olence of the Tirones and other independent tribes. Nevertheless,
it is notorious that the above-mentioned sultans indirectly encouraged
the practice of privateering, by affording every aid in their power
to those who fitted out vessels, and purchasing from the pirates all
the Christians they captured and brought to them.

[A missionary's appeal.] Father Juan Angeles, superior of the mission
established in Jolo, at the request of Sultan Alimudin himself (or
Ferdinand I as he was afterwards unworthily called on being made a
Christian with no other view than the better to gain the confidence
of the Spaniards) in a report he sent to the government from the
above Island, under date of September 24, 1748, describing the
Sultan's singular artifices to amuse him and frustrate the object
of his mission, fully confirms all that has just been said, and,
on closing his report, makes use of the following remarkable words:

"When is it we shall have had enough of treaties with these Moros, for
have we not before us the experience of more than one hundred years,
during which period of time, they have not kept a single article
in any way burdensome to, or binding on, themselves? They will never
observe the conditions of peace, because their property consists in the
possession of slaves, and with them they traffic, the same as other
nations do with money. Sooner will the hawk release his prey from
his talons than they will put an end to their piracies. The cause of
their being still unfaithful to Spain arises out of this matter having
been taken up by fits and starts, and not in the serious manner it
ought to have been done. To make war on them, in an effectual manner,
fleets must not be employed, but they must be attacked on land, and
in their posts in the interior; for it is much more advisable at once
to spend ten with advantage and in a strenuous manner to attain an
important object than to lay out twenty by degrees and without fruit."

[Governmental lenience.] It is an undeniable fact that the government,
lulled and deceived by the frequent embassies and submissive and
crouching letters which those fawning sultans have been in the habit
of transmitting to them, instead of adopting the energetic measures
urged by the above-mentioned missionary, have constantly endeavored
to renew and secure the friendship of those chiefs, by means of
treaties and commercial relations; granting, with this view, ample
licenses to every one who vent