Your Majesty has conceded to your viceroys of Nueva Espana authority, in the case of deaths and vacancies in this government, to send commissions to those who are to have charge of military matters; and until the arrival of the regularly-appointed governor you order them to send another governor from Mexico. That has been done twice by the marquis de Cerralbo--once with Don Fernando de Silva, of the Habit of Santiago, because of the death of Don Alonso Faxardo; and [the other time] with Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, because of the death of Don Juan Nino de Tabora. Your Majesty is greatly disserved in all of the things that I shall now mention. First, when the Audiencia was governing the [royal] estate, your Majesty's royal treasury was pledged to more than eighty or one hundred thousand pesos, which they obtained by a forced loan from the inhabitants, by placing soldiers of the guard in their houses, quartering these on them until they lent this money; and the officials spent the money in paying warrants that were ordered to be issued to please the soldiers and sailors. It has been the custom to order those warrants to be despatched so that they might be paid when there should be any money. As for those poor men, they have not been paid in one, three, ten, or fifteen years. They sell their warrants during such times for the fourth, fifth, or sixth part of their face value; and many have been paid at one hundred pesos for one thousand. The warrants are bought by the servants of the auditors, royal officials, governors, and other ministers, and to them is paid the face value. Thus the poor soldiers are so unjustly dispossessed of [the rewards for] their hardships; and on this account is your Majesty's royal treasury so pledged. In the term of Don Juan Cerezo de Salamanca, more than one hundred thousand odd pesos had been paid in this kind of warrants. Your Majesty having issued a decree, in the time of Don Juan Nino de Tabora, ordering such warrants to be paid at the third of their face value, he began to do so one year with twelve thousand pesos, that he set apart for that purpose. The said Don Juan Cerezo did not pursue the custom, as he declared that the said Don Juan Nino had exceeded the bounds in the execution of your Majesty's decree. Although this charge was brought against him in the residencia, it was not proved that he had actually paid that sum during his term. It is, however, clear to me, outside of judgment, that his own secretary, while he was judge and collector of the licenses of the Sangleys, who should have deposited that money in your Majesty's royal treasury, deposited a great sum of it in this kind of warrants; and so that it might not be proved judicially, the owners went to receive the money from the royal officials; and while they were there, and almost before their eyes, the said secretary again took it. And perhaps it happened that a soldier, having collected it, would say that he did