the observance of her ordinances even with the rod. La Pérouse says:
"The only thought was to make Christians and never citizens. This
people was divided into parishes, and subjected to the most minute
and extravagant observances. Each fault, each sin is still punished
by the rod. Failure to attend prayers and mass has its fixed penalty,
and punishment is administered to men and women at the door of the
church by order of the pastor." [125] Le Gentil describes such a
scene in a little village a few miles from Manila, where one Sunday
afternoon he saw a crowd, chiefly Indian women, following a woman who
was to be whipped at the church door for not having been to mass. [126]

The prevalence of a supervision and discipline so parental for the
mass of the people in the colony could but react upon the ruling
class, and La Pérouse remarks upon the absence of individual liberty
in the islands: "No liberty is enjoyed: inquisitors and monks watch
the consciences; the oidors (judges of the Audiencia) all private
affairs; the governor, the most innocent movements; an excursion to
the interior, a conversation come before his jurisdiction; in fine,
the most beautiful and charming country in the world is certainly
the last that a free man would choose to live in." [127]

Intellectual apathy, one would naturally suppose, must be the
consequence of such sedulous oversight, and intellectual progress
impossible. Progress in scientific knowledge was, indeed, quite
effectually blocked.

The French astronomer Le Gentil gives an interesting account of
the conditions of scientific knowledge at the two Universities
in Manila. These institutions seemed to be the last refuge of the
scholastic ideas and methods that had been discarded in Europe. A