s of the charitable institutions
are employed in maritime risks, and the private property of others
is besides added to them, the amount of the operations undertaken by
the merchants of the Philippines to New Spain, when divested of all
restraint, will always exceed $500,000 per annum. Nor is there now
any further occasion for the government to continue granting this
species of gratuitous tutelage to a body of men possessed of ample
means to manage their own affairs, and who demand the same degree of
freedom, and only seek a protection similar to that enjoyed by their
fellow-countrymen in other parts of the king's dominions.

[Galleon graft.] In case the above reform should be adopted, it might
be deemed requisite for the government to undertake the payment of some
of the charges under the existing order of things, defrayed out of the
freights to which the merchandise shipped in the Acapulco traders is
liable; because, calculating the freight at the usual rate of $200 for
each three bales, or the amount of one ticket, out of the one thousand
constituting the entire cargo, and of which one-half, or $100,000 more
or less, is appropriated to the ecclesiastical chapter, municipality,
officers of the regular army (excluding captains and the other higher
ranks) and the widows of Spaniards, who in this case would be losers,
independent of the remaining $100,000 or 500 tickets distributed
among the 200 persons having a right to ship to Acapulco, it would, at
first sight, appear reasonable for the treasury to indemnify the above
description of persons by a compensation equivalent to the privation
they experience through the new arrangement of the government. But
as the practice of abuses constitutes no law, and what is given
through favor is different to that which is required by justice,
there are no reasons whatever why the treasury should be bound to
support the widows of private persons, from the mere circumstance of
their deceased husbands having been Spaniards; more particularly if
it is considered that, far from having acquired any special merit
during their lifetime, most of them voluntarily left their native
country for the purpose of increasing their fortunes, and others were
banished from it, owing to their bad conduct. Neither can it be said
that the municipality have a legal right, in the case before stated,
to receive any equivalent for the value of their respective annual
tickets, which, when disposed of, usually