Such a thing will not happen, we are sure; for the moment that a law freeing the parish priests and missionaries from subordination to their prelate, or lessening or restricting the latter's power, is dictated, no religious, by bonds of conscience, would dare to continue at the head of his parish or mission, and all would retire to their convents at Manila. Such a thing will not happen, for the bishops themselves would be energetically opposed to it, and would confess, as they do, that precisely because the vast majority of their parish clergy are regulars, their clergy live so morally and apply themselves so assiduously to their ministry, and that scarcely would they find that in secular priests [presbiteros] or in regulars not fully subject to their order, and that they are consequently interested, through love of their flock, in having the parish ministries of the archipelago continue to be ruled by the same laws as hitherto. And such a thing will not happen, we say, because the holy see, jealous guardian of the interests of Christianity in the islands, not less than of the prestige of the regulars, will not permit it; while, at the last, the government would be placed in the dilemma, namely, that either a suitable and sufficient personnel be proposed to it, which might replace the religious corporations of Filipinas in a stable and worthy manner, or, on the contrary, that the latter continue discharging their actual duties, without the least diminution of the jurisdiction of their respective regular prelates.