Note 69 — Chapter VI · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE GOVERNOR: GENERAL RELATIONS

The laws of the Indies established the governor as the sole executive, and forbade the audiencia to interfere with the government.69 The governor, occupied by his extensive administrative and military duties, came to devote less attention to the judicial side of his office, which was left almost entirely to the audiencia. So it developed that the acuerdos in reference to judicial matters—the establishment of tariffs and rules for their observance and the dispatch of pesquisidores and visitors to the provinces, came in the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to be increasingly the concern of the audiencia. The authority of the tribunal in these matters was recognized by the Constitution of 1812 and the reforms made in pursuance thereof.70