being about to return and to live in the
country of their slavery, he could look to the execution of it. The
cardinal, however, with a foresight, a benevolence, and a justice, which
will always do honour to his memory, refused the proposal, not only judging
it to be unlawful to consign innocent people to slavery at all, but to be
very inconsistent to deliver the inhabitants of one country from a state of
misery by consigning to it those of another. Ximenes therefore may be
considered as one of the first great friends of the Africans after the
partial beginning of the trade.

This answer of the cardinal, as it showed his virtue as an individual, so
it was peculiarly honourable to him as a public man, and ought to operate
as a lesson to other statesmen, how they admit any thing new among
political regulations and establishments, which is connected in the
smallest degree with injustice. For evil, when once sanctioned by
governments, spreads in a tenfold degree, and may, unless seasonably
checked, become so ramified, as to affect the reputation of a country, and
to render its own removal scarcely possible without detriment to the
political concerns of the state. In no instance has this been verified more
than in the case of the Slave-trade. Never was our national character more
tarnished, and our prosperity more clouded by guilt. Never was there a
monster more difficult to subdue. Even they, who heard as it were the
shrieks of oppression, and wished to assist the sufferers, were fearful of
joining in their behalf. While they acknowledged the necessity of removing
one evil, they were terrified by the prospect of introducing another; and
were therefore only able to relieve their feelings, by lamenting in the
bitterness of their hearts, that this traffic had ever been begun at all.

After the death of cardinal Ximenes, the emperor Charles the Fifth, who had
come into power, encouraged the Slave-trade. In 1517 he granted a patent to
one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right of importing
four thousand Africans into America. But he lived long enough to repent of
what he had thus inconsiderately done. For in the year 1542 he made a code
of laws for the better protection of the unfortunate Indians in his foreign
dominions; and he stopped the progress of African slavery by an order, that
all slaves in his American islands should be made free. This order was
executed by Pedro de la Gasca. Manumission took place as w