Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/180

164 closely watched and quickly checked. To this duty Xuares not immediately address himself, and the result was that the oidores, the alcaldes, and all who administered justice, at once put themselves up to auction and sold their services, their favors, or their decisions to the highest bidder. Disorder reigned in every department, in the year following the arrival of Xuares; and even the royal revenues, which hitherto had generally remained sacred, were squandered or secreted by the persons to whose care and fidelity their collection was intrusted. The limitations which we have already seen were placed upon a viceroy's power in the time of Velasco, now tied the hands of Xuares. He could not dismiss or even suspend the defrauders of the revenue or the public wretches who prostituted their official power for gold. Nor was he, probably, unwilling to be deprived of a dangerous right which would have placed him in direct hostility to the army of speculators and jobbers. And yet it was necessary for the preservation of the colony that these evils should be quickly abated. In this political strait, concealing his intentions from the viceroyal court, he applied to Philip to send a Visitador with ample powers to readjust the disorganized realm.

The commerce of New Spain had augmented astonishingly within a few years. Vera Cruz and Acapulco had become splendid emporiums of wealth and trade. The east and the west poured their people into Mexico through these cities; and, in the capital, some of the most distinguished merchants of Europe, Asia, and Africa met every year, midway between Spain and China, to transact business and exchange opinions upon the growing facilities of an extended commerce. Peru and Mexico furnished the precious metals which were always so greedily demanded by the east. In 1581, Philip II., in view of this state of things in his colony, issued a royal order for the establishment in Mexico for a Tribunal de Consulado, though, it was not, in fact, actually put in effective operation until the year 1593, under the administration of Velasco the Second. In the midsummer of 1582, the viceroy expired, probably of mingled anxiety and old age; and it was well for Mexico that he passed so rapidly from a stage in whose delicate drama, his years and his abilities altogether unfitted him to play so conspicuous a part.