On the 23d of November, 619, the Council, after consideration, ordered the governor and Audiencia, at the summons of his Majesty’s fiscal, to report on the value and advisability [of such grant]; and that for that purpose a decree of investigation be given in legal form.  They shall cite especially what charitable works have been strengthened by other encomiendas; the disadvantages or benefits that may result from this; whether it is an estate that continues to increase or decrease; and what harm may result to the royal patrimony.

REFORMS NEEDED IN THE FILIPINAS

Sire: 

Fernando de los Rios Coronel, procurator-general of the Filipinas Islands and of all their estates, declares that, inasmuch as all that community insisted that he come to inform your Majesty of the distressed condition which it has reached, and of what was advisable both for the service of your Majesty and that community’s conservation and advancement, he has come, for that reason, at the risk of his life, after suffering so great hardships, to serve your Majesty and those islands, for both of which services he has made this memorial of the most necessary matters that demand reform.  Although he thinks that your governor, Don Alonso Fajardo, will remedy many of these things (inasmuch as that whole community writes that he is proceeding as its father), yet, since men are so liable to the possibility of death that most often the good lasts but a short time, and (as we all know by experience, for our sins), another may succeed who will inflict many injuries; and since before the complaints could reach your Majesty through so long a distance and the relief be sent, the men concerned might be dead:  it is necessary to prevent the wrongs ere they come to be irremediable, as have been all those that have placed that country in so wretched a condition.  He petitions your Majesty to examine this memorial with great consideration, for in [heeding] it consists the welfare and conservation of all the kingdom; for that country, being so far away, has no other remedy for its protection except your royal decrees.  The first ten articles of the memorial were approved by your royal Audiencia, so that you may have no doubt of them.  He did not inform the Audiencia of the others for just considerations, as was advisable—­the city having given him instructions for most of them, which are those that he presents.  In the authority that he has presented to your royal Council, the great trust reposed in his person has been evident; for he has served your Majesty and that community for more than thirty years, with so great a desire of acting rightly as is well known, and has never tried to further his own interests, as all [are wont to] do.