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Restrictions for governors
Source: The Governorship of Spanish Florida #122
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In Florida all power rested with the governor, who personally bore all administrative responsibility. Except for the junta he did not share his authority, either with local officials or with administrators or administrative councils in other parts of the Indies. He was responsible to the king and the Council of the Indies in Spain, but they were 3,000 miles away. Isolated from his superiors, the governor was free to pursue an independent course, suited to the colonial environment and to his personal predilections. Still he could not proceed completely without restraint, according to his own whims or at his own discretion. Significant checks prevented unrestricted, arbitrary rule in Saint Augustine. General Checks on the Governor The most obvious limitation on the governor’s power was royal law, the orders-in-council passed down to the governor from the king. Past and current cedulas regulated the governor’s every activity, aiming in the final analysis at bringing him under the rigid control of his superiors in Spain. Ideally, the king and the Council of the Indies hoped to define and prescribe all gubernatorial policies and to dictate a course of action for every eventuality. They desired to set up a centralized administrative system with the king having the last word. To insure absolute conformity to the royal will, the king bound all colonial officials to the spirit and the letter of the law. In Florida, for example, the governor pledged three times in his inaugural oath to obey and to enforce royal decrees. Violation of this solemn obligation was treasonable. A second restrain grew out of the right of all Spanish colonists to lay their grievances directly before the king. All Floridians were free to expose cases of gubernatorial graft, fraud, peculation, favoritism, inclemency, cruelty, or nepotism and to point up administrative incompetence and corruption. This practice forced the governor to maintain at least a semblance of good government if he was to avoid being caught up in a bothersome probe of his administration, or worse, in his disgraceful removal. Failure to reckon with this fact of colonial life could and did have disastrous consequences for the indiscreet colonial administrator. [Note: For example, the extraordinary number of complains reaching Spain concerning Governor Francisco del Moral Sanchez’s conduct resulted in a secret investigation of his administration that paved the way for his ouster in 1737.] Of course few officials were free of criticism. Jealous or vengeful colonials often abused their right to communicate directly with the king by bringing false, unsubstantiated charges against their superiors in the Indies. Ordinarily the monarch ignored accusations based on flimsy, hearsay evidence and sometimes censured the malcontents, but an undue number of complains concerning the conduct of a colonial official inevitably set off a royal investigation of his administration. (Tepaske GSF)
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