infamous" leading to conflict. In 1799 he wrote to King Charles IV a report entitled Representación al rey, sobre immunidades del clero (Description to the King, of the Immunities of the Clergy). In this document he outlined the social and political situation in New Spain and explained the symptoms of discontent. He proposed the general abolition of tribute levied on the indigenous; the free distribution of royal lands; agrarian land reform in Mexico that would permit poor people to obtain 20- or 30-year "leases" on uncultivated land belonging to the large landowners, but without paying rent; and the right to establish cotton and woolen mills. In 1804 he opposed Godoy's Cédula de la Caja de Consolidación. The Act of Consolidation sought to transfer wealth from the church to the crown by calling in all mortgages that were held by the church, which was a direct attack on the elite land holders in New Spain whose wealth was invested in haciendas and whose mortgages held by the church. This order was the equivalent of disentailment of the church because it ordered the transfer of income from the religious estates and foundations to the government, but its attack on the land holding elites' source of wealth did not shore up their loyalty to the crown. Abad y Queipo's memorial to the crown "pointed out that the withdrawal of the vast loans of the Church would paralyze agriculture and business". In 1805 and 1807 he forwarded two other reports to the king. His writings critiquing society in New Spain influenced Alexander von Humboldt, who spent a year in the viceroyalty 1803–04. Abad y Queipo presented Humboldt with his published writings when the cleric visited Paris in 1806. Humboldt's Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain was one of his first publications from his five-year sojourn to Spanish America and drew heavily on Abad's memorials. Humboldt took Abad y Queipo's argument about the low condition of Mexico's indigenous population as impeding progress in the viceroyalty, which Abad had first mentioned in a 1799 memorial to Bishop Antonio de San Miguel. Their multiple languages, ties to their home communities, collective land tenure which the crown had protected now were their chains preventing individual advancement. Although Abad y Queipo deplored the situation of the Indians, he did not blame them for it, viewing it not due to inherent racial or character flaws but to crown