The reading of these instructions can give an idea of the internal government of a Filipino settlement, and the impossibility that impartiality and efficient justice can rule, if there is no intervention by the cura. I will add that the latter regards the village in a certain manner as his own. He enjoys seeing its prosperity and its advancement, as he thinks that this is his work. He takes an interest in its having good roads, harvests, tools, irrigation, and everything that can enrich and beautify it. Many curas spend all their money in public works, and on their churches. They rival one another, each striving to have in his own village the richest altars, the best houses, musicians, schools, and finely-dressed people. It is a sight worth seeing, a friar constituting himself overseer and director of a wooden bridge or of a causeway--administering a buffet to this one, a shove to another; praising that one, or calling this other a lazy fellow; giving a bunch of cigars to the one who stays an hour longer to work, or carries most bricks up to the scaffold; promising to kill a cow for the food of next day; and making them offers, often without any intention of fulfilling them, only with the object of encouraging them, and deceiving them like children. [106] But whoever knows the country can do no less than confess that this is the only means to get any advantage out of the lazy and childish Filipinos, who have no needs; and that the cura has infinite advantages over the governor, for his buffets do not offend, his requests oblige, and his love to the village and his disinterestedness captivate and interest these people, and make them as wax. Thus indeed can it be said that the cura is the soul of the village. In any province where its ruler is united with the curas, where the latter honor the alcalde and instruct him of all that happens, and he gives them the aid that is necessary to preserve their prestige--in that province, I say, there are no thefts, no disorders, no complaints, no tears, no insurrections, nor any other thing but a complete and durable peace, [107] and great submission and reverence to the Spaniards. At the present time that may be seen in the provinces where the governor has the right desires and a clear understanding, and recognizes the error into which the government has fallen during the last few years, in trying to deprive the curas of the civil administration, by forcing them to reduce themselves to spiritual matters, and to tolerate irreligious acts. The province of Pangasinan, for example, finds itself in this case under the orders of the worthy alcalde-mayor, Don Francisco de Lila, a volunteer of the militia of Manila and a very decided liberal: I have traveled through this province by night, with only one servant, without arms, and quite without fear, although there was not a soldier in the whole province. The horses and buffaloes were feeding in the meadows without herders; and, on my