ommerce,
and for the same reason the profits of it [have declined] to so great
a degree that scarcely can one now buy one pico of silk for the price
that he formerly paid for two and one-half picos. This has been the
reason why, since the merchandise of the Chinese was lacking to the
inhabitants for their investments, they have had to buy the goods
from the Portuguese of Macan, at prices so high and excessive that
they make no considerable profit in Nueva Espana. Consequently, the
profits that the inhabitants of Manila formerly had have come to be
made by the said Portuguese of Macan. Thus the reason and motive for
the said royal decree has entirely and surely disappeared; and this
same fact ought to do away with its ruling.

The second reason also is founded on the expense and cost that had
to be incurred for the security and defense of the trading ships
from the said islands to Nueva Espana, with the fifty soldiers,
military captain, and other officers; that the said ships had to be
of a certain tonnage; and that for this reason of the said expenses
and costs, the said decree ordered the imposition of the said two
per cent in order that it should be unnecessary to have recourse to
the royal treasury. It ordered the proceeds therefrom to be deposited
in a separate fund and account, for the said expenses which had to be
incurred with the said ships and their crews. That reason likewise has
had no effect, for the said expenses have not been made, nor are they
made; nor do the said military captain, soldiers, or other officers
sail in the said ships. Neither are the said ships--those that there
are--of the said burden and tonnage, but smaller. Therefore the said
expenses and costs cease, upon which the said decree is grounded;
accordingly, that which is ruled and ordered by it ceases, for the
reason stated, and, indeed, should cease.

Third, because by the former year of six hundred and eleven, the said
governor, Don Juan de Silva, seeing the unsatisfactory method and
arrangements existing for the collection of the said two per cent,
tried to supply it--and did so--by the method that he thought least
harmful, and of greater profit to the royal treasury--namely, to impose
in its stead another duty of three per cent on the merchandise brought
by the Chinese to sell in the said city of Manila. But, although
the said imposition is ostensibly on the said Chinese, it comes, in
fact, to be imposed on the inhabitants of Manila