320. Although the captain-general tries, as a good minister, to attend to such wrongs, it is quite common that he is unable to do all that he tries; now because of the depletion of the royal treasury, whose funds do not suffice to meet the calls upon it; and now since he must proceed with the advice of the council of war in which those have many votes who understand only what pertains to the exercise of merchants, although they sign their names with military titles. If the vessels in which they are interested are in danger, all difficulties are conquered, for there is no one who does not hasten with vote and money to fit out fleets to oppose the enemy. But if not then each proposition is a labyrinth, whence he who makes it cannot unravel himself, although Ariadne gives him a thread to guide him. Hence it follows, either that squadrons are not prepared of size sufficient to warn the aggressors, or if they are prepared, they set sail when it would be better for them not to, for they only occasion the vassals new trouble. Let no one imagine that the matter of these two numbers includes imagination or lack of truth. This is proved by authentic documents in what touches the past; while so far as the present century is concerned (during which the same persecutions have been repeatedly shown), experience has given me knowledge of such injuries, when I, as procurator-general and secretary of the province of Philipinas, found that I had to solicit relief for the persecuted Indians and for the afflicted religious. It is also certain that the same thing happened in almost all the wars of which we are speaking, so that our oppressed missionaries had no other consolation than that of God, in the pains that it was indispensable for them to suffer, and which we shall now begin to relate.