Note 6 — LETTER FROM VIANA TO CARLOS III
Reading edition
As for the royal interests in these islands, I have the satisfaction of having sent to your Majesty a work entitled, “Demonstration of the deplorable and wretched condition of these Philipinas islands,” etc.; and another containing seven demonstrations6 showing the products yielded by these dominions and the expenditures of your Majesty therein; and the great retrenchments of these, and the increase [of revenues], which might be established—which would reach every year the amount of more than one million, three hundred thousand pesos, without including the increase of the tributes or counting the present receipts of this royal treasury. In regard to these two works, however great an outcry may be made by the indignation which the religious have conceived against me on account of the advantages of which they would be deprived by the [royal] approbation of the second work, I trust that the royal and just mind of your Majesty will be gratified by the zeal with which I have discovered the “philosopher’s stone” with which these islands can yield to your Majesty more than what their maintenance has cost for two hundred and three years.