Is it possible that we must see laws so harsh against the people of our own nation, and yet, that although the Chinese are foreigners and so perverse in all ways, they have merited a special título in the Recopilación and in article 18, book vi, for their defense, trade, and increase in Manila and the provinces? Fray Gaspar de San Agustin speaks as follows in his history of the conquest of Filipinas, book ii, folio 373 and verso, when speaking of the Chinese: "They are a race blinded by greed, and self-interest, and when these intervene friendship or relationship counts for nothing; for the son delights more in deceiving his father than the foreigner." He continues, and after noting that they are atheists, and that only by a miracle will it be seen that any of them is a good Christian, he concludes as follows: "finally, they are a nation who hope for no other blessings than those of this world, nor other glory than temporal goods; and they worship no other God than the metals of silver and gold, and keep faith with Money alone." This is the character of the Chinese, according to the above-cited author. [91] And, granted that it was a very inadequate statement, it is necessary to remark that both he and the rest of his order, and the others, with no difference, have favored and protected such atheists and persecuted the Spaniards. The proof is ad oculum [i.e., ocular], until the destruction during the war; for Manila and the provinces were inundated by Chinese, married and protected by the fathers, but there was not, nor is there a Spaniard [in the provinces]. This was because they did not find themselves persecuted by those same fathers; therefore the Chinese, according to the same historian, reached in time past the number of four hundred thousand. The most remarkable thing is, that the fathers administered to them in spiritual matters with as great serenity as if they were fathers of the deserts, [92] and yet Fray Gaspar confesses that they are atheists. We cannot pass in silence the fact that after the war the Chinese religious [93] refused to confess the Chinese, for they said that they knew that their fellow-countrymen were idolaters. However, the Spanish religious found a moral rule by which to proceed without any innovation, as they proceed in their own administration; and in this way they have administered the Christian churches in those regions. Consequently, he who says the contrary deceives, and falsifies the truth in regard to certain facts which are public, and which all those of us who have been in those regions have seen.