royal Audiencia there are brought and considered suits and causes for
small amounts among the natives of these islands, in which they incur
heavy costs, whereby they receive great injury and vexation: therefore,
they ordered, and they did so order, that no prosecuting attorney of
this royal Audiencia shall bring therein a new suit or petition for
an Indian, without first and foremost bringing it before this royal
Audiencia, or before the auditor for the week, in order that the latter
may determine whether the suit be a proper one--under a penalty of a
fine of six pesos of common gold, immediately upon the conviction of
anyone who may disobey this decree; one-third to go to the receiver of
fines, another third to the royal hospital, and the other third to the
poor in the prison. By this act they so declared ordered, and decreed.

Before me:

_Pedro Hurtado Desquibel_




_An act decreeing that the royal officials, in the sale of gold and
other goods, from the royal exchequer, see that it be done for cash,
and not auctioned to creditors of the exchequer, in order that the
latter may receive their money_.

In the city of Manila, on the seventh of January, one thousand five
hundred and ninety-nine, the president and auditors of the royal
Audiencia of the Philipinas Islands declared that, whereas on account
of his Majesty's royal exchequer of these islands being, as it now is,
embarrassed with many debts, it cannot succeed in paying its creditors