ose that they had. The others
who are infidels shall do the same, so that there shall remain no
remembrance of the said intercourse--under penalty that any Sangley,
of any rank whatever, who shall be known to have continued it and to
have the said godchildren or godparents, shall be condemned to row
in the galleys for four years, in a place prescribed, without pay,
as soon as they are adjudged guilty thereof. The said alcalde-mayor
of Tondo and its presidio, and all other magistrates whatever, are
ordered to take especial care in the fulfilment and execution of this
act. They shall cause it to be published, in order that all persons
may know of it, and none plead ignorance--for which purpose an order
shall be given in due form, and this act inserted therein. Thus they
voted, ordered, and decreed.

Before me:

_Pedro Hurtado Desquibel_

_An act decreeing that the Christian Sangleys, and all those who
may become Christians in the future, shall practice and exercise the
occupations that they had before they became Christians._

In the city of Manila, on the seventeenth of May, one thousand five
hundred and ninety-nine, the president and auditors of the royal
Audiencia, Court, and Chancilleria of the Philipinas Islands, having
examined this information which was remitted to this royal Audiencia
by Estevan de Marquina, alcalde-mayor of the village of Tondo and its
presidio, concerning the advisability and importance that the Christian
Sangleys living in the said village of Tondo, and in the other villages
of its jurisdiction, and those who become Christians in the future,
shall not abandon the occupations which they had before they became
Christians, as they have been accustomed to do, but shall continue
to exercise and practice them in the same manner as before--for,
by thus abandoning their occupations, that people are unoccupied
and slothful, and spend their time in games and vicious amusements,
whence result the harm and trouble which may be considered: they
declared that, in order to remedy that state of affairs, they ought
to order, and they did so order, that, now and henceforth, the said
Sangleys shall practice and exercise the occupations which they had
practiced and exercised before they became Christians, and shall,
under no consideration, abandon them--this being understood to apply
to those becoming Christians in the future, and to those who have
been Christians for six years previous to the present--