Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/363

Rh. Secularization included as an essential element, by the whole spirit of Spanish laws, the distribution of mission lands and property to the Indians. Híjar and Padrés always claimed to be advocates and defenders of aboriginal rights; and while their strongest motives, as in the case of all men in a like situation, were personal rather than humanitarian, I deem it unlikely that there was any intention of perpetrating so gross an outrage as was implied in a literal interpretation of the instructions considered independently of other laws. I suppose rather that the plan was to put the neophytes, at least in theory, on equal terms with the colonists in the distribution of property. It can serve no useful purpose to speculate upon what might have been the results if Híjar's instructions had been carried out. The revocation of his commission as gefe político enabled Figueroa very justly to annul those instructions; else he would have found himself with his reglamento very much in the position of Echeandía with his decree of January 1831. The controversy has been fully treated elsewhere; and the arguments of the two rivals on their respective systems and authority for regulating secularization, though lengthy and interesting, do not call for further notice. The Híjar and Padrés colony as planned seemed destined to exert a radical and controlling influence on the fate of the California missions; but in reality it had no effect beyond the imposition of a heavy tax for a year or two to support the families, and a diminution of the opposition which Figueroa might otherwise have expected from the friars.

The records of what was actually accomplished this year under Figueroa's provisional regulations are meagre, as we shall find the annals of secularization