than private persons can give. I am also assured that a very
productive agricultural estate can be made, by managing to obtain
from it the cost in one or two years. For the rest of the time the
rent is left free [from debt or other obligation]. For two thousand
Sangleys that will amount to forty thousand fanegas of rice; and,
as it increases with time, it will amount to fifty thousand. That is
as much as these magazines need. [_In the margin_: "Let us be informed
whether any of the expenses of those islands have been reduced." "Bring
the memorandum of the reduction that was made in the year 618."]

The gain that will accrue to your Majesty from that will be to relieve
your Majesty from the expense of fifty thousand pesos, and the Indian
natives from the assessment and allotment of fifty thousand fanegas,
which, as aforesaid, is the greatest relief for the islands, and for
this royal treasury. The risk that will be run of the money that will
be advanced to the Chinese so that they may settle and equip their
farms (in which, although it is given with confidence, there is,
of course, always some risk that some will run away and others will
die), will all, however, be of little importance, in view of the
profits that are seen to result in the estates which the religious
and inhabitants are equipping.

It would be advisable for your Majesty to decree this to be carried out
without any opposition; and that you order the viceroy of Nueva Espana,
in order to facilitate it, to send five thousand pesos separately, and
in addition [to the usual situado] in order that I may continue with
capital what has been begun without it and (with what I have lent to
the treasury from my own funds) make the experiment and take possession
of the lands, ordering wheat to be sowed in a portion of them. I am
told that it has been shown by experience that wheat bears well. This
undertaking can not be accomplished in one or two years. Your Majesty
holds these islands for many years through the Divine favor, and your
successors as long as the world shall last. Consequently, the future
must be considered, in order that these lands may not remain behind;
but if this be done in all parts, in what pertains to your Majesty's
revenues, the treasury will not remain in so backward a condition as
at present.

_Third point of the letter_

Your Majesty's royal treasury owes to that of the goods of deceased
persons more than forty thousand pesos, as a