decree.
Let it be transmitted to the office of my superior government in charge of Don José Gorraez, so that, together with the other prior proceedings, it may be presented to the board ordered to meet on Thursday, the 30th instant. Bucareli.
[A translation of the following junta and decreto will be found at pp. 426–429 of the Transcript, pars. 9 and 10.]
The foregoing agrees with its original, which I transmitted to the office of the secretary of his excellency, viceroy of this Kingdom, Don Antonio Maria, to whom I respectfully submit, and in order that the reverend father superior of the college of propaganda fide of San Francisco of this court may be notified; in accordance with the command of the superior decree above set forth I issue this in Mexico on May 12, 1772.
(Id., pp. 186–195.)
[Page 364]comment upon the pious fund of the missions.
Before proceeding I can not do less (although briefly) than invite attention to the remarks of Don Fernando Mangino, the director general of church revenues relating to the Pious Fund, which were brought to light upon the departure and expulsion of the Jesuits, inasmuch as in the twenty-eighth chapter of the first part there appears a report which he made to the reverend father superior of our college of San Fernando concerning the funds which he found, sending him a copy of an anonymous paper which came into my possession while I was in California, and which appears in its proper place in this volume. Upon comparing it (the paper) with the statement of his excellency, the director, I find some discrepancies, and in order that the two papers may not seem inconsistent to anyone reading them state the facts bearing on subject.
The anonymous paper reads as follows:
That the total amount in charity given by the benefactors to guarantee the salaries of the missionary fathers is $178,000.
And the director, although he does not state the amount of alms, says that they are included in the estates and in the sums loaned by the Pious Fund to different colleges. According to the reports of the director and the anonymous paper, the loans amount to $126,600, which through the investments of the Jesuit fathers yielded annually $4,078, together with the $1,000 yielded from the $20,000 which was received as a legacy after the expulsion of the fathers, and invested at 5 per cent brought the annual interest up to $5,078, in addition to the $15,618 produced from the cultivation of the estates, it is clearly seen that the Pious Fund has a net income every year of twenty thousand six hundred and ninety-six dollars, five reals, eight grains, with the obligation of paying each of the salaries of the twenty-six Dominican missionaries of old California, which, at the rate of three hundred and fifty dollars each, amounts to $9,100, as well as the salaries of the fathers in charge of the five missions of Monterey at $800 per annum and the double rations of the ten missionaries and three other assistants, which cost every year $5,771, 3 reals, and 6 grains. Upon deducting these sums from the net income it is seen that (except for any accident or other extraordinary expense which may occur) there remain $5,817, 2 reals, and 2 grains, and out of this it seems to be necessary to pay the officers who manage the fund. As he states, there is only paid to him as director $600, to the accountant $300, and to a secretary $100, amounting to $1,000 yearly.
Again, the director says, that at the expulsion of the fathers there was found in money the sum of $92,000, while in the anonymous paper the amount is placed at $400 more in favor of the pious work. Without doubt it will be found that at the time of drawing up the paper there was this additional sum, and that before delivering it to the control of said director it was expended in the needs of the missions or in. settling some outstanding account.
Thirdly. He says that an invoice of goods was found which appraised them at $27,250, 6 reals, which agrees with the statement in the anonymous paper, and which were sold at an advance of their valuation. Thus there was placed in the treasury $28,220, 5 reals. This, together with the ready money, amounts to $120,220, 5 reals. This sum, together with the proceeds from the estates during the period of [Page 365] almost six years which had elapsed since the expulsion (amounting, according to the statement of the director, to $110,312, 3 reals, 5 grains), brings the funds up to $230,533, 5 grains.
From this Pious Fund, since the expulsion of the fathers, there has been paid, in transporting the missionaries to California and for their daily supplies and salaries, $78,211, 4 reals, 3 grains.
There has also been paid, says the director, by order of the decree of their excellencies, the viceroys Marquis de Croix and Señor Bucareli, the sum of $136,184, 3 reals, 9½ grains for the purposes expressed therein—to fit out the warehouse of the city of Loreto for the department of San Bias, costs of the expeditions on land and sea on account of harbors of San Diego and Monterey, and for the Indians of California.
For these latter I do not know whether there has been anything more distributed than the clothing received at Loreto in the year 1767, which, according to the invoice sent me by the inspector-general, was valued at $8,500, as is stated in Part I, Chapter XV, and therefore all the remaining sum was employed for the purposes stated in the said decrees.
The director concludes by stating that at that day, July 19, 1773, there was in the funds’ treasury, net, $26,137, 11½ grains, from which the officers of the colleges of Pueblo and Querétero had to be paid $4,782, 4 reals, 9 grains for a bill of clothing for the employees of the estates, and this account settled there would remain $21,354, 4 reals, 2½ grains. Added to this $8,783, 1 real, 2 grains, which the colleges owed the fund as interest, and which when collected will bring the account up to $30,037, 5 reals, 4½ grains, from which sum, according to the decision of his excellency in the royal assembly, there must be paid promptly for the first time $10,000 and the annual salaries of all the missionaries in new as well as in old California.
In the said anonymous paper it is stated that the valuation of the invoice of goods found in the warehouse of Loreto of the Californias was fixed at $79,307, 3 reals.
And the reason that the director does not give account of this is undoubtedly because it did not come under his control; but it is evident that these goods and effects were received by the governor, D. Gaspar de Portola, who was so commissioned, and from which the soldiers of the peninsula were being paid at the time of the arrival of the inspector-general, when the control of the warehouse was handed over to Don Francisco Trillo y Bermudez, who was named commissioner of warehouses, and who was continuing in the same manner to pay the soldiers from the goods and effects and supplying the missions from the amount due them on account of the warehouse of Loreto, and against the same goods the said Commissioner Trillo made out a bill amounting to about $20,000 for the department of southern California in order to put in operation another warehouse for that department.
Of all this the director was ignorant, who, if he had known it, would have reported it to his excellency, so that the said sums might be returned to the Pious Fund, since they made up the deficiency due on account of the salary of the soldiers, which, during those years, had not been paid, as he says in his report that he has asked that the sums taken from the fund by orders of other departments, chargeable by right with such expenses, be repaid.
On account of what has been said, it seems to me that the said papers, viz, the unsigned paper and that of the director-general, coincide. (Id., pp. 597–601.)
[Page 366][For the substance of the extract from the work entitled “History of the Society of Jesus in Spain,” which Father Franqisco Javier Alegre was writing at the time of the expulsion (three volumes, Mexico, J. M. Lara, 1842), see Transcript, page 109, where a translation from the French is given.]