San Geronimo, a servant from youth to a Spanish tailor called Garcia,
stole one hundred pesos fuertes from his master, and another hundred
from Captain Castejon, adjutant of the captain-general of the islands,
who was living in his house; by extracting them from the trunks of
each one. That of the captain-general he opened with the key which
the latter's own assistant gave him. The greater part of the money
was delivered to that assistant, his accomplice; the rest was lost
at play. This deed served the defender of San Geronimo, Don Agustin
Ruiz de Santayana, to petition his acquittal, alleging in his favor
the incapacity and irreflection which that individual had shown with
the said thief. Both the criminal and his accomplice confessed, and no
obstacle was presented to substantiate this verbal process. However,
it lasted for more than one year. They troubled the master Garcia
so much with notifications and accounts of the maintenance of the
prisoner that at last he refused to have anything more to do with the
matter, and abandoned the charge. The alcalde-in-ordinary sentenced San
Geronimo to six months' imprisonment. When the Audiencia examined that
clause, March 31, 1841, it ordered the prisoner to be liberated. In
Inglaterra, that violator of his own daughter, and the domestic thief
would have been given the death sentence on the gallows.

This impunity for crimes is, to my understanding, very fatal, not
only because of the encouragement which it gives on that account to
criminality, but also because of the fear which gobernadorcillos and
alcaldes have in arresting the guilty, for they know that they will be
soon liberated and will soon take vengeance on them by robbing them,
cutting down their trees, and burning their places of business. An
employe of estimable qualities in the department of taxes told me that
once grown tired in a certain province of seeing that no one dared
to arrest a thief who had terrified the entire village, he himself
took the trouble to waylay and seize him in the very operation of
committing a theft. He had him bound, and sent him to the alcalde with
the general complaint. In a few weeks he saw him again in the village
and had to reckon with him. I have been in the estate of Buena-Vista
in the outskirts of which live very many robbers. However, they do not
steal there, but they go to do that in other places, bringing there
afterward horses, buffaloes, and whatever they can lay their hands
on