planned so that no one has been asked to pay more than he himself has confessed that he owed; but that is nothing in comparison with the innumerable injuries which have been committed in this country.  Four years have passed since I gave this order obliging them to pay one hundred pesos, and then another two hundred pesos, the largest amount not exceeding five hundred pesos.  There were very few persons taxed for the larger sum, and they were captains or leaders of expeditions.  They have put me off from one year to another and even yet they have not paid me, always alleging poverty.  I have found it necessary to take from the little that I have to pay some of these obligations, on account of the needs of the Indians, and because the Spaniards had not the wherewithal to pay them.  When I considered the hardships suffered by Spaniards in this land, and that it will utterly ruin them, if the matter with which we have to deal be treated severely by the theologians, I dared, on this account, to do what no one else would have done.  There is no lack of religious who, since their arrival here, condemn my action, and say that I am obliged to constrain the conquerors still further, or to pay the compensation myself.  I assure your Majesty that these scruples have constrained me, and do so today, to such an extent that this is the principal thing among other matters of considerable import of which I have to give an account to his Holiness and to your Majesty.  There is no doubt whatever that he who does the damage is obliged to make restitution; and all the more when the injured persons are living as they, or their children and heirs, do in these islands.  From investigations which I have had made regarding those persons who inflicted the injuries, I am assured that the sums collected as restitution do not amount to the hundredth part of the valuation of the damages.  As my age makes it impossible for me to go to Spain, and since your Majesty, as a most Christian prince, so earnestly desires and strives for the welfare of these natives, I shall send herewith a memorandum of what I have done in this case, and of what each of the conquerors has paid, and of the injuries committed—­although it would be impossible to relate them all.  I do this so that your Majesty may be pleased to grant to me and to all this land mercy and grace, when my actions are considered there; and, if it should be necessary, to procure the approbation of his Holiness to compromise the matter by releasing them from the remainder of the restitutions, as full restitution is impossible.  To attempt to do more would be only to harass them, with no other result than burdening their consciences.  Thus I will be freed from these intolerable scruples and continuous vexations in which I am placed.