LETTER FROM THE ECCLESIASTICAL CABILDO TO FELIPE III Sire: Considering that your Majesty's great desire has always shown that these Filipinas Islands should increase in all things, and they may without doubt increase greatly for the service of God and that of your Majesty, if perchance your Majesty's ministers aid them by observing the royal decrees (for no more would be necessary); understanding also that some of those religious who come here would like to have your Majesty grant them favor by giving them a university in these islands, [18] and authority to confer the degrees of bachelor, licentiate, and other degrees: we have considered that, the case having been well examined, this is not fitting, either for the service of your Majesty, or for the welfare and increase of this land. We believe that we shall give very clear and very apparent reasons for this. For if a religious order has the said university, never will the children and those born in this country have any advantage, nor will they advance any in letters. For, since it is a fact that virtue increases with reward, which is the honor, if the religious hold all the professorships, the seculars will have no incentive which encourages them to rise and to study solidly. A professorship and the thought of being able to get one makes many study. Second, it would be a great pity and even a great cause of ruin for the country, if the children of its inhabitants did not have anything more to which to aspire than a benefice of Indians, or at most one single benefice which exists, of Spaniards, in all this archbishopric, namely, this curacy of Manila, and four or five others of Indians, which exist in all these islands. All of those benefices will be given by the bishops to their servants unless students are found here such that their conscience obliges them to favor such students. If the professorships should be given only to religious, no encouragement could be given to the children of the citizens here to study earnestly, at the most more than a little grammar. For that would be enough for them so that a benefice might be given them. Third, it is necessary for the religious orders themselves here, for the children of citizens to have the wherewithal with which to be encouraged to study, and to pretend to honorable and great things. For, by such people must the orders be fed and sustained. And it is fitting that those who should take the habit in them should have studied very well, and with honorable intention, and not that men of little mind and learning should enter the orders. Fourth, it is right that this metropolitan church of Manila and the other cathedrals of these islands should have men truly erudite who may enter them and hold their prebends. This is impossible to attain if all the seculars who enter them must be only students, and only scholars, and no one can be a master, or hold a professorship, and it is well known how unadvisable that is.