magistrate to their parishioners on account of daily labor,
and to certify similarly the value of materials employed in public
works. Besides the above, they are continually called upon to draw
up circumstantial reports, or declarations, required by the superior
tribunals; they receive frequent injunctions to co-operate in the
increase of the king's revenue and the encouragement of agriculture
and industry; in a word, there is scarcely a thing to which their
attention is not called, and to which it is not expected they should
contribute by their influence, directly or indirectly.

[Allowances from treasury.] The royal treasury pays them an annual
allowance equal to $180, in kind and money, for each five hundred
tributes under their care, and this, added to the emoluments of the
church, renders the total proceeds of a curacy generally equivalent
to about from six to eight reals for each entire tribute; but
from this allowance are to be deducted the expenses of coadjutors,
subsistence, servants, horses, and all the other charges arising
out of the administration of such wearisome duties; nor are the
parishioners under any other obligation than to provide the churches
with assistants, or sacristans and singers, and the curates with
provisions at tariff prices.

[Need of more European clergy.] Finally, as from what has been above
stated it would appear, that as many as five hundred religious persons
are necessary for the spiritual administration of the interior towns
and districts, besides the number requisite to do the duty and fill
the dignities of the respective orders and convents in the capital,
independent of which there ought to be a proportionate surplus,
applicable to the progressive reduction of the infidel tribes
inhabiting the uplands, as well as the preaching of the Gospel
in China and Cochinchina, most assuredly, it would be expedient
to assemble and keep together a body of no less than seven hundred
persons, if it is the wish of the government, on a tolerable scale, to
provide for the wants of these remote missions. At the present moment
the number does not exceed three hundred, including superannuated,
exempt from service, and lay-brothers, whilst the native clergymen
in effective possession of curacies, and including substitutes,
coadjutors and weekly preachers, exceed one thousand. And as the
latter, in general unworthy of the priesthood, are rather injurious
than really serviceable to the state, it shou