ell in Hispaniola
as on the Continent. But on the return of Gasca to Spain, and the
retirement of Charles into a monastery, slavery was revived.

It is impossible to pass over this instance of the abolition of slavery by
Charles in all his foreign dominions, without some comments. It shows him,
first, to have been a friend both to the Indians and the Africans, as a
part of the human race. It shows he was ignorant of what he was doing when
he gave his sanction to this cruel trade. It shows when legislators give
one set of men an undue power over another, how quickly they abuse it,--or
he never would have found himself obliged in the short space of twenty-five
years to undo that which he had countenanced as a great state-measure. And
while it confirms the former lesson to statesmen, of watching the
beginnings or principles of things in their political movements, it should
teach them never to persist in the support of evils, through the false
shame of being obliged to confess that they had once given them their
sanction, nor to delay the cure of them because, politically speaking,
neither this nor that is the proper season; but to do them away instantly,
as there can only be one fit or proper time in the eye of religion, namely,
on the conviction of their existence.

From the opinions of cardinal Ximenes and of the emperor Charles the Fifth,
I hasten to that which was expressed much about the same time, in a public
capacity, by pope Leo the Tenth. The Dominicans in Spanish America,
witnessing the cruel treatment which the slaves underwent there, considered
slavery as utterly repugnant to the principles of the gospel, and
recommended the abolition of it. The Franciscans did not favour the former
in this their scheme of benevolence; and the consequence was, that a
controversy on this subject sprung up between them, which was carried to
this pope for his decision. Leo exerted himself, much to his honour, in
behalf of the poor sufferers, and declared "That not only the Christian
religion, but that Nature herself cried out against a state of slavery."
This answer was certainly worthy of one who was deemed the head of the
Christian church. It must, however, be confessed that it would have been
strange if Leo, in his situation as pontiff, had made a different reply. He
could never have denied that God was no respecter of persons. He must have
acknowledged that men were bound to love each other as brethren. And, if he
admitted the