Nevertheless, for a long time, nothing is to be subtracted from the work of the fathers of the church. A noble zeal animated them; often they added to it a fine tact, much practical wisdom, unlimited capacity for self-denial, and even self-immolation. Years went by; the missionary era came to an end; there was no longer the splendor of the apostolic adventure into the jungle. A different spirit began to possess a part of the clergy; not all of it, but a part. Marvelously rich the country was that Spain had annexed in this fashion; hardly anywhere else had nature bestowed a more fertile soil with a more pleasing climate. For two hundred years the Government at Madrid, with an excess of stupidity, restrained the natural development of this Eden by narrowly limiting its trade. Only to Mexico and only by means of one galleon a year could the struggling colony export its products; a process of strangulation into which some bugaboo of competition had harried the merchants of Barcelona and so the poor foolish Government. After 1815, as liberalism and the beneficent results of the French Revolution began to make their belated appearance in Spain, these restrictions were cautiously relaxed, and at once the value of Philippine lands began to increase. Four orders of European friars [15] had settled themselves in the Philippines, obtaining in the early days from the insular Government grants of estates that because of the lack of adequate surveying and for other reasons were of shadowy boundaries. As trade increased it multiplied the demand for Philippine products. Under this pressure, forests once covering great areas of rich land were cleared away by pioneers that settled upon the soil they had made tillable. In hundreds of cases the friars laid claim to such lands and demanded of the settlers possession or rents. If the settler resisted, the Civil Guard or other military force ejected him. If he sought relief in the courts he had only his heavy expenses for his pains.