ters who can do as they please here.

I do not know what can have been the reason for sending this ship to
China and beginning an enterprise so prejudicial. In a general clause,
however, of an instruction to the governor, your Majesty ordains that
the governor may send to Japon, Macan, or other pagan countries, also
to ports of the heathen and of the Portuguese in order to ascertain
if they would like trade with us. But China is not mentioned by name
in said clause; and the law of justice is that what is not conceded in
particular is not understood to be granted in a general statement. The
point under discussion was not only not particularly conceded by your
Majesty, but had been expressly prohibited by a special decree. Not
only did your Majesty ordain that no ship whatever should go from other
Spanish possessions to China, but it is even decreed that the Chinese
merchants coming here shall not take back Spanish money to China;
and that merchandise shall not be exported from China on account of
the Spaniards, but on account of the Chinese themselves. Even in the
same instruction, in the two clauses immediately preceding the one
to which I refer, your Majesty commands a thing incompatible with
the sending of a vessel to China, which has been undertaken this
year. Your Majesty decrees that all the goods coming from China
should be sold at the pancada and that nothing should be bought on
private account until after the pancada. The aforesaid decree would
be futile if license were then to be given to send money to China,
and also ships, to buy there the stuffs and merchandise for the
Spaniards. It may be that there are those who represent that this
has been done for the sake of opening a door to the evangelization
of China; but such persons do not have as a profession the preaching
of the gospel. The evident truth is what I state.

The sole correction for these evils, and for all the misfortunes of
this land, is for your Majesty to send--besides a holy and learned
archbishop, zealous in honoring God, your Majesty, and the common
welfare--a disinterested and God-fearing governor, such as Don Luis
Perez Dasmarinas, and, according to my information, Don Pedro Brabo
de Acuna, who has been governor for some years in Cartagena in the
Indias. But I understand that, at the receipt of these letters and
other things, your Majesty will have ordered Don Francisco Tello to
return [to Espana] and another governor will be provided. May