the years 1840 and 1841. This table is compiled
at least in part from the guide of Manila for the year 1840; the
population of each province being taken therefrom. Thirty-three
provinces are enumerated. The total number of causes for 1840 was 295,
and for 1841, 499.]

The first thing which arrests the attention in these reports is the
increase of crime. The fiscal, whom I questioned in regard to this
matter, told me that now many causes are elevated to process which
were before finished in the interior courts, and that during these
latter years many old causes had been sentenced. This may be true, but
in regard to the accumulation of back cases that have been sentenced,
I believe that that can only be understood from the year 1838, or even
from that of 1839, because of the lack of judges in which the court
found itself in 1837. No matter how it is considered, the increase is
palpable, for the causes alone for murder of last year amount to more
than all those of any of the years of the first five years, and it is
incredible that at that time they neglected to try people for homicide,
although they did dissimulate in regard to lesser crimes. The second
thing which arrests the attention is the tendency to theft, since
the greater part of the homicides have been committed by robbers,
and further one sees a great multitude of causes for theft. For
among those two kinds of crime are found two-thirds of all kinds of
criminality. This is a matter well worthy of reflection in a country
where the means of existence can be procured so readily. The third
[thing that arrests the attention] is the mildness of the sentences. In
the last five years, when there were 439 homicides, only 28 have
ascended the scaffold, one-third of those tried have been set at
liberty, and 328 condemned to light punishment. One would not believe
that those treated with so great mercy are (at least always) criminals
for insignificant faults. A man of the village of Narbakan was tried
in the year 1840 for having begotten children twice by his daughter,
the second time that having been done by means of assaulting her with
a dagger. The attorney asked for ten years of imprisonment, but the
Audiencia did not impose any penalty and did not even condemn him to
the costs, nor did it take the measure in honor of public morality of
causing them to separate, but allowed them to live together as they
are still doing. At the beginning of the same year, 1840, Mariano