[not inclusive]
| Years | Causes |
| 1832 | 75 |
| 1833 | 83 |
| 1834 | 43 |
| 1835 | 102 |
| 1836 | 108 |
| 411 |
Report of the criminal causes sentenced between the years 1836–1842 [not inclusive]
Crimes
| Years | Rebellion or Conspiracy | Murder | Robbery Theft and Imposition | Incendiarism | Mobs and Lampoons | Falsehood and Perjury | Immorality and Scandal | Wounds and rough usage | Total no. of Causes |
| 1837 | 43 | 54 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 5 | 114 | ||
| 1838 | 108 | 145 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 52 | 60 | 382 | |
| 1839 | 74 | 149 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 45 | 41 | 317 | |
| 1840 | 2 | 83 | 106 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 41 | 54 | 295 |
| 1841 | 131 | 216 | 12 | 6 | 5 | 66 | 67 | 499 | |
| 2 | 439 | 670 | 26 | 16 | 19 | 212 | 227 | 1609 |
Penalties
| [Years] | Imprisonment | Deprivation of Office and othercorrectives | Total no. of Sentences | |
| [1837] | 6 | 99 | 17 | 122 |
| 1838] | 6 | 140 | 169 | 313 |
| 1839] | 6 | 192 | 46 | 244 |
| 1840] | 7 | 131 | 19 | 157 |
| [1841] | 3 | 173 | 77 | 253 |
| 28 | 735 | 328 | 1089 | |
| Total number of causes sentenced in the first five years | 411 |
| Idem | 1607 |
| Increasing the latter | 1196 |
[Here follows a report in tabular form showing the number of causes in each province for the years 1840 and 1841. This table is compiled at least in part from the guide of Manila for the year 1840; the population of each province being taken therefrom. Thirty-three provinces are enumerated. The total number of causes for 1840 was 295, and for 1841, 499.]
The first thing which arrests the attention in these reports is the increase of crime. The fiscal, whom I questioned in regard to this matter, told me that now many causes are elevated to process which were before finished in the interior courts, and that during these latter years many old causes had been sentenced. This may be true, but in regard to the accumulation of back cases that have been sentenced, I believe that that can only be understood from the year 1838, or even from that of 1839, because of the lack of judges in which the court found itself in 1837. No matter how it is considered, the increase is palpable, for the causes alone for murder of last year amount to more than all those of any of the years of the first five years, and it is incredible that at that time they neglected to try people for homicide, although they did dissimulate in regard to lesser crimes. The second thing which arrests the attention is the tendency to theft, since the greater part of the homicides have been committed by robbers, and further one sees a great multitude of causes for theft. For among those two kinds of crime are found two-thirds of all kinds of criminality. This is a matter well worthy of reflection in a country where the means of existence can be procured so readily. The third [thing that arrests the attention] is the mildness of the sentences. In the last five years, when there were 439 homicides, only 28 have ascended the scaffold, one-third of those tried have been set at liberty, and 328 condemned to light punishment. One would not believe that those treated with so great mercy are (at least always) criminals for insignificant faults. A man of the village of Narbakan was tried in the year 1840 for having begotten children twice by his daughter, the second time that having been done by means of assaulting her with a dagger. The attorney asked for ten years of imprisonment, but the Audiencia did not impose any penalty and did not even condemn him to the costs, nor did it take the measure in honor of public morality of causing them to separate, but allowed them to live together as they are still doing. At the beginning of the same year, 1840, Mariano San Gerónimo, a servant from youth to a Spanish tailor called Garcia, stole one hundred pesos fuertes from his master, and another hundred from Captain Castejon, adjutant of the captain-general of the islands, who was living in his house; by extracting them from the trunks of each one. That of the captain-general he opened with the key which the latter’s own assistant gave him. The greater part of the money was delivered to that assistant, his accomplice; the rest was lost at play. This deed served the defender of San Geronimo, Don Agustin Ruiz de Santayana, to petition his acquittal, alleging in his favor the incapacity and irreflection which that individual had shown with the said thief. Both the criminal and his accomplice confessed, and no obstacle was presented to substantiate this verbal process. However, it lasted for more than one year. They troubled the master Garcia so much with notifications and accounts of the maintenance of the prisoner that at last he refused to have anything more to do with the matter, and abandoned the charge. The alcalde-in-ordinary sentenced San Gerónimo to six months’ imprisonment. When the Audiencia examined that clause, March 31, 1841, it ordered the prisoner to be liberated. In Inglaterra, that violator of his own daughter, and the domestic thief would have been given the death sentence on the gallows.