In regard to the Seminary of Sancta Potenciana

The Seminary of Sancta Potenciana is a charity of great service to God our Lord, and the welfare of this community, for there are housed many orphaned girls and the poor daughters of those who have served your Majesty, and who have died, leaving daughters, and little or nothing for their support and assistance.  They can be assisted and reared here, as is being done with many now in it.  They live here in all virtue and under good instruction, in great retirement, and engaged in holy and devout exercises.  Hence it results that the Divine Majesty of God our Lord has daily and continual praises, and your Majesty prayers, that are offered to Him for your Majesty.  It only remains for your Majesty to protect and favor this charity, both by granting it some reward, as an aid to its support and expense; and by ordering that there be professed nuns in it, as is the desire of this community—­and especially that the superior of this seminary be one.  For this purpose it would be highly desirable for your Majesty to have sent from Nueva Espana three or four women of the sanctity, virtue, and experience requisite.  They are necessary to begin so heroic and important a work, and to increase and further perfect it.  By this God will be very well served, your Majesty rewarded by His Divine Majesty, and this community favored, consoled, and increased in spiritual blessings.

That the posts on ships which ply hither be given to men of this country

It is important to appoint men of this country, well qualified and sufficient for it, to the post of captain and other posts in the ships plying to this country; for being inhabitants of the country, and men who have to return and live in it, they will endeavor to procure its welfare, and will fear to commit the wrong of casting goods overboard, which is so injurious to this community.  And especially is this injurious to its poor, who suffer all the greatest hardships and losses, as they cannot send their goods as can others who are more powerful and perhaps less deserving.  The latter load their goods in a part of the ship which is safe from these risks; and it usually happens that the rich profit from the good sale that they are wont to have of the goods they send, while the poor are losers, because their goods are not loaded or are cast overboard.  If the captain is not a man of much conscience, and only desires his own enrichment, and not the welfare of the country, and again, does not have to live here, but can return; and if he should commit any wrongs for any cause, and for advantage to his own goods, it would be in vain to go to Nueva Espana to beg satisfaction.  If he were an inhabitant of this country, he would fear to do wrong, in that he might not pay the penalty afterward.  Moreover, as men who do not live in this community have to be given an opportunity of gain if they are to accept these offices, it is better for the inhabitants of