anciently common among them, namely, usury in loans, and enslavement
through tyranny. In order that my readers may better understand and
recognize the power of God, who has unrooted these evils, it has
seemed to me best to describe them in greater detail.



Of usury and slavery among the Filipinos. Chapter XXXXVI.


Among other vicious practices common to these nations and proceeding
from that fountain and abyss of evil, idolatry, one was that insatiable
cupidity mentioned by the evangelist St. John as one of the three
which tyrannize over the world. [1] This caused them, forgetful of that
natural compassion which we owe to one another, never to lend succor
in cases of need without assurance of profit. Consequently, whenever
they made loans (not of money, which they did not use or possess,
but of other things, most commonly rice, bells, and gold--this last
more than all else, for when weighed it took the place of money, for
which purpose every one carried in his pouch a balance), they must
always agree upon the profit which should be paid them in addition
to the sum that they were to lend. But the evil did not stop here,
for the profit or gain itself went on increasing with the delay in
making payment--until finally, in the course of time, it exceeded all
the possessions of the debtor. The debt was then charged to his person,
which the poor wretch gave, thus becoming a slave; and from that time
forth all his descendants were also slaves. There was another form
of this usury and slavery, by which the debtor or his son must remain
from that time a slave, until the debt, with all the usury and interest
which were customary among them, was repaid. As a result of this, all