I am accustomed at times, for the sake of greater assurance, to refer to the Audiencia certain causes and matters that are of importance to your Majesty's service and the obligation of my office--some, to one of the auditors, who consults with me in them; and in some, according to their nature--to ask them for their opinions.

They are generally accustomed to excuse themselves from all of these, if they do not care to attend to them, and arguments or reason do not suffice for it.

I cannot tell how they are to be compelled to act if reason does not move them, or unless your Majesty be pleased to order a reform in this matter, with the orders that concern each one, and what is to be done both in the above and in the declaration of jurisdictions--concerning which I wrote to your Majesty quite fully in letters of last year.
[_Marginal note_: "Observe the ordinances according to the despatches that have been sent you regarding this."] 22d.

I have committed the inspection of this country--which your Majesty ordered to be made by one of the auditors for the consolation and relief of its miserable natives, and of which no memorandum exists as to when it must be made--to Doctor Don Alvaro de Mesa, as he is in better health and more suitable for that purpose than are his other associates.

Although he resisted (even saying that I could not appoint him), and even gave me other excuses, I think that he would do it after the conclusion of this despatch of ships, had not the commissions come for the residencias that your Majesty has entrusted to him.