Note 36 — ROJO’S NARRATIVE

54. This point has been treated with prolixity, for besides being one of the most serious, and one of greatest pain, it has been shifted and juggled [adviterado?] variously, blackening enormously the conduct of the archbishop, even to affirming that it is evident that he had an understanding with the English for this cession, in a journal full of false entries and of black impostures, composed by the fiscal. But God be thanked, that the evidence of this criminal calumny is false, and the weak apprehensions or inferences on which it is founded have been clearly dissipated. For what is affirmed is false, namely, that the cession of the islands had been discussed or made before October 26, and that letters had been written for their surrender, as the first council was held on the said day, and the second on the following day (the twenty-seventh and the twenty-eighth). On the twenty-ninth, the archbishop made his resolution, and wrote the rough drafts of said letters with his own hand on the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth. The statement also is false, namely, that on the twenty-ninth, said letters were sent with one of the same date in which the archbishop answered the general ceding the islands. For these original letters are yet in possession of the secretary of the assembly, and neither then nor at any time have they been sent or delivered. So true is this that the commanders having gone—Draper on the twelfth of November36 of the past year, and Cornish on the first of March of the present year, who never asked him for a letter for the surrender of the islands—the British government tried afterwards to get the archbishop to give letters of surrender for Zebu, Yloylo, and Zamboanga, which he refused and did not give, as appears from his letters, rejecting the instances of the above-mentioned British government.