authors regarding the frightful diminution of the inhabitants of the
Philippines in the first years after the discovery. In the time of
their first bishop, that is, ten years after Legazpi, Philip II said
that they had been reduced to less than two thirds.

Add to these fatal expeditions that wasted all the moral and material
energies of the country, the frightful inroads of the terrible pirates
from the south, instigated and encouraged by the government, first in
order to get complaint and afterwards disarm the islands subjected to
it, inroads that reached the very shores of Manila, even Malate itself,
and during which were seen to set out for captivity and slavery,
in the baleful glow of burning villages, strings of wretches who had
been unable to defend themselves, leaving behind them the ashes of
their homes and the corpses of their parents and children. Morga,
who recounts the first piratical invasion, says: "The boldness of
these people of Mindanao did great damage to the Visayan Islands,
as much by what they did in them as by the fear and fright which the
native acquired, because the latter were in the power of the Spaniards,
who held them subject and tributary and unarmed, in such manner that
they did not protect them from their enemies or leave them means with
which to defend themselves, AS THEY DID WHEN THERE WERE NO SPANIARDS
IN THE COUNTRY." These piratical attacks continually reduced the
number of the inhabitants of the Philippines, since the independent
Malays were especially notorious for their atrocities and murders,
sometimes because they believed that to preserve their independence
it was necessary to weaken the Spaniard by reducing the number of his
subjects, sometimes because a greater hatred and a deeper resentment
inspired them against the Christian Filipinos who, being of the their
own race, served the stranger in order to deprive them of their
precious liberty. These expeditions lasted about three centuries,