HARQ VICEROY CORRUPTION OF ALCALDES. 257. 



panied by earthquakes, which swept the sea over the coast, and 

 caused great losses to the farmers and herdsmen who dwelt on the 

 neighboring lowlands. 



Nunez de Haro, Archbishop of Mexico, 

 L. Viceroy, ad interim, of New Spain. 

 1787. 



The appointment of this eminent prelate to the viceroyalty ad 

 interim by a royal order of 25th February, 1787, was perhaps one 

 of those strokes of policy by which the Spanish ministry strove to 

 reconcile and connect the ecclesiastical and civil unity of the 

 American empire. The sway of the archbishop, complimentary as 

 it was to himself and to the church, was exceedingly brief, for he 

 entered upon the government on the 8th of May and was super- 

 ceded by Flores on the 17th of August of the same year. New 

 Spain was undisturbed during his government ; and no event 

 is worthy of historical record in these brief annals of the country, 

 save the effort that was made to prohibit the repartimiento or sub- 

 division of the Indians among the agriculturists and miners by the 

 sub-delegados, who had succeeded the alcaldes mayores, in the per- 

 formance of this odious task. The conduct of the latter personages 

 had been extremely cruel to the natives. They either used their 

 power to oppress the Indians, or had trafficked in the dispensation 

 of justice by allowing the sufferers to purchase exemption from 

 punishment ; and it is related that in certain alcaldias mayores in 

 Oaxaca, the alcaldes had enriched themselves to the extent of more 

 than two hundred thousand dollars by these brutal exactions. In- 

 humanity like this, was severely denounced to the king by the 

 bishop Ortigoza, — who merited, according to Revilla-Gigedo, 

 the title of the Saint Paul of his day, — and the eloquent prelate 

 complained in behalf of his beloved Indians as vehemently as 

 Las Casas at an earlier period of this loathsome oppression. But 

 interest overcome the appeals of mercy in almost all instances 

 since the foundation of the American empire. The Spaniards re- 

 quired laborers. The ignorant and unarmed Indians of the south 

 and of the table lands, were docile or unorganized, and, although 

 the Spanish court and Council of the Indies seconded the viceroy's 

 zeal in attempting to suppress the cruelty of the planters and 

 miners, the unfortunate aborigines only experienced occasional 

 brief intervals of respite in the system of forced labor to which 

 they were devoted by their legal task-masters. 



