The revenue which supports the Filipinas Islands, which cannot be
replaced by any other, and which if it were properly established
and administered would yield incalculable advantages, is that from
tobacco. Three millions of inhabitants, all without exception of sex
or age consumers of that article--and for each one of them, on the
average, and at a very low estimate, can be set down a consumption of
four pesos [worth] a year--would produce an addition to the revenue
of twelve million pesos, which they would obtain from the land and
from their industries, in order to give at the same time a great
impulse to commerce. This is not a paradox, for the use of tobacco
is of so prime necessity for the Indians that the same calculation
can be made for that object that would be made for the use of bread
in España. [Bernaldez considers the injurious effects of enforcing
this monopoly in only a part of the islands--"although more than half
the population is today subject to the monopoly, its income is only
one-tenth of what, at a reasonable estimate, it ought to be"--and
those of its careless and negligent administration. He makes the
following suggestions:] That the collection of the tributes from
the Indians of Filipinas be made compulsory in money, as soon as the
colonial money can be placed in circulation in their provinces. That
the monopoly of tobacco in Filipinas be extended to all the [now]
exempt provinces, without exception; and the government there will
succeed much better in establishing it therein by sagacity than
by authority or force. That the examination and appraisal of the
leaf tobacco which the monopoly purchases from the growers be made
before a board which the government there shall appoint annually,
composed of officials from the capital who are most trustworthy and
intelligent in that branch of administration, such tobacco as proves
to be unfit for use being burned in their presence. That all the
tobacco which can be collected in Filipinas be conveyed to España, by
means of contracts with private persons for the freighting of ships;
and with it the amount which can be remitted from the [different]
branches of the royal exchequer, and the annual surplus of their funds.