the king’s revenue acts in these Islands increases and extends, which naturally will be the case if the plans and improvements dictated by the present favorable circumstances are carried into effect, I do not hesitate to say that it will be necessary again to appeal to the establishment of a greater number of boards for the management and collection of the various branches of the revenue, whether they are called intendencies, or by any other name; as it will be extremely difficult for the administration to do its duty, on the confined and inadequate plan under which it is at present organized.

[Fiscal system.] Under its existing form, it is constituted in the following manner:  The governor of the Islands, in his quality of superintendent or administrator general, and as uniting in himself the powers of intendent of the army, presides at the board of administration of the king’s revenue, which is placed in the immediate charge of a treasurer and two clerks.  The principal branches have their respective general directors, on whom the provincial administrators depend, and the civil magistrates, in the quality of sub-delegates, collect within their respective districts, the tributes paid by the natives in money and produce, and manage everything else relating to the king’s revenue.  In ordinary cases, the general laws of the Indies govern, and especially are the ordinances or regulations of the Intendents of New Spain (Mexico) ordered to be observed in the Philippines.  It ought further to be observed, that, in these Islands, the same as in all the vice-royalties and governments of America, there is a distinct body of royal decrees in force, which, in themselves, constitute a code of considerable size.

[Opposition to tobacco monopoly.] The process of converting the consumption of tobacco into a monopoly met with a most obstinate resistance on the part of the inhabitants, and the greatest circumspection and constancy were necessary for the governor, Don Jose Basco, to carry this arduous enterprise into effect.  Accustomed to the cultivation of this plant without any restriction whatever, and habituated to its use from their infancy, it appeared to the people the extreme of rashness to seek simultaneously to extirpate it from the face of the greatest part of the Island of Luzon, in order to confine its culture within the narrow limits of a particular district.  They were equally revolted at the idea of giving to a common article a high and arbitrary value, when, besides, it had become one of the first necessity.  Every circumstance, however, being dispassionately considered, and the principle once admitted that it was expedient for the colony to maintain itself by means the least burdensome to the inhabitants, it certainly must be acknowledged that, although odious on account of its novelty and defective in the mode of its execution, a resource more productive and at the same time less injurious, could not have been devised.  Hence was it that