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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:

An act decreeing that the royal officials, in the sale of gold and other goods, from the royal exchequer, see that it he 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 what it thus owes them—which results from the fact that some of the said creditors, in order to have their accounts paid to them, present themselves at the royal auctions which are held for the sale of gold, cotton cloth, and other