Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 10).djvu/39

 and extremely useful, and may conduce to the improvement, good management, and systematic conduct of the royal hospital that the hospital of the Confraternity of La Misericordia should be joined with it. The resulting advantages will be recapitulated; and the causes and reasons on which I rely, and which I find for this, are the following.

The first reason is that this is a work of so great service to the Divine Majesty of God, and the royal Majesty; to the state a very great advantage, profit, and benefit; to the poor, the advantage, attendance, and healing of their maladies and miseries, bodily as well as spiritual.

Conspicuous among the advantages is the service to God done by caring for His poor, whether Spanish or not, which latter are a forgotten and wretched people—although some of their masters, for charity and the love and service of God, provide and afford them their support, their good, their care, and their salvation, spiritual and temporal.

The royal Majesty will be much advantaged, because by the charity, good order, and system that will exist, several salaries for persons employed in the said hospital may be dispensed with, and there will be more profit and increase of the revenue; while for the support of the poor there will be a larger fund, in addition to the fact that they will be better cared for and served. The result will be that health will more abound, and that perhaps mortality will be lessened, together with these great sicknesses—a great service to God and his royal Majesty, and the state; for his Majesty will have more soldiers, by which he will reap a profit, and in this case a great one, because of the great cost and expense of sending