Note 3 — Chapter XXII

Since we have to furl the sails to this discourse, because of the limits of time, and make an end to this small work in these last chapters, I thought it important to first make an extract (although with much labor) of all the alms and sums of pesos, produced by the funds which are administered by the house of Santa Misericordia, during the years when—all being complete, and no disaster of earthquakes coming upon them, or shipwrecks or other accidents, which depend on time—it distributes to the benefit of all this community. I was also moved to this interesting task by making charts of all the funds and their pious purposes, by having met in the first part of the life of the venerable and most reverend father master, Fray Simon de Roxas, a great servant of God and a member of the Order of the Santissima Trinidad de Redemptores [i.e., the Most Holy Trinity of Redeemers].3 written during the year 670 by the very reverend father master, Fray Francisco de Arcos, preacher and theologue of his Majesty, and of the tribunals of his royal conscience, etc., in which he refers to a paragraph of a letter which Juan Baptista Labaña wrote during the voyage from Portugal of Don Phelipe III (of happy memory), in which he cited folio 16; and in the life of the said venerable father, a description of the alms which the royal house of Santa Misericordia of the court of Lisboa distributed in the year 619, and of those which regularly and annually it distributes in the pious ends which are contained in the said chapter, is found in book 8, chapter x, pp. 418–420. It states that those alms are about 30,000 ducados annually. Inasmuch as chapter xi of this work states that the alms distributed by this house of Santa Misericordia of the city of Manila amounted to about 70,000 pesos, I have determined to prove the said proposition part by part, passing over the circumstances which are found in the said chapter, and making a clear demonstration of their reality, without failing one jot in the truth, which is required in a matter of so great importance, and which has to yield in so great glory to the Spanish monarchy. It is a pity that in the circumstances of the present case, there should be many who opposed the truth as it did not issue so clear and apparent in all the books of the house which treat of this matter; and necessarily I am obliged to give it by imagining charts which are fitting and do not leave the least reason for doubt.