de barangay.  Each cabeza is obliged to look after forty-five or fifty tributes which comprise as many families, and that is the signification of barangay.  The cabezas must reside with them in the district or street assigned; must attend in person to the good order and harmony of their individuals; must apportion among them all the services that are due from them collectively; must settle their disputes; and must collect the tribute under a fixed bond, in order to effect its delivery afterward in entirety to the gobernadorcillo, or directly to the provincial chief, as happens in that of Tondo.  The cabezas are ex-officio attorneys for their barangays in all matters that concern them collectively, and electors of the gobernadorcillos and other officials of justice.  For that interesting function, only the twelve oldest men of each town or the substitutes whom the ordinance assigns, have a vote.  In some provinces the cabezas appoint only the three who have to compose the terna [i.e., three nominees for any office] for the gobernadorcillo.  These, with the outgoing gobernadorcillo, proceed to the election of the deputies, alguacils, and their committees.  The cabecerias [i.e., headships], much more ancient in origin than the reductions [i.e., native villages of converts], were doubtless hereditary.  At present they are hereditary and elective.  When they fall vacant, whether for want of an heir or through the resignation of the regularly appointed incumbent, the substitute is appointed—­by the superintendent, in the provinces near the capital; and in those distant from it by the respective subdelegate chief, but at the proposal of the gobernadorcillo and other cabezas.  This same plan is followed in the creation of any cabeceria in proportion to the increase in population, and as the number of tributarios in each town demands it.  The cabezas, their wives, and first-born sons (who are their assistants in the collection of the royal revenues), enjoy exemption from the payment of tribute.  The cabezas in some provinces serve in the cabecerias for three years; and, if they do not prove defaulters, they are recognized as chiefs in the towns, with the titles of ex-cabeza and don.  Such system offers the serious disadvantage of multiplying the privileged class of chiefs, which, being exempted from personal services, increases the tax for the common people or the polistas [102] in proportion to the increase of the privileged class.

The offices of gobernadorcillo, deputies, and alguacils of justice are elective, and last one year, with superior approbation.  It is stipulated that the elections take place exactly at the beginning of each year, in the royal houses or halls of justice in the towns, and not elsewhere.  The electors are the outgoing gobernadorcillo and the twelve senior cabezas de barangay.  For gobernadorcillo three individuals have to be nominated by a plurality of votes, and the respective place of each one in the terna must be expressed.  It