des only taking into account such real and effective disbursements
or extraordinary expenses as in fact they may legally have incurred
in the performance of their duties.

Should it, however, be deemed expedient, from causes just in their
nature, hereafter to exonerate the natives from the obligations of
paying tributes, by which means the amount deducted for the three
per cent. commission could not then be brought into account, let
me be allowed to ask what enlightened government would hesitate
submitting to an additional expense of so trifling an import, in
exchange for beholding more than two millions of men forever freed
from the extortionate acts of their old magistrates; and, through
the effects of the new regulations, the latter converted into real
fathers of the people over whom they are placed? How different would
then be the aspect these fine provinces would present to the eyes
of the philosophical observer who would, in that case, be able to
calculate to what an extent the progress of agriculture and industry
in these islands might be carried.

[Demoralization of over-seas service.] Nevertheless, I do not wish
to insinuate that by the better organization of the provincial
governments, the present irregularities and abuses of authority
would entirely cease; because I am aware, more especially in the
Indies, that the persons who hold public situations usually have too
exaggerated ideas of their own personal importance, and easily mistake
the gratification of their own whims for firmness of character,
in the necessity of causing themselves to be respected. Still it
is an incontestable fact that, by removing the chief temptation,
and rescinding altogether the license to trade, the just complaints
preferred by the native against the Spaniard would cease; the motives
of those continual disputes which arise between the magistrates
and the ministers of the gospel exercising their functions in the
same provinces, and the zealous defenders of the rights of their
parishioners, would be removed, and the inhabitants of Manila,
extending their mercantile operations to the interior, without the
dread of seeing them obstructed through the powerful competition
of the magistrates in authority there, would be induced to settle
in or connect themselves with the provinces, and thus diffuse their
knowledge, activity and money among the inhabitants, the true means
of encouraging the whole.

What has already been said will suffi