The merchants of Sevilla complain that the trade with China has been destroyed by the Indias, but they do not understand the cause of its ruin.  The Marquis de Montesclaros, who governed Nueva Espana and Piru, and understood this matter very well (as he did many things), wrote your Majesty a letter from the Indias, which is in your royal Council, where he says with clear and evident arguments:  “But what strikes me is, that as the commonest and most universal means of working the mines is quicksilver, this loss is caused by giving that metal at so high a price to the miners.  For in the first place, as most of them are poor, they cannot buy it, and therefore a great deal of metal is left unworked; and in the second place, because those who are able to buy it cannot work poor mines (for they would be ruined thereby), and as the greater part of those in the Indias are of this kind, double the amount of silver [obtained] is left unmined.  If your Majesty would order the quicksilver to be given at cost and expenses, it would be of incomparably more profit than today; and the Indias would be in a better condition, more merchandise would be bought, the duties would increase, and the merchants would not feel the want of the silver which goes to the Filipinas—­as they did not feel it in times past, although there came much more merchandise from there than at present.  I would that there were so great an abundance of quicksilver in the Indias, and so cheap, that it could be bought, not only by the miners, but by other Spaniards and Indians, who would then have so much silver that their complaints would cease.”

If the trade were transferred to Espana, those who say that the merchandise from this country would be carried to Filipinas, to be exchanged for the goods of that country, are not aware that in those regions there is no one to use Spanish goods except the Spaniards, who with four pipas of wine, and other wares of little importance, would be quite sufficiently supplied; and that, if this were so, the Portuguese and Dutch would take the merchandise away, for nothing escapes their notice.  Both of these take silver, and whatever else they take is of small importance; so that it would soon be necessary, in order to maintain the trade, to carry silver from Espana and risk it again.  It is less trouble to carry it from the Indias, beside the incomparably greater risk from the sea and from enemies [by the other route]; and Nueva Espana would be ruined.

To the third reason, in which they say that many troops are used up, I would say that it is true that there go each year sometimes two hundred men, and other years less, and again none at all; and of these more die from their excesses than from the war, and they do not count those who return and go through India and other regions.  If those islands were to be abandoned on account of this difficulty, the same reason holds in Flandes and Italia, which use up more men in one campaign than do the Filipinas in twenty years.