and increase of the revenue; while for the support of
the poor there will be a larger fund, in addition to the fact that
they will be better cared for and served. The result will be that
health will more abound, and that perhaps mortality will be lessened,
together with these great sicknesses--a great service to God and
his royal Majesty, and the state; for his Majesty will have more
soldiers, by which he will reap a profit, and in this case a great one,
because of the great cost and expense of sending and bringing them
here. The state will also have a larger population, more citizens
and men to defend it, in addition to the great private and ordinary
benefit received by the people thereof, in saving much expense on
their property incurred for the care of their servants and slaves,
as well as trouble, care, and responsibility, by their being cared
for in the said hospital bodily and spiritually.

Then the importance of this for the souls and bodies, not only
of the Spaniards but those of the slaves, may easily be seen and
understood. For the former, the Spaniards, fail not to have and
to suffer great and special need in their illnesses and deaths,
of someone to minister to them, or at the least to aid and comfort
them therein; while the latter, the slaves, as a people cast off and
the greater part of them ordinarily belonging to the royal crown,
and of so different races--some or many of them yet to be converted,
or imperfectly instructed and entered in the Christian faith--still
more require that there should be someone who in the love of God,
and with zeal for the good of their souls, should aid them and secure
their welfare and health, spiritual and temporal, in the one case as
in the other.

Further, the reward, merit, and crown befitting the service done
to God our Lord by this, and to the royal Majesty, and the good
to this state and these islands, will not be small; since the
result and the advantages which will arise from it are so great
and so special, important, and universal; and this is a cause for
applying the compassion and Christian charity in this state to the
glory and service of God, to the welfare, relief, and consolation,
perhaps the salvation, of His creatures and the poor thereof; and
to the edification and confusion of the great numbers of barbarians,
heathens, and infidels whom we have as witnesses about us looking at
us, and who will see nothing that can move and edify them like such
works of