Note 24 — ANDA’S MEMORIAL, 1768

This is the character of the Chinese, according to the above-cited author.24 And, granted that it was a very inadequate statement, it is necessary to remark that both he and the rest of his order, and the others, with no difference, have favored and protected such atheists and persecuted the Spaniards. The proof is ad oculum [i.e., ocular], until the destruction during the war; for Manila and the provinces were inundated by Chinese, married and protected by the fathers, but there was not, nor is there a Spaniard [in the provinces]. This was because they did not find themselves persecuted by those same fathers; therefore the Chinese, according to the same historian, reached in time past the number of four hundred thousand. The most remarkable thing is, that the fathers administered to them in spiritual matters with as great serenity as if they were fathers of the deserts,25 and yet Fray Gaspar confesses that they are atheists.