_An act decreeing that the evidence that the clerk of court cannot
take be entrusted by commission of this royal Audiencia, and assigned
by the members thereof, to the notarial commissioner of examinations._
In the city of Manila, on the twenty-first day of the month of January,
one thousand five hundred and ninety-nine, the president and auditors
of the royal Audiencia and Chancillería of the Philipinas Islands
declared that, whereas, conformably to the royal ordinances, all
the evidences in suits and cases pending in this royal Audiencia,
are committed to the clerk of court; and whereas, on account of the
volume of business incumbent upon his said office, he cannot receive
them all, and commits them to the notaries: therefore, because the
aforesaid taking of evidence cannot be done unless authorized by this
royal Audiencia, under the direction of its members, they ordered,
and they did so order, that in regard to evidence which the said clerk
of court cannot take immediately in interrogatories and petitions,
by virtue of which such evidence must be taken, an act be passed by
which his duty may be committed by this royal Audiencia and assigned by
its members to a commissioner of examinations, the latter to receive
and examine the said evidence, and to take the oaths of witnesses
thereto. The said commissioner shall give a receipt to the parties for
the fees which he shall collect from them for said evidence, and at
the foot of the evidence he shall in like manner sign his name. The
clerk of court shall not receive any fees for such evidence; and
under no circumstances whatever shall the said evidence be taken in
any other way, except as herein stated, under penalty that evidence
given in any other way shall be null and void; and the commissioner
receiving it shall incur a penalty of one hundred pesos of common gold,
as soon as he shall have been judged guilty, the fine to be applied
in equal parts to the royal treasury and court-rooms of this royal
Audiencia. By this act they so declared, ordered, and decreed.