242 GALVEZ VISITADOR REFORMS TOBACCO MONOPOLY. 



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 em- 

 ployments. His extraordinary talents and remarkable industry 

 enabled him to comprehend at once, and search into, all the tribu- 

 nals 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 sus- 

 pended 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 re- 

 ceived 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 in- 

 come upon the unrestrained production and manufacture of this 

 article. Thousands of the poorer classes were engaged in its pre- 

 paration 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 con- 

 sequently this project of the visitador gave reasonable cause for dis- 

 satisfaction 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 Audi- 

 encia of Manilla, Don Jos6 Areche, was ordered officially to ex- 

 amine into the executive conduct of the Marques de Cruillas who 



