The ordinances framed by the junta received the emperor's approval, and after being somewhat amplified were published in Madrid in 1543, and thenceforth known as the New Laws.[XIV‑15] The code contains a large number of articles, many of them relating almost exclusively to the enslavement and treatment of the natives. It was provided that all Indian slaves should be set free, unless their owners could establish a legal title to their possession.[XIV‑16] None were thenceforth to be enslaved under any pretext. Proprietors to whom the repartimientos had given an excessive number must surrender a portion of them to the crown. On the death of encomenderos[XIV‑17] the slaves were to revert to the crown. All ecclesiastics and religious societies and all officers under the crown must deliver up their bondsmen or bondswomen, not being allowed to retain them even though resigning office. Inspectors were appointed to watch over the interests of the natives, and were paid out of the fines levied on transgressors. Slaves were not to be employed in the pearl-fisheries against their will under penalty of death to the party so employing them, nor when used as pack-animals was such a load to be laid on their backs as might endanger their lives. Finally they were to be converted to the Catholic faith, and it was ordered that two priests should accompany all exploring parties, to instruct the Americans that his Majesty the emperor regarded them as his free subjects, and that his holiness the pope desired to bring them to a true knowledge of him the spread of whose doctrines had in less than half a century been attended with the depopulation of the fairest portions of the New World. * * * * * Among the provisions of the new code were others almost as distasteful to many of the Spaniards as were those relating to the enfranchisement of the natives. The audiencia of Panamá was abolished and two new tribunals were to be established, one at Los Reyes, which now first began to bear the name of Lima, and was thenceforth the metropolis of the South American continent; the other termed the audiencia de los Confines, at Comayagua, with jurisdiction over Chiapas, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the province of Tierra Firme, known as Castilla del Oro. From the decision of these tribunals and from those of the audiencias of Mexico and Santo Domingo, there was to be in criminal cases no appeal. In civil suits the losing party might demand a second trial, the benefit of which is not apparent, as no new evidence was admitted, and the case was conducted by the oidores who rendered the first judgment. If the amount exceeded ten thousand pesos de oro, there lay right of appeal to the council of the Indies. Moreover, the oidores[XIV‑18] were empowered to inquire into the administration of the governor and other civil functionaries, and to suspend them from office, their report being sent to the council of the Indies for final action.