The Council, on examining in the hall of justice the [records of the] official visit which Licentiate Don Francisco de Rojas made of the Audiencia and royal officials of the Filipinas Islands; and having examined therein charge three made against the said royal officials regarding the general account for each year to be taken from them by an auditor of accounts [contador de cuentas]—namely, that they have not given him sworn statements; and, in particular, that they refused to give a sworn statement of the amounts that ought to be collected, and of other things which the auditor of accounts ordered—commanded me to make a comprehensive report from what should appear in the records of the visit, and in the other papers resting in the secretary’s office concerning the matter; so that, having been examined in the government where they are considering whether it is advisable or not to appoint one for life to that office of auditor of accounts in those islands, and with what conditions, the advisable measures may be taken. In fulfilment of that command, having attended to that matter as was fitting, I have drawn up this paper, in which, as briefly as possible, and as was required by the gravity of the matter, I have compiled what treats of it, dividing it for greater distinctness and clearness into the four following points.
Point 1. Of the beginnings in those islands of the office of auditor of accounts, and of the variations and changes that have occurred in it, down to the present.
Point 2. Of the litigations that have occurred between the royal officials and the auditor of accounts, in regard to the manner of exercising the duties of that office.
Point 3. Of the disadvantages, as seen from the records of the visit, that arise from the existence of that office in those islands.
Point 4. Of the advantages that are found for the existence of that office in those islands, and what has been enacted and decreed in the Council regarding it, up to the present.
[Point 1]
Book 7, folio 284, verso. In regard to the first point, I presuppose that, as appears from the certification of the government notary of those islands, there is not in it the particular reason of an order from his Majesty for the governor of the islands to appoint an auditor of accounts, as all the governors have done for many years past. What appears is, that in years preceding that of 1595 (although it does not appear when this practice was first inaugurated), the governor made an annual appointment of an auditor of accounts, in order that he might audit the general account of the royal officials for the preceding year—as is mentioned by the governor Don Luis Perez Dasmariñas in the first perpetual title that he gave as auditor of accounts, in the year 595, to Bartolome de Renteria, who was the first to whom it was given with this title. The governor says the following in regard to it:
“Inasmuch as his Majesty has ordered the governor of these islands to audit the account of the royal official judges of the islands annually, by means of an auditor of accounts who should be appointed for that purpose, and to send each year the report that he should make to his Majesty, as has been done; and inasmuch as I am informed of, and see, the disadvantages and dangers that result to the royal estate of having the governors appoint, as is their custom, a new auditor [contador] for the said accounts each year, in order to give him that profit that is due him for other services: there is no one in that calling as competent as is necessary. Thence it results that the said accounts are not audited with the clearness and completeness that is advisable, or in the good order and style in which an expert auditor would leave them, and who would learn by experience and by special acquaintance from the times when he should have audited them before, or by his knowledge through the condition of other accounts that he might have audited, the condition of the royal estate. Such a person will try to understand the royal treasury thoroughly, while he who audits the accounts once will do it more carelessly. All that carelessness would cease, as would many other disadvantages which experience has shown; and we could achieve the results that are desirable for the service of his Majesty by appointing an auditor to audit the accounts every year, without changing or removing him for another, but allowing him to hold the said office continuously.”
The title continues with the appointment of the said Bartolome de Renteria as auditor of accounts, as long as it may be the will of his Majesty and of the said governor in his royal name; and orders that the uncertainties, additions, and results [resultas] that shall arise be communicated to the said governor, so that they may be concluded and executed with his decision. The title assigns him a salary of five hundred pesos of common gold, payable from the royal treasury.
Book 7, folio 235. His Majesty despatched a royal decree in the year 596, ordering the establishment of the Audiencia of the said islands. In that provision were inserted the ordinances pertaining to this point, namely, the sixty-seventh, the sixty-ninth, and the ninetieth.[1] They read as follows: