[74] "The friars have always been considered as poor and needy by the government of España, and in that notion--without stopping to consider that their ownership of land was continually extending further in Filipinas, and that through various schemes they had created for themselves a secure income in the country--the Spanish monarchs by various provisions (most of them despatched at the instigation of the friars) have ordained that their needs be supplied with wine, oil, various contributions, and cash donations, under the most flimsy pretexts." (Pardo de Tavera, note 7, p. 51.) [75] "At the pleasure of the king, on account of the lack of clerics at the beginning." [76] "In effect, it can be said the friars trained clerics in order afterward to employ the latter in their own service; for under the name of coadjutors each cura kept in his convent one or two clerics, according to the necessities of the parish, who served him as if they were slaves, and who suffered every sort of humiliation and annoyance. It was not only in those times [of Anda] that the situation of the Filipino cleric was so melancholy and abject; but, in the midst of the increasing prosperity of the friars and their curates, with equal pace increased also the wretchedness of their coadjutors and the intolerable misery of their existence. In order to justify their conduct toward the Filipino clerics, the friars resorted to the pretext of their unfitness; but not only is this argument calumnious, but, even if it were accepted as sound, it does not justify the bad treatment which they give the cleric, and would demonstrate, besides, that the education which he receives from the friars is incomplete and defective." (He cites Archbishop Santa Justa as rebuking the regulars for thus calumniating the clerics, saying, among other things, "Is it not notorious to every one of us here that the spiritual administration all devolves upon the coadjutor cleric, the father minister reserving to himself only the charge of collecting in his own house, without leaving it, the parochial dues. How can they deny this, when it is so public? If the clerics are incapable, how can the ministers in conscience allow and entrust to them the spiritual administration of their villages? If that be not so, how dare they discredit the clerics with the strange, not to say unjust, censure of their being unfit and incompetent?") "In these later times, the friars, since they could no longer rail against the clerics in that fashion--for they do not, at least so much now, insist on their old accusation of unfitness, because the Filipino clerics have proved that they include men of as great learning and virtue as the friars, and even more--resorted to a political reason, making the Spanish government believe that the Filipino clerics were every one filibusters. This weapon was of good results for the cause of the friars, but fatal for the Filipino clergy,