Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/353

Rh was a partial and experimental secularization of certain old missions, eight of which are named, where there have been no new conversions for many years. A portion of the property might be distributed, and the rest kept as a community fund, administered by stewards of their own choice, free from tithes, and devoted to the support of the spiritual administration. The missionary should have for a time a fatherly control, and the alcaldes and majordomos should be responsible for losses and evils resulting from a failure to follow his advice. The neophytes should be made to understand that if they neglect their privileges they will be again put under the padres. With these precautions, if also the government will see that the gente de razon are obliged to set a better example, the evils of secularization may be reduced to a minimum.

Figueroa had now become convinced that any general measure of secularization would be productive of great injury to the interests of California. In his report of July 20th, he had advocated a gradual emancipation, in which he thought the friars might be induced to coöperate. Now, having heard that a bill for secularization had been introduced in congress, he made haste to lay before the government, in his report of October 5th, the results of his own experience and the views of Duran and García Diego, with whom he agreed to the extent of opposing any sudden and radical change in the mission system, as involving total destruction of all the property with possible danger to the security of the territory. He was inclined to favor Duran's plan of a partial and experimental change at the oldest missions. It