am coming more to see the great injury which this commonwealth suffers, without finding any means for its redress.  I promise your Majesty that I am not moved to this step by the greater importance which this office will then have, but only for the service of your Majesty, and by seeing that this is as I have said in my other letter; and that there is great need of reform, in order to ward off disaster at all points, for it is very near.  May our Lord protect the Catholic person of your Majesty, in the prosperity which is necessary for Christendom.  Manila,

July 15, 1604.

Don Pedro de Acuna

It is not expedient that there should be an Audiencia in the
Philipinas.

Sire: 

For a long time I have been reflecting upon the matter which I shall here mention, and many times I have resolved to give your Majesty an account of it, and of others as important.  I have been kept back and restrained, by fear that it might or could be suspected that I was moved by some personal interest or passion; but owing to the difficulties which have confronted me in one way and another, having consulted and conferred with serious religious and other persons, both ecclesiastical and lay, who look at the matter dispassionately [MS. defective] resolved not to delay any longer, for it appeared to me that otherwise I did not act in accordance with the obligations of my office, or the favor which your Majesty has done me by putting me in this position.

Your Majesty has a royal Audiencia in these island with four auditors, one fiscal, and other officers, whereby your Majesty spends each year sixteen thousand five hundred pesos.  It seems that this might be dispensed with for the reasons set forth in the paper which goes with this, and to which I refer, only adding (what I may say in all truth) that, although this commonwealth is in the greatest trouble, through the many causes of death, wars, conflagrations, afflictions, shipwrecks, and the destruction of so much property, as your Majesty has learned, there is nothing which it feels more keenly today, or which afflicts it more, than to have the Audiencia here judging, and with it to lack all freedom of person or property.  The name of auditor is so odious here that it alone offends; and we have come to such a state of affairs that because I, in conformity to what your Majesty has ordered, have attempted to maintain and have maintained amicable relations with the auditors; and have shown, on various occasions, more patience and endurance than the people considered right; and more than seemed fitting to my situation, in order not to give rise to scandal:  some have conceived hatred for me, publicly saying that, to comply with the expenditures and opinions of the said auditors, I was neglecting to look after them, and that I could correct the evil which the Audiencia was doing.  But as I cannot do that, it has seemed to me the best means to let the public see that there was good feeling between