-"Queriendo entender muy de
raizo todo lo que pasaba, como Principe tan zeloso que era de las
cosas de la religion." Hist. de Don Pedro Gasca, Ms.]
Gasca accepted the important mission now tendered to him without
hesitation; and, repairing to Madrid, received the instructions
of the government as to the course to be pursued. They were
expressed in the most benign and conciliatory tone, perfectly in
accordance with the suggestions of his own benevolent temper. *10
But, while he commended the tone of the instructions, he
considered the powers with which he was to be intrusted as wholly
incompetent to their object. They were conceived in the jealous
spirit with which the Spanish government usually limited the
authority of its great colonial officers, whose distance from
home gave peculiar cause for distrust. On every strange and
unexpected emergency, Gasca saw that he should be obliged to send
back for instructions. This must cause delay, where promptitude
was essential to success. The Court, moreover, as he represented
to the council, was, from its remoteness from the scene of
action, utterly incompetent to pronounce as to the expediency of
the measures to be pursued. Some one should be sent out in whom
the king could implicitly confide, and who should be invested
with powers competent to every emergency; powers not merely to
decide on what was best, but to carry that decision into
execution; and he boldly demanded that he should go not only as
the representative of the sovereign, but clothed with all the
authority of the sovereign himself.
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