Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 10).djvu/153

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1597–1599]
SANTIBAÑEZ TO FELIPE II
149

observed, and from its violation there result great inconveniences. But, as it appears that the salaries appointed by your Majesty are not sufficient recompense for coming to such distant lands, your Majesty might decree that when the governors were such as they should be, and have abstained during their whole term from trade, at the time of their departure your Majesty would permit to be given them as large a cargo as they wish, and even an entire ship, so that they might be made prosperous. The auditors might be given, every six years, to each one the liberty of a cargo, so that in this way they would have what is needed to marry their children and maintain their households. For otherwise they are the causes of great losses; and, as they are involved in the same misdeed, they are not urgent in having the mandates and decrees of your Majesty complied with.

It is a great hindrance to the growth of the faith and morals of the natives that there is a continual communication with the infidel Chinese. Since they are coming to trade, it would be well that when they finish selling their wares they should leave the country; for from their remaining in these islands result many great inconveniences. In the first place, on account of their greed, they have taken to the cultivation of gardens and other real estate; whence it follows that all the native Indians live idle and vicious lives, without anyone urging them to labor. The Chinese have risen, by buying and selling and bringing provisions to the community, to be the retailers of supplies. From this it results that this country is so expensive to live in that where a fowl used to be worth half a real, or at the most one real, it is now worth four. Formerly a ganta of rice could