advisable for your
Majesty to be pleased to have the proper decision made known.

During disputes in this Audiencia, it is the president's privilege
to appoint judges; and when the auditors are challenged, he alone
remains unchallenged. Moreover, he has appointed them without any
opposition, basing his action on the old custom of this Audiencia, and
on the words of the law: "The president, the members of my Council,
and the auditors who shall remain unchallenged, shall appoint
lawyers." But recently they have tried to make an innovation and
to read the petitions of the recusants and to ascertain the causes
that they give. That they did in opposition to the accountant, Martin
Ruiz de Zalazar, in regard to a plea of appeal. As they were not in
harmony, I appointed as judge an advocate of this royal Audiencia,
who having been summoned to the session, and being asked whether the
case had right of appeal, declared in favor of the said accountant:
without allowing him to vote the auditors made him leave the session,
and proceeded by act against the party. The said accountant again
challenging him, because of these and other injuries, the said auditor,
without allowing him to read the appeal, declared that his associate
was not challenged; and the latter, as his alternate, proceeded to try
the new challenge, without its being sufficient to contradict it in
writing in the session. The so open enmity between the Audiencia and
the royal officials being evident, I have withdrawn the papers until
your Majesty be pleased to provide the remedy. A similar difficulty
has happened to me in regard to the appointment of a lawyer in the
challenge of the said Don Juan Sarmiento; and it is necessary for
the governors to know what pertains to them in such cases, since the
appointment of lawyers is not a point of law, but of the direction of
that Audiencia as president; and when he is not there they appoint,
without considering whether or not there have been judges in the cause.

The two auditors whom Don Francisco de Rojas suspended have died. Those
who are left will attend better to the service of your Majesty
anywhere else than in Philipinas. That will mean the cessation of many
challenges and other indignities, as well as the vengeance feared by
those who have made depositions against them during the visit.

Your Majesty orders me, by a decree of August 26 of the past year,
that in matters of government and expenses of the royal treasury