“Jesus be with your Lordship.  Several Sangleys tried to persuade me to procure for them licenses to remain in the country, but I would not consider the matter.  A few days later they came with the licenses, and told me that each one had cost them twenty reals, amounting to five tostons.  If this goes on in this way, what they tell me of past years appears probable—­namely, that the licenses cost seventy thousand pesos, since there was more fraud.  May our Lord protect your Lordship.”  These are the words of the said commissary. [In the margin:  “So great an excess seems to be an exaggeration, and it did not occur at a time when the auditors could attend to this.”]

These two reals from each Chinaman for the license, each year, ought to be expended to pay the salary of the man appointed by the auditor, and for other matters.  These Chinese are never effectually driven out, nor is their number diminished, and I fear that these Chinese will not be driven out until God, for the sins against nature which we permit in this country, has destroyed us; for it is our greed which maintains them.  The Jesuits [20] alone, have on their cultivated lands about two hundred and fifty Chinese, each of whom is worth and pays to them each month four reals and a fowl (which is worth four more), and each Friday a certain number of hen’s eggs, and an equal number of goose eggs.  Besides this, the Chinese give either fruit or garden truck, and are made to plant fruit-trees.  This is in a single small settlement, called Quiapo, situated near this city.  The Jesuits have other fields also in this neighborhood.  The Augustinians have many other fields in the village of Tondo, which lies directly across the river from this city; I am told that they have in these two hundred and fifty more Chinese.  The master-of-camp, Pedro de Chaves, and other persons, also have farms, all full of this sodomy.  With the protection of these and many other persons, these men are maintained, and this vice is kept alive in this your Majesty’s land.  Lord, have mercy; Lord, have mercy; Lord, have mercy!  I beg of your Majesty to have compassion upon us, and, since your Majesty has conferred upon me the gift of this archbishopric, to favor and aid me; for greed is most puissant, and, if there be no fear of punishment, it will support the sodomites and heretics.  The governors and the auditors all are glad to have the religious write favorably of them to your Majesty and to the auditors of the royal Council of the Indias; they will therefore, tolerate much, for they are unwilling to displease the religious orders.  I must speak the naked and evident truth, Sire; and, for the love of God, those who are guilty of this vice should be sent out of the realms of your Majesty, and this black Parian be taken from them.  They should all go forth and return to their own country; and those who come here for commerce should remain in their ships, at least at night.  There are already enough married Christian