Note 50 — Grau y Monfalcon’s Informatory Memorial of 1637 (continued 2)

As an argument for that course, it is alleged that notable transgressions are committed in regard to the two permissions for Filipinas and Perú. Although this memorial only defends that of the islands, the one is most completely verified by treating likewise of the other; and the illegal acts in both consist rather in the exaggeration with50 which they are mentioned than in the arguments by which they are proved. Who has ever said, or what possibility can there be, that the two ships which come every year from the islands to Acapulco, whose permitted cargo is of 250,000 pesos (not of 500,000, as is affirmed), carry four millions in merchandise? That, even in pearls and diamonds, seems impossible to be contained in two small vessels; and how much more so in the goods of so great bulk as those that are carried in them! The schemer tries [to say] that those four millions are worth eight in Nueva España, or even ten for the returns [on investments]; and that that sum goes back to the islands with the 500,000 pesos allowed by the permission, with another 600,000 which is sent as the ordinary aid, granting the net profits at one hundred and fifty per cent, or at the least at one hundred per cent. Were that so, those islands would be most wealthy in one year, for their citizens, as has been said, numbering 230 (counting married and single men), if ten millions entered their possession annually, which would be more than 43,000 pesos for each one, neither Venecia [Venençia—MS.], Genova, Sevilla, nor Lisboa, nor these four empires together, would equal their wealth. With the same extravagance does the captain talk of the ship that sails annually to [from—MS.] Perú, [saying that] its permission, which is for 200,000 ducados, extends to three millions of silver that goes unregistered.