ut confession. In the village of Lilio,
on the brow of Mount Banahao, where there are 1,300 tributes, there
were more than 600 persons who did not confess in the year 1840; and
this has not been one of the most remiss villages in the fulfilment
of its religious duties."

[Father Juan Ferrando, who examined Mas's MS., says that 'the Filipinos
confess according to the instruction that is given them. In Manila,
as I know by experience, they confess as well as the most fervent
Spaniard, and I have heard many fathers say the same of many Indians
of the provinces.']

"Very many of them also never go to mass in any village where the
cura is not especially zealous. In the city of Vigan, where there are
about 30,000 persons, not more than 500 or 800 went to church during
my stay there on any feast-day, except one of especial devotion to
celebrate a virgin patroness of the city. There has been and is much
talk of the influence of the curas in the villages. No doubt there is
something in it, but their respect and deference toward the parish
priest is influenced not a little, in my opinion by their idea (and
one not ill founded) of the power of the priest, of the employment
that he can give; and of their hope that he will protect them in any
oppression that they receive from the civil government or from the
soldiers. In reality, the friar usually addresses his parishioners
in the language of peace, which is the method which fits well into
the phlegmatic Filipino. He constitutes himself their defender, even
without their having any regard for him--now from the injuries that
the avarice of their governors causes them, now from the tendency
of these to acquire preponderance and to command, which is the
first instinct of man. Consequently, the friars, by resisting and
restraining in all parts, and at so great a distance from Madrid,
the tyranny or greed of the Spaniards, have been very useful to the
villages, and have been acquiring their love. And since the islands
are not kept subject by force, but by the will of the mass of the
inhabitants, and the means of persuasion are principally in the
hands of the religious, the government is necessarily obliged to
show the latter considerable deference. From this fact originates
their influence in temporal affairs, and the fear mixed with the
respect with which they inspire the people. Three facts naturally
result from all this. The cura, speaking in general, is the one who
governs the vil