The principal abuse is that, although your Majesty ordered that no money pass from Nueva Espana here, and although you granted permission to these inhabitants to receive only five hundred thousand ducados, a way has been found whereby they secretly send annually as much as they wish—­and that without the said prohibition being any hindrance to any person of Nueva Espana, or those of any other region.  The governors my predecessors have had knowledge of this abuse, but they have not dared to remedy it because of the annoyances that arise in so well-established a practice, and one in which nearly all the vassals of your Majesty are included.  For this same reason, and because I have so recently arrived, I have considered it fitting to inform your Majesty, so that, in so grave a matter, you may determine what will be most fitting to your royal service. [In the margin:  “Send this letter to Don Juan de Palafox, so that he may be informed of it.”  “Seen by the [word illegible in MS.] J. Palafox.”]

It is my opinion that since it has been impossible to check the practice of sending every year money for these parts from Nueva Espana (and I suspect that two millions are sent, and that the dearness occasioned by this abundance of silver results only to the benefit of Great China, where the money stops without your Majesty having collected your duties), it will be considered as an aid to the great expenses of the galleons of this line that your Majesty allow the money that shall have to pass to be openly registered in Acapulco, at the rate of five per cent.  By so doing your Majesty will enjoy what has hitherto been usurped by the officers (both the higher and the lower) of the said ships; and at a reasonable price, and with permission, no one would conceal the money that he was sending.  And now since no other remedy is found, it will be right for your Majesty to do this, so that you may not lose your duties.  In regard to the difficulties on account of which they might at Acapulco refuse to accept this tax, which will reach so great an amount of income, I answer that the trade of these islands is not injured nor will the exchanges of the money that comes annually from Nueva Espana increase.  Only that which has hitherto been done surreptitiously will be done openly in the future, to the benefit of the royal treasury.  The higher and lower officers of the galleons will content themselves with the emoluments of their offices, which are those that they are enjoying for this.  Will your Majesty have this matter considered very closely; for here, to one who has the matter before him, it is a clear case.