and constituents to offices of profit, must needs keep in his graces.  The archbishop and bishops, if they do not conform to his will, may have their temporal support taken from them; for if he cannot do it with good cause, he can easily do it in other ways.  In a thousand things which occur, too, they need him for the direction of their affairs; and he can inflict on them so many burdens and annoyances that they realize how dearly they are buying the privilege of opposing him or contradicting his wishes.  The chapter of the church is the same, or worse; for he makes appointments, as your Majesty is patron, and orders the stipends to be paid.  Accordingly it is necessary to be in his good graces.  The cabildo of the city dare not do anything against his will; for those who oppose him or say anything in the sessions which is contrary to his wishes, it costs dear, and, besides, he is aware of whatever they do there.  They dare not write to your Majesty, without taking to him the letters so that he may examine them; and there have been times when he has had these torn up, and ordered them to write others.  Consequently, the religious who are teaching, and those of the convents, are all dependent upon him.

The royal officials do no more than he wishes, and, besides, they have the example of former ones, who for not acting thus were removed, and held prisoners for three years until your Majesty learned of it, and ordered their offices to be returned to them, and perchance the many hardships and afflictions which the governor inflicted upon them, and caused them to suffer, cost two of them their lives, and lost for your Majesty, in the factor, one of the best servants whom you had in the Filipinas.  Accordingly, what I promised to prove is well established; for the complaints were so long in arriving, and the redress in returning, that he who awaited them was already dead.

In the third place, it is essential that he should not be excessively grasping; and that your Majesty should give him such expectations, if he conducts himself well, that his profit will rest more on them than in what the government is worth to him.  He should be of mature age and great experience in handling the affairs of the commonwealth, such as some knights possess who hold offices of corregidor on the coasts of Espana, and who govern in peace and war, as they never lack exercise for these abilities on the coasts.  For if they were only required to be expert in war, the country would be in ruins before they became capable of governing it—­as, for our sins, we have seen in past years.  They should not come burdened with debts, which are demoralizing in a thousand ways.  Notwithstanding that your Majesty has issued decrees which prohibit them from giving offices of profit to members of their households, rather than to the worthy persons of the kingdom, these decrees are the least complied with; nor is there any one who dares to interfere in this.  If any one should make bold to put the bell on the cat, as the adage says, who would make him comply with it?  By no means the royal Audiencia.  At one time when I was petitioning for the execution of a royal decree of your Majesty there, an auditor, a friend of mine, said:  “You should not do this; for, besides not accomplishing anything by it, you will get yourself into difficulty with him.”