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Rh had acted. The necessity for a change was recognized, and the duty of the new ruler, as of his predecessors, was to ascertain and report the best practical methods. Minister Alaman disapproved in the vice-president's name Echeandía's decree of 1831: both because he had gone far beyond his authority in issuing such a decree, and because some of its provisions were not in accord, as pointed out, with the law of 1813, on which it purported to be founded; and he ordered Figueroa, if Echeandía's order had to any extent been obeyed, to restore the missions to the position they held before its publication. Yet he was to study the question closely, to ascertain what missions were in a condition to be secularized according to the law of 1813, and to report such a plan as he might deem most expedient.

Figueroa's general instructions from Minister Ortiz Monasterio, also bearing the date of May 17th, authorized him to go practically much further toward secularization than did the document just mentioned. Article 4 was as follows: "It being a matter of the greatest necessity that the neophytes rise from the state of abasement to which they find themselves reduced, you will cause to be distributed to such as are fitted for it such fields of the mission lands as they may be capable of cultivating, in order that they may thus become fond of labor and may go on acquiring property; but there must be kept undistributed the lands necessary for the support of divine worship, schools, and other objects of common utility. By this means, for the mission system may be gradually