Note 23 — THE FRIAR VIEWPOINT

“We might extend our remarks to much greater length23 in this important matter in order to prove that the ‘Ordeno y mando’24 of those who govern always falls to pieces before insuperable difficulties, and therefore to accuse the religious of being the reason why Castilian is not popular in Filipinas when we have the most eloquent data that in the villages ruled by secular priests of the country, there is less Castilian spoken than in the parishes ruled over by the friars, is an immense simplicity into which only the malevolent can fall or those who do not know those races by experience.—Consult Barrantes’s La Instrucción primaria en Filipinas; and Father Valdés’s El Archipiélago Filipino.”25