rvation
and advancement, he has come, for that reason, at the risk of his life,
after suffering so great hardships, to serve your Majesty and those
islands, for both of which services he has made this memorial of the
most necessary matters that demand reform. Although he thinks that
your governor, Don Alonso Fajardo, will remedy many of these things
(inasmuch as that whole community writes that he is proceeding as its
father), yet, since men are so liable to the possibility of death that
most often the good lasts but a short time, and (as we all know by
experience, for our sins), another may succeed who will inflict many
injuries; and since before the complaints could reach your Majesty
through so long a distance and the relief be sent, the men concerned
might be dead: it is necessary to prevent the wrongs ere they come to
be irremediable, as have been all those that have placed that country
in so wretched a condition. He petitions your Majesty to examine
this memorial with great consideration, for in [heeding] it consists
the welfare and conservation of all the kingdom; for that country,
being so far away, has no other remedy for its protection except your
royal decrees. The first ten articles of the memorial were approved
by your royal Audiencia, so that you may have no doubt of them. He
did not inform the Audiencia of the others for just considerations,
as was advisable--the city having given him instructions for most of
them, which are those that he presents. In the authority that he has
presented to your royal Council, the great trust reposed in his person
has been evident; for he has served your Majesty and that community
for more than thirty years, with so great a desire of acting rightly
as is well known, and has never tried to further his own interests,
as all [are wont to] do.

1. He declares that having obtained two decrees from your Majesty
some years ago (while acting in this capital as procurator-general
of the kingdom), with regard to the trading-ships, ordering that your
governor and captain-general despatch them some time in the month of
June, as the greater part of their success in the voyage consists in
that, and as that country has no other fruits and harvests except that
commerce, for its conservation and increase, and also for the increase
of your royal treasury: not only have they not kept the said decrees
but have even done the very opposite. Thence have followed very many
great wrongs and annoy