Note 10 — FINANCIAL AFFAIRS OF THE ISLANDS, 1766

19. By establishing the monopoly of cock-fighting10 in these islands (as in Mexico), with the charge of one grano for each Indian who resorts to the said sport, and reckoning forty-eight granos (which make four reals) for forty-eight times11 when each, at the least, would bet each year, four hundred thousand persons would share [in contributing to] the royal exchequer two hundred thousand pesos, at the least reckoning. For it is certain that there are more than eight hundred thousand souls who are able to bet on the cocks, and that, on account of their vicious dispositions and extraordinary addiction to this sport, it might be reckoned that each one would gamble more than eighty times a year; in that proportion the proceeds of this income, which here is estimated at only two hundred thousand pesos, would exceed four hundred thousand pesos.