The judicial authority of the audiencia was impeded during the greater part of its history by the failure of the government to entrust it with complete jurisdiction in all civil and criminal matters, and by the tendency of the latter to interfere in matters of minute and insignificant detail, which should have been left to the magistrates of the tribunal. The Constitution of 1812 and the reforms made in pursuance thereof really effected the changes which had long been needed. The audiencia's jurisdiction was made final in all civil suits and increased in administrative cases; thereafter no appeals were made to the Council of the Indies unless they involved administrative law. Cases involving official dishonesty, incapacity, residencia, pesquisas, treason, disputes between audiencias and other tribunals over conflicts of jurisdiction, and questions of the interpretation of the law were still carried to Spain. These were important steps for the improvement of colonial judicial procedure; they served to simplify it, preventing a multiplicity of cases from being carried to Spain which should have been settled within the colony. These tardy reforms left to the home government more time in which to occupy itself with questions of governmental policy, leaving to the audiencias more authority and responsibility in purely judicial matters, thus giving to them a greater prestige in the commonwealths wherein they were situated. The qualifications for the magistracy were also raised at this time, although it cannot be said that the magistrates of the audiencias were at any time incompetent or lacking in ability. The audiencias of the colonies were given equal status with those of the Peninsula, and were thus elevated in dignity and standing to the rank of tribunals of the first order. The chief defects of the colonial judicial system of the seventeenth century were thus corrected, though somewhat tardily. It is unfortunate indeed that these changes applied only to a mere skeleton of Spain's former colonial empire. In this chapter we have discussed the audiencia as a formal court of justice, with methods, practices, and traditions little different from those of any tribunal of justice. However, it had judicial authority more extensive and far-reaching than has yet been indicated. Among the different kinds of cases over which the audiencia had jurisdiction, perhaps none was more important, and certainly none was more exclusively peculiar to the Spanish judicial system than suits of residencia. So distinct and extraordinary was that phase of judicial activity that it merits consideration apart from a discussion of the audiencia's functions as an ordinary court of law. In the following section we shall note its jurisdiction as an administrative court over suits wherein the government was a party and wherein the object was not only to punish offenders, but to act as a preventive of official misconduct. CHAPTER IV