possession of two other deposits belonging to regidores of the capital. By these means, and by the expenditure of ten thousand pesos of his own, wherewith he made purchases in the neighboring provinces, he accumulated a considerable store of grain.[1] He broke up effectually the trade in contraband goods between Acapulco and Peru. While this was a-doing it was found that members of the consulado had been concerned, some of them openly, in these practices.[2] He removed the royal officials having charge of the supplies for the Philippines, putting clean-handed men in their places, and in consequence the amount of supplies sent to that colony was greater than ever before.[3]
He checked immediately all pilfering of the royal treasury, banishing from the mines the foreigners and others who had defrauded the revenue, ordering that all money received for taxes should be sent at once to Mexico, and putting an end to other practices by which so much of the king's money had remained in the hands of dishonest officials.[4] Owing to these reforms in the management of the treasury the viceroy was enabled to send an increased amount of money to Spain, where at this time it was sorely
- ↑ He also ordered that maize should not be fed to cattle within fourteen leagues of Mexico and ten of Pueblo, and that throughout the viceroyalty the price of this staple should not be more than twenty reales the fanega. Abundance soon brought the price down to less than this, and it sold as low as sixteen reales. This public benefaction was acknowledged by the cabildo of Mexico, in a formal manner, toward the close of 1623. Mex., Rel. del Estad., 7-8. The viceroy also ordered that Juan Juarez, fiscal of the audicncia, should be present at the granary, at certain determined hours daily, for the purpose of seeing that the poor were impartially treated. He caused the butcher-shops of the archiepiscopal palace to be closed and prohibited the sale of all articles of food at the exorbitant prices hitherto prevailing. Grambila, Tumultos, MS., 3.
- ↑ In the prosecutions growing out of this matter the viceroy allowed no appeal; this was afterward qualified as an act of tyranny by the audiencia in their answer of February 8, 1624, to Gelves' protest from his cell in the convent of San Francisco. Mex., Rel. Sum., 15.
- ↑ In 1622 the value of these supplies was nine hundred thousand dollars, and in the following year two thirds of that amount. Mex., Rel. del Estad., 5.
- ↑ Gelves had been told that it would be impossible to recover money turned into the treasury in partial payment of taxes. On investigation it was found that there was nearly a quarter of a million of dollars thus owing, some of it since 1598, and of this amount about one half was recovered. Mex., Rel. del Estad., 4.
