[At present, the tribute paid by the Indians should not be increased because so many of them would be distressed by any heavier tax; but this might be done later, when the class of large proprietors may have increased in numbers. The payment of this tax in kind is a source of loss, not only in the quantity and quality of the products paid in, but in the damage caused by transportation and storage; and in selling the products thus received by the government there is loss, because its agents are poor managers of such business, not having the shrewdness or the knowledge of the markets which enable private merchants to make their profits. The commutation of the payment from money to kind was only partly due to the influence of the alcaldes, who preferred it for the benefit of their own trading;] the cause which has rendered that commutation almost necessary and which operates directly to the prejudice of the Indian, is the lack of a colonial money peculiar to the Filipinas Islands, like that which the other possessions in Asia have (of the necessity of which I will speak in another chapter), in order to revive internal commerce and promote and facilitate the payment of taxes. The indirect taxes by means of government monopolies in Filipinas are, in my opinion, those most suitable to the native disposition of inhabitants who, furnished most abundantly by the soil with all the income necessary for their support, convert the superfluous enjoyments of life into objects of prime necessity. It should be a firm principle of good government to protect and rectify the administration of these indirect taxes, especially those on tobacco and wine--not only because these will be sufficient to cover abundantly all the expenses of army and navy, but because in case of a war and the absolute cessation of trade the government will have this firm support for its existence; and therefore no hearing should be given to the suggestions and proposals of those persons who are craftily working to free the islands from those monopolies. But so long as these taxes are not made general through all the provinces of the archipelago, so that the fire of the contraband trade (which always finds lodgment in the exempt provinces) may be extinguished, and until certain reforms are adopted in their administration and protection, the produce [of these taxes] in favor of the royal exchequer must be very disproportionate to the amounts consumed by that large population. Of the revenue from tobacco