In 1813 the bishop-elect of Michoacán, Manuel Abad y Queipo, published a collection of his important writings addressed to government and also an extensive pastoral letter condemning the rebellion that afflicted his diocese. He thereby publicly identified himself as an ardent defender of church privilege and property; as a critic of the gross inequalities of Mexican society, desirous of reform; as an advocate of the constitutional monarchy envisaged by the Constitution of Cadiz; and as a vehement opponent of the 1810 Insurgency led by his erstwhile friend, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. Born in 1751, the illegitimate son of an Asturian nobleman, Abad y Queipo studied law at the University of Salamanca and in 1779 accompanied Archbishop Cayetano Francisco Monroy to Guatemala, where he acted as promotor fiscal or diocesan attorney and was ordained as priest. In 1784 he joined Fray Antonio de San Miguel on his journey to Valladolid and on arrival was appointed Judge of Testaments, Chantries and Holy Works, a post he occupied until 1809. As we have seen, he was the bishop's trusted lieutenant and figured prominently among the circle of enlightened ecclesiastics and officials who governed the diocese in the closing decades of Bourbon rule. A student of Adam Smith, Montesquieu and Campomanes, Abad y Queipo drew upon his deep experience of Mexico and his wide reading to frame the first real analysis of colonial society. When he visited Paris in 1806, he presented Alexander von Humboldt with a copy of his extant memorials, a source which the Prussian savant cited frequently in his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, albeit attributing them to Bishop San Miguel.