governor nor auditors and fiscal be allowed
to act as godfathers to the citizens; for that involves very great
annoyances, as that kingdom is so new, and as all make claims.

27. _Item_: That it is the practice or abuse that fowls are given to
your governor, auditors, and other officials of the royal Audiencia at
lower prices than are current; and that the governor of the Chinese
is ordered for that purpose to allot the share of all [the Chinese],
and each one is obliged to give weekly so many fowls at a certain
low price, and he who does not give them is punished and fined. The
worst thing is that on this occasion the governor of the Chinese
steals as many more, at the same price. That amounts to a vast sum;
for, since there is no other flesh eaten except beef and pork, these
fowls amount by the end of the year to more than twenty thousand. In
this way signal injury is done to the Chinese.

They also provide their houses with rice, which is the usual bread;
and they take it as well as other things from your royal storehouses,
at the prices for which they are given to your Majesty as tributes. It
results that your Majesty's treasury, in the course of the year,
encounters a deficiency of supplies, on account of the great expense,
and these must be bought afterward at very high rates. He mentioned
this so that your Majesty should provide what may be deemed advisable;
for it is a pity to see your Majesty's treasury poorly administered,
since it is so necessary there. [93]

28. _Item_: Inasmuch as certain regidors of the city have their
encomiendas in the Pintados Islands and other districts, and as the
governors, in order to annoy them, command them to go to live on the
encomiendas, thus obliging them to leave their offices, to their own
great loss and inconvenience; and as that is even the cause of their
being unable to exercise their offices with freedom, in order not to
anger the governor: he petitions your Majesty that, if your governor
thus urge a regidor to go to live [there] in person, he may maintain in
the said encomienda a soldier in his stead, since it is the same thing;
and it shall be understood that he is under no further obligation. The
same also is to be understood with the leading citizens of Manila.

29. _Item_: That your governor of Filipinas, in recent years,
requested from your viceroy of Nueva Espana many kinds of supplies,
such as rigging. One year they carried him fifty thousand pesos'
worth of