2. Attention should be directed to the following items: The exemptions from tribute which are usually granted to the villages in the cases for which the laws provide; the amount of what is not collected; that which is lost through the failure of the officials to render account, and through the omissions of the royal officials to collect as they should; the salaries which are paid to the said royal officials and to the subordinates of the established accountancy, mainly for the accounts and collections of the royal revenue in the provinces; the costs of transporting the proceeds of the said tributes to this capital; the losses of the vessels which convey the said goods, commodities, or products in which the said tributes are levied, according to the different production of the provinces; the pay of workmen [Tag., bantayes], and other petty expenses which are paid from the royal revenue in each province; the cost of the vessels which go out to cruise against the Moros, in the defense of the said provinces; and many other expenses, to ascertain and compute which would require tedious labor. But, as this report aims to show how much the king receives from the Indians and what he spends on their account, the aforesaid general computations are convincing that the royal treasury spends in these islands much more than what they produce; and that the ecclesiastical estate—or, to speak more accurately, the religious orders—profit by and receive almost all the proceeds from the tributes.
3. On this account the royal situado has been necessary in these islands, in order to pay the following expenses: the salaries of the governors, the ministers of the royal Audiencia, and their subordinates; the officials of the royal treasury; the soldiers in the garrisons of Manila and Cavite, with all their followers; the arsenal of Cavite; and numberless expenses which have grown since the retrenchments which were decreed by Señor Cruzat. And as the situado and the income-producing monopolies are not sufficient for all the said expenditure, the islands have been and will be in the most wretched condition, and in the utmost danger of being ruined, unless some remedy be applied.
STATEMENT IV
What the curas and ministers receive from the Indians
1. On account of the three reals which each whole tribute pays to the curas and ministers for the feasts of Corpus [Christi], the patron saint, and the monument at Holy Thursday, they receive from the two hundred thousand tributes the amount of seventy-five thousand pesos; and [therein] are not included the heads of barangay, the officials of the villages, and other persons exempt from tribute, who also pay the said three reals.
2. As for the value of the casual fees and parochial dues, although it is the general opinion that those same ministers of doctrinas regulate these at one peso for each tribute, it is estimated that from this source are received only one hundred and seventy thousand, four hundred pesos.
The total of these sums is 245,400 pesos.
Summary
| Pesos | tomins | |
| The ecclesiastical estate receives from the king, as in statement ii | 187,229 | 6 |
| Also from the Indians the aforesaid sum of | 245,400 | |
| Total amount | 432,629 | 6 |