1766.] SCHEMES OF THE COURT OF SPAIN. 105 



the Council of Castile, and Galvez, a high officer of the Council of 

 the Indies, embraced reforms in every part of the administration, 

 particularly in the finances of the American dominions, the shameful 

 abuses in which had been laid open by Ulloa, in his celebrated 

 report* presented to the government in 1747. It was likewise 

 intended that the vacant coasts and islands, adjacent to the settled 

 provinces in the New World, should be examined and occupied by 

 colonies and garrisons sufficient for their protection against the 

 attempts of foreign nations to seize them, or at least to secure 

 to Spain the semblance of a right of sovereignty over them, on 

 the ground of prior discovery and settlement. The deliberations 

 with regard to this system seem to have been conducted with the 

 utmost secrecy by the Spanish government ; and no idea was enter- 

 tained of its objects in 1766, when Galvez, the officer above named, 

 arrived in Mexico as visitador,-\ with full powers to carry the new 

 measures into effect in that part of the dominions. 



This Galvez was a man of the most violent and tyrannical dis- 

 position. His arbitrary proceedings in financial matters occasioned 

 an insurrection in the province of Puebla, which nothing but the 

 firmness and good sense of the marquis de Croix, then viceroy of 

 Mexico, prevented from becoming general. He then engaged in an 

 expensive war against the Indians in Sonora and Sinaloa, the coun- 

 tries bordering on the eastern side of the Californian Gulf, from 

 which very little either of honor or of profit accrued to Spain ; and 

 a portion of his impetuosity having thus escaped, he turned his 

 attention towards California, where he was charged with an im- 

 portant duty. 



The sovereigns of continental Europe and their ministers had 

 long been impatient and jealous of the influence enjoyed, or sup- 



* Noticias seer etas de America — Secret information respecting the internal adminis- 

 tration of Peru, Quito, Chile, and New Granada, collected by Don Antonio de Ulloa 

 and Don Jorge Juan, who had been sent for that purpose by the Spanish govern- 

 ment in 1740 ; the only work from which it is possible to obtain a true picture of the 

 state of those countries, and of the abuses and corruptions practised in them by the 

 Spanish officials. It was first published at London, in 1826, by some political refugees 

 of that nation, who had obtained possession of the original manuscript. 



t " This title is given to persons charged by the court of Madrid to make inquiries 

 as to the state of the colonies. Their visits, in general, produce no other effects than 

 to balance for a time the authorities of the viceroy and the audiencia, [powers almost 

 always at variance,] and to cause an infinite number of memorials, petitions, and 

 plans, to be devised and presented, and some new tax to be imposed. The people of 

 the country look for the arrival of a visitaddr with the same impatience with which 

 they afterwards desire his departure." — Humboldt's Essay on Mexico, book ii. 

 chapter vii. 



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