This occasion made sufficiently evident the greatness of the benefit that the islands owe to the Society for the [treaties of] peace made with these kings--thus finding the royal arms at liberty for more pressing exigencies, and being set free, as regards those kings, from the most painful anxiety lest their forces would be allied with our dangers. With this, attention could be given to the punishment of Burney, a pirate as cruel as impious; and to finding external relief in the domestic losses and evils which had rendered our safety so uncertain. [Our forces were thus ready] in an almost general revolt of all the islands, in the provinces that were most subjugated and had never tested the keenness of our arms; for they had yielded to the echoes of our trumpets, receiving our troops in peace. But in these recent years had been operating in these new worlds the influences of that malign planet which was ruining Europe (and especially our España), with revolts of entire kingdoms, and has caused rivers of blood to run in the populous kingdom of China; and it reached these islands, to wreak on them its fierceness. And God--permitting evil, for the credit of virtue and the reward of the good--gave warlike courage to the most pusillanimous tribes, and armed the nakedness of these Indians to resist the unconquerable steel of our Spaniards. The first region to declare against us was the province of Ibabao, which is in the island of Samar; it is the coast which faces the north, beaten by the sea of Nueva España. There the Society has a new residence, which is occupied by six fathers. All the villages connected with it revolted, following the audacious stand of the chief among them, which is Palapag. This was occasioned by the oppressions arising from our public works--which is a motive that should appeal to them, since they were the ones interested in the defense [of the coasts against their enemies]. But the Indians, as barbarians, do not heed future perils, but rather present fatigues; and to these their slothful nature opposes itself. The losses of galleons made it necessary to maintain in that province a shipyard. This drafted all the carpenters from Manila, and, in order to supply those that were needed on that shore, it was necessary to demand from each province a certain number--a quota of hardly one to each village, and this so equitably that to worldly prudence these allotments seemed advantageous, for which many would eagerly ask. But as the Indians have grown up in their wretchedness and in the life of brutes in their remote mountains, it seems to them that they are maintaining their liberty. They resented greatly this political compulsion to citizenship and the formation of a village, [so that they would live] as men. Those in the provinces that were most civilized and were nearest to Manila had obeyed the decree without opposition, but these [remote] provinces immediately made such