Throughout this detailed study of the judicial and administrative machinery of a Spanish American colony, the principal difficulty is to say where, in the Indies, real authority lay. This astonishing Empire displayed in the sixteenth century almost all the obvious weaknesses which a colonial empire can display. Its population—its quarrelsome and litigious Spanish settlers, its teeming Indians, many still unsubdued, its sullen and mutinous negro slaves—made an explosive mixture. It was beset by covetous enemies. It was governed by professional judges and officials responsible only to the Spanish Crown. It was separated from Spain by three thousand miles of ocean, a gap bridged only by the slow passage of infrequent convoys—rarely more than once a year and sometimes less frequently. All the circumstances conspired to make communications hazardous as well as slow. The ships were unhandy, overloaded, and overcrowded. The sailing-masters were often incompetent and usually subject to the orders of soldiers who knew little of the sea. The convoy lanes were beset with privateers and pirates and the convoy system itself imposed delay.

The most obvious policy in these conditions would apparently be to create a strong colonial government which could make rapid decisions and enforce them on the spot. On the contrary, the whole administrative system was devised deliberately to prevent the growth of such a government. The Spanish Crown never fully trusted its servants. Reference to Spain, with all its delays and uncertainties, was consistently encouraged. All important decisions were made in Spain. Naturally at such long range it was difficult to secure the prompt enforcement of royal decisions.