Note 2 — Chapter VIII · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE GOVERNOR: CONFLICTS OF JURISDICTION

There were two complaints most frequently made against governors. One of these was their commercial excesses and the other, their abuse of the power of appointment. The former consisted of the monopoly of galleon space for themselves, or their friends, the acceptance of bribes from merchants for various favors, or the manipulation of the Chinese trade in some way for their own advantage. The tendency of governors to appoint their friends and relatives to office, notwithstanding the royal prohibition, and the apparent inability of the audiencia to prevent this was a source of complaint, especially during the early years of the colony.2 Dishonest proceedings in the sale of offices, including the retention of the money received and the disposal of offices to friends for nominal sums, were among the irregularities of the early governors. These abuses the magistrates often knowingly permitted in return for some favor allowed them by the governor. That the laws which forbade these abuses of the power of appointment had been openly and flagrantly violated was a charge brought up repeatedly in the residencias of governors and magistrates. An examination of the correspondence of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would almost lead to the belief that the home government despaired of ever righting these wrongs, and left them unpunished, rather directing efforts towards reform in other channels in the hope of remedying greater defects.