The appointment of this eminent prelate to the viceroyalty _ad interim_ by a royal order of 25th February, 1787, was perhaps one of those strokes of policy by which the Spanish ministry strove to reconcile and connect the ecclesiastical and civil unity of the American empire. The sway of the archbishop, complimentary as it was to himself and to the church, was exceedingly brief, for he entered upon the government on the 8th of May and was superceded by Flores on the 17th of August of the same year. New Spain was undisturbed during his government; and no event is worthy of historical record in these brief annals of the country, save the effort that was made to prohibit the _repartimiento_ or subdivision of the Indians among the agriculturists and miners by the _sub-delegados_, who had succeeded the _alcaldes mayores_, in the performance of this odious task. The conduct of the latter personages had been extremely cruel to the natives. They either used their power to oppress the Indians, or had trafficked in the dispensation of justice by allowing the sufferers to purchase exemption from punishment; and it is related that in certain _alcaldias mayores_ in Oaxaca, the _alcaldes_ had enriched themselves to the extent of more than two hundred thousand dollars by these brutal exactions. Inhumanity like this, was severely denounced to the king by the bishop Ortigoza,--who merited, according to Revilla-Gigedo, the title of the Saint Paul of his day,--and the eloquent prelate complained in behalf of his beloved Indians as vehemently as Las Casas at an earlier period of this loathsome oppression. But interest overcome the appeals of mercy in almost all instances since the foundation of the American empire. The Spaniards required laborers. The ignorant and unarmed Indians of the south and of the table lands, were docile or unorganized, and, although the Spanish court and Council of the Indies seconded the viceroy's zeal in attempting to suppress the cruelty of the planters and miners, the unfortunate aborigines only experienced occasional brief intervals of respite in the system of forced labor to which they were devoted by their legal task-masters. DON MANUEL FLORES, LI. VICEROY OF NEW SPAIN. 1787-1789.