lay it before your Majesty, so that you may be pleased to provide in
this matter and in other things touching auditors, as may best suit
you. [I ask that your Majesty act] without greater inclination to one
side than the other, since this office is yours, not mine; and since
I shall live in the same manner with or without it, without coveting
greater honors than your Majesty (may God preserve you for us) has
granted me and grants me in employing my services.

[_Marginal note_: "After considering what you mention in this matter,
it is reduced to the following points. The first and more essential
is that which you mention (although in ambiguous terms) regarding
the trading of the auditors and government employees there, for which
reason they prevented the sending of the cloves. The testimony that
you send of it does not concern this matter, but only that of the
goods and money that were to be sent to Terrenate for trading. That
indeed was done in accordance with your opinion. The opinion that you
shall hold in matters so worthy of reform you must always send to me
distinctly and clearly expressed; for if there are such officials
who commit illegal acts--not only in trading, but in hindering
the profit of the royal treasury--it is advisable not only for the
greater security of the treasury, but also for the administration of
justice, that such persons be punished with the rigor that the case
requires. Consequently, you shall do this, sending me information
of what is done in this matter. If any proven guilt results you
shall sequester the property of offenders, in order to assure the
judgment. In accordance with this, we are writing to the Audiencia,
advising it of what it must do. In order that no official may have
any cause to think that you, of your own accord, are trying to prove
him guilty in a matter so grave, you shall be accompanied, in whatever
concerns the sequestration of goods, by the archbishop resident there,
in whose person we have the necessary confidence. The second point is
that you will have been informed of all the things that concern the
advantage of the royal treasury. You shall accordingly declare those
things in the tribunal of the treasury and in the assembly. This
reply by letter will be your authority, so that you shall need
nothing more special than this for whatever may be to the benefit
of my royal treasury, and shall procure that benefit by all and any
justifiable means. The third point is--a