Note 5 — LETTER FROM VIANA TO CARLOS III

In regard to the “Ordinances for the provinces,” I have systematized those which Doctor Don Simon de Anda y Salazar can show you; he carried with him a copy of them, which I drew up with the knowledge and experience which I have acquired by dint of constant application. Thus far they have been neither approved nor censured by the royal Audiencia, in virtue of the royal decree which your Majesty addressed to that body, that they should frame and arrange some ordinances, keeping in mind the articles of the late governor Don Pedro Manuel Arandía, and those of the reverend father in Christ the bishop of Nueva Caseres;5 but as the said ordinances cannot be framed without [incurring] the resentment of the ministers of doctrinas, and opposing their despotism and their designs (which aim at the overthrow of the ordinances which I composed), that court has left the matter in suspense for more than three years. And it will remain in this condition, at the pleasure of the senior auditor in the said Audiencia, on whom alone it depends, unless the efforts of those zealous ministers Don Manuel Galvan and the above-mentioned Don Simon de Anda, and those which I have exerted in the duties of my office, can secure the settlement of a business of so great importance—in which are included the two points which I have already mentioned, the trade with the Indians, and their instruction in the Castilian language.