Chap. VIII. DEPOPULATION OF THE COUNTRY. 123 



lie declares that he always sought to enforce these orders 

 from the day that he landed in Peru ; and words to the same 

 effect are to be found in the reports of most of the other 

 viceroys.^ 



But side by side with these evidences of the good inten- 

 tions of the Government, is the testimony of the viceroys 

 that then* efforts to comply with these beneficent orders, and 

 enforce these humane laws, were fi'uitless, and rendered of no 

 effect by the unworthiness of their subordinates ; and almost 

 all complain of the rapid depopulation of the country. In 

 1620 the Prince of Esquilache reported that " the arm of the 

 viceroy was not powerful against the negligence and mal- 

 administration of the corregidors ;" in 1681 the Count of 

 Castellar said that he had to correct and punish the excesses 

 both of the corregidors and the curas ; in 1697 the Duke of 

 La Palata speaks of the depopulation of the villages and 

 towns, caused by the forcible detention of the Indians to work 

 at the mines, in cloth and cotton workshops, and in farms ; 

 and another viceroy attributes the rapid depopulation of 

 the country to the same causes, and also to ch-ink, and 

 urges a closer supervision of the conduct of the corregidors 

 and curas. 



I have, in a former work, given a brief account of the 

 treatment of the IntUans, and of the way in which the laws 

 intended for their defence were evaded ; from the evidence 

 of the brothers UUoa, who were commissioned to make a 

 special and secret report on the subject to the King of >Spain 

 in 1740.^ I have since collected abundant testimony to the 

 same effect, printed and in manuscript, both at Madrid and 



' Especially in those of the Count of Indians. The proceedings, still in MS., 

 Alba de Liste" in 1660. In September naay be seen in the national library at 

 of that year tliis viceroy assembled a ' Lima. 



Junta, in obedience to an ordir from - Cuzco and Lima, chap, vii., from 

 Si>aiu, to consiUt respecting the in- the Nutkias Secretas of the Ulloas. 

 struction and good treatment of the 



