"It cannot be established as a principle from where these classes of servitude among the natives arose, for they are all of the islands and not foreigners; it is understood that they made them in their wars and differences; and the most certain is that those who were most powerful made and took as slaves the others for slight causes and occasions, and most often through loans and usurious contracts current amongst them, the payment, risk and debt increasing with the lapse of time until they became slaves; and thus all these forms of servitude have their violent and unjust origin, and it is about them that there arise the greater part of the lawsuits that exist among the natives and with which they keep busy the judges in the forum of the court, and the confessors in that of the conscience." To the last of the preceding paragraphs Rizal makes the following annotation, which, mutatis mutandis, should give leading Filipinos of to-day matter for reflection:-- "This class of slaves exists even now in many parts, and before all in the province of Batangas, but it must be confessed that their condition is very different from that of a slave in Greece, or Rome, from that of the negro, and even of those made in later times by Spaniards.... "Filipinas, in spite of so many centuries of christianization, in spite of the efforts of some few noble minds, priests as well as civilians, continues still, and is desired to continue, almost in the same state as formerly, for those who direct the country look more to the present than to the future, and because they are guided not by confidence, but by fear. The efforts of the religious corporations to improve this state of things have never been as efficacious, nor as strenuous, as might have been expected from them." Morga continues: [63]-- "These slaves are the greatest wealth and capital which the natives of these islands possess, because they are to them very useful and necessary for their labors and farms; and among them they are sold, exchanged, and made objects of contract, like any other merchandise, from one pueblo to the other, from one province to the other, and likewise from one island to the other. For which reason, and in order to avoid so many lawsuits that would arise, if the question of these servitudes, their origin and beginning, were taken up, they [the slaves, Tr.] are retained and kept as they were kept formerly." Rizal comments on this passage as follows:--