usually lawyers, and their duties in connection with the civil administration of the country were by no means arduous. Later, military men were more frequently appointed, and held under the viceroy the rank of captain-general; but their responsibilities were light, for peace prevailed throughout the land except in Nayarit, where a comandante was stationed, subject in military matters to viceregal orders, and in political and judicial affairs to the governor and audiencia. The election of subordinate local officials seems to have belonged originally to the audiencia; but after long disputes between that body and its president, during which both parties several times appealed to the crown, the latter received the right of making appointments—a license which he had gradually usurped.[1]
The governor subsequently named the alcaldes mayores and corregidores of the different districts, with the exception of Zacatecas and perhaps one or two others, where the king, for some special reason, retained the privilege. He also appointed, down to 1646, many of the officials of Nueva Vizcaya. All this power would seem, however, to have been vested in him as president of the audiencia, for the revenues were administered by special treasury officials appointed by the king, the governor receiving a regular stipend.[2]
There are few incidents worthy of record concerning the governors of Nueva Galicia, and these relate for the most part to trivial matters, as the quarrel of one with a bishop about some petty formality; the unusual brilliancy of the bull-fights at the installation of another, while the building of a church or even the
- ↑ Mota-Padilla, Conq. N. Gal., 508, is the authority for this usurpation, and he gives the number of appointments in 1742 as above 32; but Calle, Mem. y Not., 92, states that a century earlier the governor had the appointment of 54 officials in Nueva Galicia and Nueva Vizcaya.
- ↑ The revenue collected in Guadalajara from all sources from 1730 to 1740 was 2,332,335 pesos. Mota-Padilla, Conq. N. Gal., 318. The same author boasts of the promptness with which Nueva Galica always paid her quota of taxation.
