Note 62 — Chapter XI · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE CHURCH: THE ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION

The leading church historians of the Philippines—Martínez de Zúñiga, Salazar, Fonseca and Concepción—were naturally unfavorable to Salcedo in their accounts of the events of his administration. All agree, however, that Salcedo was a man of energy and precision, who, at the beginning of his rule, gave promise of universal satisfaction. The correspondence of the civil officials who were contemporaneous with the governor, and the letters of Salcedo himself show that his chief concern was the enforcement of the laws and the elimination of the ecclesiastical and commercial graft with which the administration of the government of the Philippines was permeated on his arrival in the Islands (Letters of Coloma, Bónifaz, Montemayor, León, and the Municipal Cabildo, 1670–1, A. I., 67–6–3; see also note to Ventura del Arco Mss., in Blair and Robertson, XXXVII, 262).

Zúñiga, however, states that Salcedo’s commercial reforms were only intended for the benefit of himself and his friends, and that he reserved the chief articles of trade for himself, leaving only second-rate and spoiled goods for the merchants. This same historian states that the governor arranged for the early departure of the galleon on one occasion, with his goods on board, leaving those of the majority of the merchants unshipped (Martínez de Zúñiga, An historical view, I, 307–308). Fonseca charges him with avarice, maintaining that all classes of society in Manila were disgusted with the governor’s commercial transactions and were shocked at his exile of the archbishop. This historian relates that “the magistracy, the army, the merchants, arts and industries, ... all raised their voices against the badly directed government of Salcedo, determining to over-turn him; representative citizens of Manila petitioned the audiencia, asking that it deprive him of the government, ... and the royal acuerdo determined to do so, but at the last moment the judges disagreed over the question of whose signature should precede the others; this question remained in litigation, and blocked the action of the royal acuerdo” (Fonseca, Historia de la provincia de santissimo Rosario. Libro V, Capítulo VIII, quoted in Sobre una reseña histórica, 92). Concepción, the Augustinian historian, confirms the above, and gives a more clarifying reason for the failure of the audiencia to oust the governor—namely, that the latter was sharing his commercial profits with the magistrates, thereby purchasing their favors; the oidores were therefore reluctant to take action against the governor (Concepción, Historia general, VII, 137–138, 162–200).