upon them many benefits in converting and civilizing them.  If she should abandon the islands great evils would result.  Even tyrannical treatment does not justify vassals in refusing obedience to their rulers—­in support of which position many citations are made from the Bible and from historical precedents.  The Spanish rulers are accordingly entitled to collect the moderate tribute which they have imposed on the Indians, if they protect and instruct the latter—­the condition on which their right to tribute is based; but all should pay alike, infidels as well as Christians, when they receive alike those benefits.  As for the Indians who have not been provided with instruction and the protection of law, no tribute should in any case be demanded from them and whatever has been thus far collected ought to be restored to them in full, as having been unjustly and unrighteously exacted.  In the encomiendas which, although once pacified, have since rebelled, a small amount of tribute should be collected, not to maintain the encomendero, but to meet the expenses of restoring order and obedience therein.  In other cases, where the encomendero fulfils his obligations in other respects, but fails to provide religious instruction for the natives through lack of ministers, he is entitled to collect only part of the tribute designated—­that is, what remains after deducting the amount due for the support of ministers (estimated in proportion to the number of the people), and for the erection and maintenance of churches.  In short, the natives should pay only for such benefits as they actually receive.  The amount to be paid should be based on the amount expended by the government and the encomenderos in providing those benefits.] In these islands the number of five hundred Indians (and in some places even a smaller number) has been assigned to each minister as sufficient for his charge; and to each minister of religion has been given a hundred pesos and a hundred fanegas of rice, all which is worth at least one hundred and twenty-five pesos; this is the fourth part of the five hundred pesos which the five hundred Indians are worth to the encomendero.  It is then a fair rate of taxation, and usually the most exact, to deduct, when religious instruction is lacking, the fourth part of the tribute. [If the encomienda is governed with justice, its holder may in reason collect the other three-fourths.  The fathers remonstrate against the proposal to allow the holder of a small encomienda to collect more than he may who has a large one, as unjust and dangerous.  If the fourth part is to be withheld from the encomendero, they think that it should be at once returned to the natives from whom it was taken.  They recommend that the governor give orders that the administration of justice be everywhere established in the encomiendas, and then three-fourths of the tributes may be collected.  For this, however, they advise the appointment of deputies directly by the governor, to inspect the encomiendas regularly—­a duty which will not be satisfactorily performed by the present alcaldes-mayor, or by deputies whom they would appoint; and these persons should be given adequate salaries, to obviate the possibility of their defrauding the natives.  The paper is signed by the Augustinian provincial, Juan de Valderrama, and eleven others of the order.]