According to the rule of collegial responsibility, this delinquency of the accountant’s was just as much the fault of the treasurer. Most of the lapses mentioned involved duties of the steward, and now that the treasurer had been retitled “treasurer-steward” it might have been assumed that he would take care of them. Francisco Menendez Marquez shrugged off the responsibility, saying that since the office of steward had been added to his duties without any allowance for an assistant, he had more work than he could do without keeping the accountant’s books. The crown’s reaction to this impertinence was oddly mild: whatever it cost to put the books in order was to come from the royal officials’ salaries or property, and not be a charge on the treasury. [Note 48: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] Before receiving this letter, Francisco had already named another relative, Juan Ruiz Mejia, to the office of steward at a salary of 200,000 maravedis—a low sum, he said, since the steward had to hire assistants. The treasurer argued that it was time for a new royal office: “The separation of this steward’s office is very much in Your Majesty’s service, so the treasurer can be free to attend to the balancing and settlement of the other business of his office and that of the counting house. For that matter, the place of factor-overseer was most important to the service of Your Majesty… in this presidio. The governor who advised Your Majesty otherwise could have had no other motive than less opposition to his money making.” The crown was unmoved. The treasurer-steward might divide his own salary with an assistant if he liked, and the king stood disposed to honor and reward his servants, but no new royal offices were to be created. [Note 49: Francisco Menendez Marquez and Pedro Benedit Horruytiner 5/17/1646] The pleas of later treasurers received the same response. Pedro Benedit Horruytiner, overwhelmed by the disorder in the counting house, asked for a formal investigation (visita de caja) and audit. His request came inopportunely. The crown had just made a pronouncement about the general uselessness of such investigations and ordered that they be curtailed. In no case was the salary of a visiting auditor to be charged to the royal exchequer; it must come out of fines and condemnations. [Note 50: Recop 6/9/1644] Perhaps because the culprits at the Florida treasury had no property worth the condemning, Santa Cruz did not find the time to visit St. Augustine in the 1640s. Instead he proposed a remedy for the treasury’s problems, which he thought of in terms of the situado. It should not be necessary for the Florida governor and royal officials to send a situador to Mexico City. The officials of that coffer should deliver the Florida subsidy to the treasury at Vera Cruz to be sent, registered on one of the flagships of the fleet, to the officials in Havana. There were merchants in Vera Cruz and Havana who would supply the Florida presidio with provisions and clothing at reasonable prices and at their own risk. Comments on this proposal by the fiscal of the Council show that the officials in Havana were trusted no more than those in St. Augustine. The fiscal thought it would be as well to contract for presidio clothing. As for collecting and transporting the situado. The governor of Florida should farm out the position of situador to the lowest bidder and let him worry about how to get it to St. Augustine. In accordance with this laissez-faire attitude, Governor Salazar Vallecilla awarded the mission of situado collection to four vecinos of Vera Cruz. ...The auditor continued to claim that Florida’s problems stemmed from situado mismanagement at every step, from the choice of situador, through the bribes in Mexico City, to the kind of transportation to Florida. He pressed one of his earlier solutions. A fourth of the situado for Florida could be saved if it were brought to Cuba by the general of the galleons and turned over to the royal officials in Havana, who could either send it on or let the Florida officials come after it the way those of Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico did. The Council of the Indies again ignored the Cuban accountant’s efforts to have a greater say in the Florida subsidies. Its fiscal asked the viceroy to investigate the charges of bribery and told the auditor to go on with his collections. [Note 54: Pedro Beltran de Santa Cruz, Havana 11/20/1655, with comment by the fiscal of the council 7/5/1657.]