We do not want, your Excellency, temporal honors or dignities, which we have renounced by choosing for our profession a life hidden in Jesus Christ. We do not belong to those who, in whatever they do, think immediately, even when deserving them, of recompenses and decorations. We do not desire, as our enemies believe (who judge us, perhaps, from themselves), to preponderate in the civil government and administration of the villages, nor even at least to continue our slight official intervention assigned to us in certain secular matters by law and tradition. If one desires to strip the parish priest or the missionary of all administrative, gubernatorial, and economic functions, in which, without us ever claiming it, yea, ever, the secular authority has come to solicit our modest cooperation, let it be done at a seasonable time. Those who adopt such an inclination will see what is most advisable for the exalted interests of the fatherland; but from them and not from us, who have ever (even enduring because of that intervention, annoyances, censures, and persecutions, and considering it a true burden) been docile auxiliaries of the civil authority, will be demanded the responsibility of the consequences that may be occasioned by so far-reaching a measure. We have come to the islands to preach and to preserve the Christian faith, and to instruct these natives with the celestial food of the sacraments and the maxims of the gospel; to prove that the principal intent of España, on incorporating this territory with its crown, was to christianize and civilize the natives. We have not come to become alcaldes, governors, judges, military men, agriculturists, tradesmen, or merchants; although the concord and fast union that should prevail between the Church and State be granted, and the fact that we constitute here the only social Spanish institution, never have we refused to contribute with our might as good patriots and submissive vassals to whatever has been demanded of us, and which we have been able to perform, without dishonor to our priestly and religious character.