You shall exercise great care not to send judges on special commissions except in necessary and unavoidable cases, in order to avoid the harm that they generally cause to communities. This must be avoided there, chiefly because that community has been settled so recently. It is advisable to act with greater caution in this matter, as in everything else, for the better conservation and increase of that community.
You shall exercise the same and greater care to maintain thorough harmony and unity with all the ecclesiastical dignitaries, both secular and regular, and with all the ecclesiastical estate; for many consequences, very important for the general and individual good of all that land and all those provinces, can be expected from the good example resulting from this. At Toledo, on the twenty-fifth day of May, in the year one thousand five hundred and ninety-six.
I The King
By order of the king, our sovereign:
Joan de Ybarra
Signed by the president and members of the Council. Page 245
[1] Contract for disposing of goods by wholesale.
[2] As early as 1550 a decree was issued that, “when possible, schools should be established for the instruction of the Indians in the Castilian language” (Recop. leyes Indias, lib. vi, tit. i, ley xviii); but apparently this was not fully enforced.
[3] See the document here referred to, at the end of Vol. V, and completed in Vol. VI.