Even when the gobernadorcillos are recompensed with a certain percentage for the collection of contributions, and they collect some other dues, the total sum that they finally receive is so small that their office is considered honorary. In spite of this, the duty is an onerous one, and they are subject to annoyances, fines, and imprisonment, if the gubernative, judicial, and administrative authorities, etc., are rigorous. The Indians covet it with a desire that is astonishing, and avail themselves of all possible means in order to obtain it. The secret of the motive that impels them lies in their fondness for prominence, and in the fact that nearly all of them succeed in becoming rich, or in attaining independent means, after the two years of their office. For the _polistas_, or individuals who are obliged to labor on the public works of the state, build their houses for them free of cost, bringing the materials from the forest or the points where they are found; there are the _fallas_, or the amount of the aliquot sum that is to make good the deficiency in public works [i.e., in the services on public works rendered by the natives], in the collection of which there is opportunity for the gobernadorcillo to figure, by supporting all or the majority of those who should perform that work, and himself using that money; the innumerable bribes and illegal exactions that they impose, and the taxes that they collect through numberless separate judgments: [all these] make the office sufficiently lucrative, although in that country, scarcely any importance is attached to many of these irregularities (even by those who are injured by them), which custom has almost sanctioned as law. The election of corporate members is carried on under the presidency of the provincial chief by twelve of the most prominent men in the town--half of them drawn by lots cast by those who were gobernadorcillos and cabezas de barangay, and the other six from the cabezas in actual office; while he who is gobernadorcillo at the time of election votes also. The individual who obtains most votes is proposed to the general government as being first on the list; he who follows him in the number of votes, in the second; and the actual _pedaneo_ [i.e. a subordinate officer, here the gobernadorcillo], in the third. From that list of three [_terna_], the governor-general appoints one, after seeing the report of the president of the election.