communities knew that the ruin of the country was their own ruin, the end of the Spanish domination, the end even of their existence in Filipinas." "On three bases rested the Spanish domination in Filipinas with its institutions and organisations: religion; the prestige of the parish-priest regulars; and the superiority of race in so great accord with Spanish nobility." To freemasonry was due the destruction of the high ideal of religion, and also the idea of the superiority of race; and to freemasonry is due, then, the loss of the colony. The friars have not committed the abuses with which they have been credited, and were not the cause of the revolution. They were always the upholders of Spanish sovereignty, and protected the natives. [96] The municipal reform of 1893, the "Maura law," in conferring a considerable degree of local autonomy on Philippine towns, made the newly created municipal councils also school boards. It was a further step in taking from the padre the power to "visé" and supervise everything done, small and great, in a town. In promulgating the law, Governor-general Blanco (popular with the Filipinos for his liberal measures) took pains to explain that the priest's school-inspecting powers, so far as religious teaching went, were to be the same as ever. As a matter of fact, this reform of Minister Maura, sent forth amid much accompaniment of proclamas in Spain and the islands, was virtually made a dead-letter under succeeding governors. Its non-enforcement, except in a few towns, was one of the complaints of the insurgents in 1896. See LeRoy "Friars in the Philippines," in Political Science Quarterly for December, 1903, pp. 672, 673. [97] Victor S. Clark (Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, no. 58, May, 1905; Labor Conditions in the Philippines), says (p. 854): "Practically all the Christian population of Mindanao spoke Spanish in 1883, which indicates that the statistics probably did not cover the remoter Jesuit mission stations among the Moros. In that year about 21 per cent of the total population reported for the islands could read, but less than 5-1/2 per cent could speak Spanish. In other words, 75 per cent of the persons able to read could do so only in the Malay dialects." [98] Estadismo, chapter xiv (Retana's ed.; note by Zamora).