It is known by all, and is demonstrated quite clearly, that the traditional laws for teaching, if admirably penetrated by the spirit, profoundly Catholic, of their epoch, were very deficient, and in no small measure impracticable in Filipinas, because they lack almost all the means indispensable for the happy attainment which legislators and missionaries ardently desired; equally notorious is it, and also demonstrated, that the absolute lack of legal rules and regulations to facilitate their obligation accentuated more strongly the deficiency of those laws. We say legal, because the few regulations that there were, and which were practiced, were those of which mention has already been made in the Práctica del Ministerio of 1712, circulated as was compulsory, by their provincial among the Augustinian parish priests, revised in the provincial chapter of 1716, and amplified and printed in 1731; and the Instrucciones morales y religiosas [i.e., Moral and religious Instructions], [91] printed in 1739 for the use of the Dominican fathers--a lamentable lack which disappeared with the publication of the regulations of December 20, 1863. This law which was successively perfected by numerous decrees of the superior government of the islands, especially by generals Izquierdo, Gándara, and Weyler, who were filled with the praiseworthy desire for the teaching; this law together with the opening of the Suez Canal, which has produced a notable increase in the European population, [92] and by this and by the facility of numerous communications and most valuable commercial transactions, has been an abundant fount of education and progress, which must be perfected and heightened so that what ought to be an abundant and beneficial irrigation for so valuable possessions may not be converted into a devastating torrent. But even after this which we might call a giant's step in the history of the Filipinas, their progress and their relations with Europa, within the islands even, very much still needs to be done. It is a fact that the coasting trade steam vessels have acquired an increase more considerable than could have been imagined twenty years ago, while the sail-coasting trade has not been diminished for this reason, but increased. But just as the maritime communications have acquired great facility, communications by land have deteriorated not a little, and the neighborhood roads of all the islands have been falling into complete neglect since the day when the days of forced labor began to be reduced, and this tax became redeemable [in money].