ffspring of their
natures, [and show the] duplicity and deceit with which they are
arming themselves in order to break the peace, perhaps because they
have seen that the inspector who was expected did not come this or
last year, at whose coming I was hoping to have rest. But since he
has not come, it will be necessary for me to do myself what I wished
to have done by the hand of another--namely, to give the auditors to
understand the respect which they ought to have for their governor
and president. This said, I shall now go on to answer the points of
the letter which I have heard from them themselves, and which they
say are the ones which they wrote to your Majesty. In passing, I
shall answer to that Council the chief complaints, which, I suppose,
are the ones that may oppose my method of governing. It is no little
consolation that all of them have to do with points or controversies
of justice, and not defects which transgress my obligations; for it
is those that could give me some pain.

_That it is not advisable that the royal Audiencia carry the burden
of visiting the prison of Tondo and that of the Parian of the Chinese._

3. The first point is in respect to the royal Audiencia petitioning
that it be ordered that they visit the prisons of the village of
Tondo and of the Parian of the Sangleys. This does not appear just;
for although those prisons are near Manila, and inside the district of
the five leguas to which the [jurisdiction of the] Audiencia extends
(which is the argument on which they take their stand), still those
places have their alcaldes-mayor, and are separate jurisdictions, and
it belongs to those officials to make their visitation of prisons as
the Audiencia do in theirs. It is true that the alcaldes-in-ordinary
and those of the court (who are the auditors themselves) arrest in
Tondo and in the Parian by virtue of the five leguas; but they do not
put the prisoners in the prisons of those courts, but in that of the
court, or the prison of this city. The example which they have cited
to me--namely, that the prisons of the suburbs of Mexico are visited
on Saturdays by the auditors--is not well taken in this case; for those
prisons are in charge of the corregidor, and separate, because the city
is large and needs those different prisons. But the prison of Tacubaja,
which is one-half legua or slightly more from the city, is not visited
by the Audiencia, because it has its own alcalde-mayor. And it is
c