ation and government, and for dealings with
and good management of the Indians, that both your Majesty and the
encomenderos should receive profit; and that the royal estate should
not suffer, nor the encomendero starve, abandon everything, and go
away. For your Majesty's share alone there would necessarily be more
than a hundred and fifty thousand pesos of restitution, not to count
thirty thousand pesos of income which would be lost from the present
tributes (for all the encomiendas belong to your Majesty); and these
islands would be left alone without a single soldier, and with only
the bishop and the religious, so that within one week there would be
neither the one nor the other. I assured him, in fact, that without
express order from your Majesty I could not curtail or diminish the
royal income or alter the encomiendas from their first establishment,
which they have had for twenty-six years. I answered him fully in
respect to the establishment of justice where there is none, and the
great good that would result therefrom. I urged him to appoint laymen
of good life and example, who, while there are no religious there,
may instruct and bring them up in the holy faith, as your Majesty
commands in the royal charge regarding presentations--to which the
bishop never has given me an answer. I told him that finally, in
these two ways, it will be brought about that they will not be left
alone and intractable, and thus ready to rebel and rise in two days'
time. It were well that these laymen of good life, when religious are
lacking, not only be not appointed by the bishop, but that they do
not importune the Indians. The bishop does not wish others than the
religious to do that, and meanwhile it is not done by either. It would
doubtless be of some benefit, and the lack of instruction of which your
Majesty complains would be obviated, if the encomenderos could furnish
it. But, if there is no such thing in the land, the encomendero is not
to blame--as your Majesty declares plainly in my instructions, clause
forty-nine, in the following words, "they do not supply it or try to
supply it as they are bound to do, and as they should, although there
is a sufficient number of the said ministers." Therefore, when there
is not a good supply, but a lack of ministers, the encomendero is not
at fault, and has no reason for not collecting his tribute. Should
the encomenderos be deprived of this, your Majesty, as the party
most interested, coul