"Por Dios, Donde se hallaria otro pais que has sufrido tanto. [6] Think of it! Up to 1811 the Philippine islands dared not trade with any country but Mexico, not excepting their neighbor, China. Then the picturesque, half-moon-shaped galleons of Mexico did all the carrying of the Philippines and charged prices such as would enrich them in spite of the pirates they frequently met. For this trade Mexican promoters and the Spanish crown received their tribute, and the Spanish friars, too, had their share. The people were abjectly poor. Even the soldiers were often unpaid, and begged their support from the people whom they subjected. The friars charged exorbitant rentals on the lands they claimed. They encouraged the people to build cathedrals, monasteries and churches, but the cathedrals, monasteries and churches did not belong to the people after they had built them. They charged the people rental on graves in consecrated ground, and when the rent was not paid they evicted the dead. They made the price of marriage so high that many of the people lived together out of wedlock. The friars selected the women of the people they fancied and openly consorted with them, and the children of friars are common throughout the islands. The people are poor, living for the most part in grass houses, while the friars are rich and live in luxury; and this has been going on for centuries." "Bad, very bad; the morals of the tropics and the Orient." "This is not all. The friars exercised the power of secret investigation, and one never knew when he was safe. A friar might report a man as a conspirator against Spain, and, while meeting him and showing friendship for him in public, secretly secure his banishment. There have been cases which I could name, where friars, coveting the wife or sister of a man, have procured his banishment or even secured for him an appointment at a distance, so that they might have the way open to accomplish their purposes. There was a fear which beset every man, even those who through fear were nearest to the friars, that if his eyes should light upon his wife or daughter in an envious way, if he did not give them up he was lost." "Surely, General, this is exaggerated." "The half has not been told. In Lenten time, which was the period when the country folk came to confess, the parish friar would give strict orders to the scribes of the church that in the distribution or giving out of the certificates to the penitents among himself and his coadjutors they should give him the young unmarried women and servant penitents, whom he obscenely solicited through words and manipulations in the confessional." "Why, this is horrible."