e of conscience
he can have who has all these souls in his charge, both those who
collect and those of whom collection is taken. To relieve me from the
anguish in which I live, the only means of removing all difficulties
is for your Majesty to send us a great number of religious of the
four orders already established here--without giving ear to those who
speak of a matter about which, in my opinion, they have no means of
judging here. They say that some have tried to persuade your Majesty,
with no other spirit than that of the devil (who wishes to hinder
so much good), that we have all the religious that are necessary. In
addition to the thirty-seven Augustinians now here, more than three
hundred others are needed; and even these will not be enough. Yet,
with this number great results would be accomplished.

The first is that your Majesty would be fulfilling the obligation
which you have toward these nations, in giving them instruction. They
need this, because of the ten divisions of this bishopric eight have
no instruction; and some provinces have been paying tribute to your
Majesty for more than twenty years, but without receiving on account
of that any greater advantage than to be tormented by the tribute
and afterward to go to hell.

Second, all the Indians who are to be pacified will then be found,
because experience has already shown us that to think of finding the
Indians with a force of soldiers is rather to lose them, and never
to pacify them; while with religious they all become obedient with
great good will. And, when they are pacified and converted, much
larger tributes can be exacted, and the increase of revenue in the
treasury of your Majesty from their tributes would be greater than the
amount spent in sending them religious; while the conscience of your
Majesty would be free from the greatest weight which, in my judgment,
it has in this land, because tributes are collected from Indians
who have never rendered obedience, and do not, as I have said above,
know why they are paying it.

In the last clause your Majesty orders me to charge myself with the
protection of the Indians of this bishopric. I receive this charge
as a special favor; because, as it was, I was burdened with the same
responsibility, and with this commission I shall have, as your Majesty
says, more authority in order to render aid. And this provision was
so necessary because, without it, I was able to do almost nothing to
succor the In