seen that any of them is a good Christian, he concludes as follows: “finally, they are a nation who hope for no other blessings than those of this world, nor other glory than temporal goods; and they worship no other God than the metals of silver and gold, and keep faith with Money alone.”
This is the character of the Chinese, according to the above-cited author.[24] And, granted that it was a very inadequate statement, it is necessary to remark that both he and the rest of his order, and the others, with no difference, have favored and protected such atheists and persecuted the Spaniards. The proof is ad oculum [i.e., ocular], until the destruction during the war; for Manila and the provinces were inundated by Chinese, married and protected by the fathers, but there was not, nor is there a Spaniard [in the provinces]. This was because they did not find themselves persecuted by those same fathers; therefore the Chinese, according to the same historian, reached in time past the number of four hundred thousand. The most remarkable thing is, that the fathers administered to them in spiritual matters with as great serenity as if they were fathers of the deserts,[25] and yet Fray Gaspar confesses that they are atheists.
We cannot pass in silence the fact that after the war the Chinese religious[26] refused to confess the Chinese, for they said that they knew that their fellow-countrymen were idolaters. However, the Spanish religious found a moral rule by which to proceed without any innovation, as they proceed in their own administration; and in this way they have administered the Christian churches in those regions. Consequently, he who says the contrary deceives, and falsifies the truth in regard to certain facts which are public, and which all those of us who have been in those regions have seen.
In confirmation of the above, see the same historian, book iii, folio 426, in which, treating of the arrival of Governor Santiago de Vera, he says: “He brought very strict orders from his Majesty[27] to correct the great excesses which had come to his royal notice, and which had been committed by the encomenderos of the Indians—who, losing shame before God and the world, had descended to such dishonorable acts (perhaps for lack of punishment in the first encomenderos), which transgressed their obligation.” Leaving aside the truth of so great excesses and of the medium by which they came to his royal notice (which if investigated thoroughly must have been, without doubt, through the fathers themselves) it is a fact that a decree was despatched at Lisboa, March 27, 1583, in favor of the Indians, and against the excesses of the encomenderos.
The above-mentioned historian continues, and says that the governor deprived Bartolomé de Ledesma, encomendero of Abuyo, of his encomienda, as also others whom he found more guilty in similar crimes—whose names he omits, as it is not his intention to reveal or point out other persons who at present behave as they should; but he will not neglect to give the royal decree.