eligious, and confessors who are interested,
and the captains likewise, will take advantage of the opportunity that
your Majesty leaves open, with a thousand evasions, and arguments
that since your Majesty gives permission for a hundred, it should
also be given for other hundreds and other thousands. Accordingly,
for the love of God, let there come a decree and with it a reiterated
injunction from your Majesty similar to the most Catholic and potent
decision of the Catholic monarchs, Don Fernando and Dona Ysabel,
your Majesty's progenitors, putting an end at once to these evils
and driving these people from the lands of your Majesty, as did the
said sovereign monarchs. Not even considering their royal tributes,
at one stroke they drove all the Moors and Jews from Hespana, and
that deed they considered as their glory. Your Majesty must not think
that these people are only in or about Manila, for they are through
the whole country and scattered all about; and they are spreading
this diabolical crime and other vices throughout the whole land,
and even their evil doctrines. In spite of this even the religious,
as well as the others, tolerate them for the temporal advantages in
building and other affairs, which they find in the Chinese. If we be
not very pure toward God and justice and reason, a thousand will lead
us to love and take pleasure in temporal affairs and interests.

The second cause for these heavy punishments is the excessive
wickedness which exists among the Spaniards and Indians in the sin of
carnality. The third cause is the disregard of your royal decrees and
mandates. This has brought ruin upon the country; and as, in truth,
just laws are the strong walls of kingdoms, so on the contrary
the violations of such laws are the breaches through which enters
ruin. Besides this, into this country has come a doctrine of evil
theologians and jurists and confessors, who, weakening the force of
the laws of the kings in their relation to the conscience, open a
very broad field for the violation of what your Majesty so justly
and prudently orders. [_In the margin_: "I say this in regard to
the decrees which concern commerce between these islands and Mexico,
as well as several others."]

The fourth cause is a neglect of punishment against the alcaldes-mayor;
nor is any investigation of importance carried on against them,
nor are they in any way punished. This is a great pity, and as
those who are going to be their succe