Other equally unjust charges. We shall not compare our conduct with that of the respectable and very estimable native priests of the secular clergy, whom the majority of the separatist Filipinos flatter, undoubtedly because it is not to the purpose of their plans to combat them. We shall not rebut the shamelessness of supposing that part of our property has a criminal origin, and that we are certain despots in our rural estates who suck the blood of our tenants by various methods, an infamy so often refuted with authentic data of overwhelming proof. We shall not speak of the vast imposture of imputing to us all the executions by shooting, imprisonments, tortures, trials, and confiscation of property of those implicated in the last insurrection. We scorn the absurd fable that we are absolute masters, not only of consciences, but of all the archipelago, at the same time that they, obviously contradicting themselves, as error is wont to do, declare that our prestige and influence in the islands is lost. We neglect to attribute to ourselves whatever hate and censure, according to them, have been made in the country by the military [institutos armados], the governors, the judges, and all the public organisms, in deportations and other kinds of punishment; as if we religious managed to our liking the machine of the government and administration of this territory, and as if, from the governor-general down to the last agent of the police, all were but the blind executors of our will. We lay aside those and other things--poorly executed arguments--which certain misguided sons of this country are still employing, and which are unfortunately repeated by certain peninsulars, in order to manifest their hatred or prejudice against the clergy; and pass on to speak of the insurrection and of the imperious necessity of remedying the extremely embarrassing situation of the religious corporations in the archipelago.