Note 41 — ANDA’S MEMORIAL, 1768

In the management of the royal treasury, and especially in that of the storehouses at Manila, Cavite, and other places; in the contracts and charters for the transportation of provisions from the provinces to the capital; in the care and conservation of arms and ammunition; in the collection of tributes; in the collection of all the royal duties; in the appraisals for the sales of offices; in the auction of the revenues leased and held by monopoly; and finally, in everything of advantage to his Majesty: there are most enormous frauds, which need instant correction by planting deeply the order, system, and method which justice and the laws demand, in order to suppress the thefts which have hitherto enriched the governors, royal officials, and other employees who have made a private patrimony out of what belongs to the king, destroying the royal revenues and ruining the islands generally by their insatiable greed. Consequently, although the country has resources for maintaining superabundantly all the obligations and business of the royal service, his Majesty has expended immense sums in the annual situados sent from Nueva España, without other benefit than that of feeding the avarice of faithless ministers, both secular and ecclesiastical—who, although charged with the conservation and prosperity of those islands, abandon them without defense, and in the miserable condition which was made plainly evident in the last war, to our utmost grief, where even the hearts of those most honored and put under obligation by the king were alienated, and they forgot the loyalty and love due to both Majesties.41