our Majesty ordered to be written to me from San
Lorenco el Real [i.e., the Escorial], on the seventeenth of August of
eighty-nine, I received by the hand of the secretary of the governor,
Gomes Perez Dasmarinas, in the village of Tabuco, outside of this
city, on the first of June of this year ninety. And for one so beset
with afflictions, labors, and difficulties as I am, the favor which
your Majesty therein shows me was no little comfort; for I have been
freed by it from the pains of conscience, which I continually bore in
my soul, at seeing the course of affairs in this land. I held myself
obliged by conscience to go in person to inform your Majesty of these
matters, as it appeared to me that my letters were accomplishing
little, in accord with my hope that your Majesty would at once amend
what you knew stood in need of betterment. And this thought gave me
more anxiety because, as at other times I have written your Majesty,
among the calamities and misfortunes under which this land suffers,
none the least is that your Majesty must get information of them
through the very men who have destroyed this land, and who work
for their private interests rather than for the common good. As
the reports are made by such persons, your Majesty can well see the
result. Therefore this land has come to its present misery; and the
new governor will have no small task if he maintains it, and saves it
from ruin, and it is even now all but lost. I am emboldened to say this
because hitherto there have been made to your Majesty many perverse
reports; and by this ship we have received the decrees, by which it
clearly appears that false reports were given your Majesty, because
of the provisions made in these decrees, as I shall explain elsewhere.

The greater part of the religious and other principal persons of this
land were of the same opinion as I, maintaining that I was in duty
bound to go in person and give your Majesty an account of affairs here,
because they see that everything here is going to ruin; and that this
common expedient was of greater importance than the harm that might be
done by my absence. But thanks be to God, in whose hands are the hearts
of kings, and who put into the heart of your Majesty what is provided,
ordained, and commanded by this letter for the weal and betterment of
all this land. If this be executed as your Majesty has ordered, the
country may be helped; but hitherto there has been so much sloth and
careles