[17] A marginal note in the text adds to this name “y Ossorio.” [↑]
[18] Spanish recopiladas, apparently meaning that these decrees have been included in the official Recopilación de leyes de Indias. [↑]
[19] “The censos yield only five per cent.” Censo refers to annuities in some form or other, and especially to “quit-rent;” it also sometimes means “interest,” which is a derivative and special meaning; in a general sense, it may be rendered “income.”—James A. LeRoy.
Dominguez (Diccionario nacional) enumerates several different kinds of censo (which he defines as “a contract by which one person sells and another buys the right to receive a certain annual pension”); the statements in our text relative to the status of houses and lands in and near Manila would indicate the probability that the censos there mentioned were what Dominguez calls consignativos, “in which a certain amount is received for which must be given in return an annual pension, giving security for the said sum or capital with rent-producing property or real estate.” He instances as a censo reservativo the arrangement made by Joseph with the Egyptians ([Genesis, ch. xlvii]), by which, after all the land in that country had become the property of the crown, the people received back their fields on condition of their paying to the king the fifth part of their produce, which constituted an annual pension or quit-rent (censo). The same word may also mean “census” and “tax-register;” Dominguez states that when the Spaniards conquered America they found the tax-register established in Mexico and Peru.—Eds. [↑]
[20] A marginal note at the beginning of each of these letters states its authorship; but that on the Jesuit provincial’s letter adds, “with very well-grounded arguments” (muy fundamentalmente). [↑]
[21] Spanish, theatro; that is, the personnel of the Spanish body of citizens. [↑]
[22] Cf. the prices paid somewhat later for the wine monopoly, in the first document of VOL. XLVI. [↑]
[23] Spanish, trage de golilla. The golilla was “a certain ornament made of pasteboard faced with taffeta or other black fabric, which surrounded the neck, over which was placed a pleating of gauze or other white stuff, which was starched. At present this decoration is used only by the togated officials and others attached to the courts of justice.” (Dominguez.) [↑]
[24] For notices of this missionary, see VOL. XXXVI, pp. 218, 219. Calderon’s memorial is more fully described post, near the end of sec. 94 of the Extracto. [↑]
[25] See account of Quiroga’s proceedings in VOL. XXX, pp. 50–52, 85–88, 91, 105. [↑]