Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/258

242 person charged with this important task,—Don Jose Galvez,—was endowed with unlimited authority entirely independent of the viceroy, and he executed his office with severity. He arrested high officers of the government, and deprived them of their employments. His extraordinary talents and remarkable industry enabled him to comprehend at once, and search into, all the tribunals and governmental posts of this vast kingdom. In Vera Cruz he removed the royal accountants from their offices. In Puebla, and in Mexico, he turned out the superintendents of customs, and throughout the country, all who were employed in public civil stations, feared, from day to day, that they would either be suspended or deposed. Whilst Galvez attended, thus, to the faithful discharge of duty by the officers of the crown, he labored, also, to increase the royal revenue. Until that period the cultivation of tobacco had been free, but Galvez determined to control it, as in Spain, and made its preparation and sale a monopoly for the government. Gladly as his other alterations and reforms were received by the people, this interference with one of their cherished luxuries was well nigh the cause of serious difficulties. In the city of Cordova, and in many neighboring places, some of the wealthiest and most influential colonists depended for their fortunes and income upon the unrestrained production and manufacture of this article. Thousands of the poorer classes were engaged in its preparation for market, while in all the cities, towns, and villages, there were multitudes who lived by selling it to the people. Every man, and perhaps every woman, in Mexico, used tobacco, and consequently this project of the visitador gave reasonable cause for dissatisfaction to the whole of New Spain. Nevertheless, the firmness of Galvez, the good temper of the Mexicans, and their habitual submission to authority, overcame all difficulties. The inhabitants of Cordova were not deprived of all control over the cultivation of tobacco, and were simply obliged to sell it to the officers of the king at a definite price, whilst these personages were ordered to continue supplying the families of the poor, with materials for the manufacture of cigars; and by this device the public treasury was enabled to derive an important revenue from an article of universal consumption. Thus the visitador appears to have employed his authority in the reform of the colony and the augmentation of the royal revenue, without much attention to the actual viceroy, who was displaced in 1766. The fiscal or attorney general of the Audiencia of Manilla, Don José Aréché, was ordered officially to examine into the executive conduct of the Marques de Cruillas who