Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 08).djvu/166

 endas belong to your Majesty); and these islands would be left alone without a single soldier, and with only the bishop and the religious, so that within one week there would be neither the one nor the other. I assured him, in fact, that without express order from your Majesty I could not curtail or diminish the royal income or alter the encomiendas from their first establishment, which they have had for twenty-six years. I answered him fully in respect to the establishment of justice where there is none, and the great good that would result therefrom. I urged him to appoint laymen of good life and example, who, while there are no religious there, may instruct and bring them up in the holy faith, as your Majesty commands in the royal charge regarding presentations—to which the bishop never has given me an answer. I told him that finally, in these two ways, it will be brought about that they will not be left alone and intractable, and thus ready to rebel and rise in two days' time. It were well that these laymen of good life, when religious are lacking, not only be not appointed by the bishop, but that they do not importune the Indians. The bishop does not wish others than the religious to do that, and meanwhile it is not done by either. It would doubtless be of some benefit, and the lack of instruction of which your Majesty complains would be obviated, if the encomenderos could furnish it. But, if there is no such thing in the land, the encomendero is not to blame—as your Majesty declares plainly in my instructions, clause forty-nine, in the following words, "they do not supply it or try to supply it as they are bound to do, and as they should, although there is a sufficient number of the said ministers." Therefore, when there is not a good