but the same cannot be said of the idolatrous and hardened people. Emboldened by the edicts formerly published and still unrevoked against the christian religion, they continually had recourse to the most vexatious steps to compel the faithful to take part in their superstitions, and in many instances accused them before the judges. On these occasions the christians were treated with rigor or mildness, according to the disposition of the judges under whose cognizance they happened to fall. In Holy Week a catechist was apprehended in the act of carrying a parcel which contained a missal, a chalice and vestments. Being brought before a judge, he was subjected to several interrogatories and tormented in many ways, but could not be induced either to renounce the faith or to discover the priest to whom the effects belonged. As an instance of judicial clemency, a respectable family, which, during the persecution had been deprived of their house by the mandarins, had their property restored to them, and the pagan occupant was compelled to pay rent for the house for the time it had been in his possession. In like manner the vice-roy refused to receive the charge of christianity preferred by a pagan against a christian, with whom he was engaged in a law suit.
Trivial and few as were such acts of relenting rigor, they were hailed by the missionaries as tokens of returning peace. But it was not long ere their joy was forced to give place to fresh alarm. In the course of the summer of 1823, the vice-roy was recalled, and his office was entrusted to a man of very different disposition. Scarcely had he arrived in the province, when he published an edict prohibiting the exercise of the christian religion, threatening the christians with the old pains and penalties, and ordering the mandarins to make diligent search for them, and especially for the priests, and upon discovering, to visit them with the utmost severity of the existing laws. Happily, however, for the faithful, the mandarins, wearied perhaps with their former unsuccessful attempts to extirpate the christian religion, and sickened with the effusion of so much innocent blood, were but little inclined to rouse themselves from repose in order to carry into effect the deadly projects of the new vice-roy.
