Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/545

Rh crown in corregimientos suffered greatly from the harshness of the corregidores.

Bishop Zárate of Oajaca took the same ground and maintained that one small town, having a variety of occupations for the Indians, would support a Spanish family; but it took four of them to pay the salary of a corregidor. Even so; the inhabitants of that one town were rarely at liberty to work for themselves, nearly all their time and labor being claimed by their master. This was not the case in corregimientos, where nothing was required but the payment of the royal tribute. The worthy bishop, in his zeal to convince the visitador that new laws were needless, went so far as to accuse the Indians of ill treating their masters, and that sometimes native alguaciles would arrest Spaniards and bring them bound to the audiencia.

Bishop Maraver of New Galicia called his native flock "a beastly, ungrateful, lying set, audacious and insolent;" but reflecting on the causes of the Mixton war, he approved of the Jaws prohibiting the enslaving of Indians, and of reducing them to captivity or servitude, unless for rebellion; otherwise they might be emboldened to revolt. He further recommended that, except the cities and some principal towns, all the rest of the land should be divided among Spanish conquerors and settlers, a measure no less impolitic than unjust.

Indeed, there were many among the clergy opposed