Note 46 — Part II

“On account of the English invasion, it was positively prohibited that foreign vessels should land at Filipino ports. This prohibition, and that imposed in the royal decree of 1593—which provided that no merchant of Manila should send his vessels to China, or go there to purchase his goods directly—were superlatively absurd, mischievous, and impolitic; for this constituted a [special] privilege in favor of the Chinese, who, when they appeared in the port of Manila once a year in their clumsy champans, secured for lack of competition a considerable increase in the prices for their merchandise, the valuation placed on the goods not being sufficient to diminish the monopoly which they enjoyed on those articles.” This stupid procedure not only kept the Spaniards from competing with foreigners in the markets of India and China, thus surrendering all that commerce and its advantages to the latter; but these, especially the English and French, took advantage of the Chinese monopoly of trade with Manila by sending thither cargoes of their goods under the flag of some Asiatic country; some Armenian or Moor would act as owner of the vessel, the real captain or agent being ostensibly an interpreter. (Montero y Vidal, Hist, de Filipinas, ii, pp. 120, 121.)

On one occasion Viana tried to stop this by demanding that the Audiencia punish severely the Frenchmen who were selling their cargoes in Manila, in open and reckless violation of the royal decrees; but that tribunal declined to do more than notify the Frenchmen that a repetition of the offense would be severely punished—on the ground that a lawsuit brought against them and the buyers of the goods would involve nearly all the citizens of Manila, the religious corporations, and various dignitaries. (Azcarraga y Palmero, Libertad de comercio, pp. 115, 116.) Azcarraga was a Filipino. ↑