Note 4 — FISCAL’S REPORT ON SANGLEY LICENSES

13. Even if those newly-imposed licenses had all the justification and security that law can give, and his Majesty (may God preserve him) had ordered them to be imposed, so zealous a minister as Don Sebastian ought to have represented to his royal Council of the Indias that these Sangleys have been made to pay for the privilege of remaining in these islands the annual sum of eight pesos five reals since the year 610. That brings his Majesty, according to the number of the Sangleys now, 120,000 pesos annually. In the years 638 and 39, when there were twenty-five or thirty thousand Sangleys (which was the time of the insurrection), those licenses amounted to more than 230,000 pesos. Since that sum is so considerable, a risk was being incurred if they were burdened with another imposition; for they might, oppressed by so many exactions and assessments, abandon the commerce of those islands, even though they perceived so much gain in them, and his Majesty would because of these licenses lose that established commerce.... Representing those reasons and inconveniences to his Majesty, he ought to have suspended the execution of this measure until, the matter having been conferred over in the royal Council of the Indias, his Majesty should decree according to his pleasure. All the more [should this be done] in lands and kingdoms recently acquired, as are the Indias—where for many years after the conquest no alcabala, gabel, or other contribution was imposed or asked until the year 574, when general decrees were promulgated ordering that the payment of the alcabala be introduced into the kingdoms of Piru and Nueva España, and that with great moderation and mildness. Don Francisco de Toledo, viceroy of Piru,4 suspended the execution of the decree for many years, until the Marques de Cañete5 ordered, in the time of his government, the collection of that duty, by virtue of a new decree which he held. Although, as is a fact, the excise duties are a royal right, so ancient and accepted, and neither the Indians nor the Spaniards, their colonists and conquistadors, paid his Majesty anything, the suspension of [their collection by] Don Francisco de Toledo was regarded as advisable, until pressing necessities compelled more severe exactions.