And since this chief executive, actuated by what he himself has observed in this province of Pampanga, in that of Bulacan, and in those of Tondo and Laguna de Bay (which he has visited personally), cannot any longer permit such extortions and injuries as are caused, among all classes of persons, to the farmers and poor Indians in the said provinces, and in the other districts to which this decree will also be made to extend: I command that in future the implements of labor--such as carabaos, plows, hemp-combs, and other field utensils belonging to the Indians, mestizos, creoles, Spaniards, or any other class of persons--shall not be seized for a civil debt, any more than their lands, since most of them have no ownership in these. Moreover, they shall not be arrested at the times when they must work in the fields, such as plowing, and gathering their harvests: and, at the times when they can be arrested, authority shall be given to the alcaldes-mayor so that they can grant them a respite of six months, without loading them with fees or other exactions. And, as the backward state of agriculture in Filipinas proceeds also from the fact that, notwithstanding there are many industrious, laborious and charitable persons in the villages, there are also many others in whom sloth and idleness reign--for instance, many chiefs and their sons, and the heads of barangay; and generally these who have exercised the office of magistrate (who, on account of having served in these employments, afterward refuse through a sort of vanity and pride to go back to field work), all these caring only to subjugate the common people by compelling them to work without pay in their fields, and trying to exempt themselves from the common labor, and from the other burdens to which those who pay tribute are subject--likewise this chief executive has resolved to declare that such exemptions ought not to be understood for the classes of persons who are mentioned above, unless they possess at least eight cabalitas of their own land cultivated and worked by their servants or day-laborers, expressly forbidding that they rent these lands to others--always provided that they are not prevented by age or infirmities from carrying on their farm-work in person, since in this case they are allowed to rent them.