risks, and the private property of others is besides added to them, the amount of the operations undertaken by the merchants of the Philippines to New Spain, when divested of all restraint, will always exceed $500,000 per annum.  Nor is there now any further occasion for the government to continue granting this species of gratuitous tutelage to a body of men possessed of ample means to manage their own affairs, and who demand the same degree of freedom, and only seek a protection similar to that enjoyed by their fellow-countrymen in other parts of the king’s dominions.

[Galleon graft.] In case the above reform should be adopted, it might be deemed requisite for the government to undertake the payment of some of the charges under the existing order of things, defrayed out of the freights to which the merchandise shipped in the Acapulco traders is liable; because, calculating the freight at the usual rate of $200 for each three bales, or the amount of one ticket, out of the one thousand constituting the entire cargo, and of which one-half, or $100,000 more or less, is appropriated to the ecclesiastical chapter, municipality, officers of the regular army (excluding captains and the other higher ranks) and the widows of Spaniards, who in this case would be losers, independent of the remaining $100,000 or 500 tickets distributed among the 200 persons having a right to ship to Acapulco, it would, at first sight, appear reasonable for the treasury to indemnify the above description of persons by a compensation equivalent to the privation they experience through the new arrangement of the government.  But as the practice of abuses constitutes no law, and what is given through favor is different to that which is required by justice, there are no reasons whatever why the treasury should be bound to support the widows of private persons, from the mere circumstance of their deceased husbands having been Spaniards; more particularly if it is considered that, far from having acquired any special merit during their lifetime, most of them voluntarily left their native country for the purpose of increasing their fortunes, and others were banished from it, owing to their bad conduct.  Neither can it be said that the municipality have a legal right, in the case before stated, to receive any equivalent for the value of their respective annual tickets, which, when disposed of, usually amount to about $20,000 in the first place, because it is well-known that the eleven aldermen’s seats, of which that body is composed, seats which can either be sold or resigned, originally did not cost as much as $50,000 and clearly the principal invested is out of all kind of proportion with the enormous premium or income claimed.  In the second place, although the above municipal situations were originally purchased with a view to obtain some advantages, these formerly were very different to what they are at present, when the great increase of shippers to Acapulco, or in more plain terms, of purchase of tickets competing to obtain them, has given to these permits a value more than triple to that they possessed thirty years ago.