Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 10).djvu/167

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1597–1599]
BENAVIDES TO FELIPE II
163

matrimony had detained him, the dispensation and past evil acts might be endured; but according to the report, although these are not matters which I can examine into, he is still continuing in these vile acts of his, as a man without God, law, or king.

Another instance: an affair characterized by covet- ousness, wrongs, and injustice, which are being perpetrated before the sight of God and all the world. This is the affair. There is here a vessel which is called "Sancta Margarita" which belonged to Captain Stevan Rodriguez. This boat he despatched this year to convey cloth and merchandise from this city to Mexico. There is a record of what this same ship took last time; and according to the register (which is here and in Mexico) the vessel loaded two hundred and fifty to three hundred toneladas; but this year there was not allotted among the citizens of the islands more than a hundred and sixty toneladas. All the rest, up to the said number of two hundred and fifty or three hundred, he has seized upon. This injustice and robbery is terrible, but the circumstance makes it even more remarkable that sin and greed and vices so blind a man that he considers everyone else blind; and thinks that they will not look at this ship and see its size, when it is present here; nor remember that, in this same ship, the same persons with the same merchandise laded ten times as large a cargo; nor does he consider that, at any rate, the registry of this same ship exists.

On the day on which I write this, which is the last of June, when the ships should have sailed days ago for Mexico, because they might encounter a wind which would make it impossible for them to leave this bay for a long time, and the voyage would be lost,