What they as Catholic institutions contradict. All who have written upon Filipinas consider the benefit that the country, and very chiefly the Spanish dominion, has obtained, from that system in which the parish priest and the missionary were the intermediary, more or less direct, between the public authorities and the mass of the Filipino population. It does not belong to us to demonstrate that, for well does the history of this archipelago show it, and it is being told in eloquent, although tragic voices by the present fact, with the deplorable consequences that España is feeling, and to which it has been guided by a senseless and suicidal propaganda against the religious orders. What we have to say at present is, that if the civil authority be not most diligently attentive to the maintenance, encouragement, and guaranty of religion and morality in the islands, as it must be through its solemn promise contracted before the supreme pontiffs and before Christian Europe, in accordance with the teachings and precepts of our most holy Mother, the Church; if it do not oppose a strong wall to the avalanche of insults, taunts, and systematic opposition to the religious of Filipinas, which is coming down upon the peninsula and the archipelago; if it do not prosecute the secret societies with the firmness of a foreseeing government; if it do not cause us to be respected and held as our quality as priests and Spanish corporations demand, in public and in private, in all the spheres of the social order, in whatever concerns España and its agents, repelling every project that in one way or another attempts to remove our prestige and to lessen our reputation, hindering the fruit of our labors: there is no suitable and meritorious way--and we say it with profoundest grief--in which we can continue in the islands. We cannot be less, your Excellency, in our order, than military men, to whom their profession is an honor and exaltation, as well as an exaction; less than the class of administrative functionaries whose rights and prerogatives are defended and guaranteed by the State; less than the mercantile and industrial companies and undertakings, who are considered and protected as impelling elements of public wealth; less than legal, medicinal, and other professional--scientific, artistic, or mechanical--associations, which are honored and respected in every well-organized society. We believe, and this belief is not at all exaggerated, that, as Catholic institutions, we have a right to all the honors, exemptions, and privileges, that the Christian Church and State, and the laws--in accordance with which the religious orders were established in Filipinas--extend to ecclesiastical persons and corporations, and especially to the regulars; and that as Spanish institutions, we ought to have the same consideration as the other entities that have arisen and exist under the protection of the flag of the fatherland.