mong Christians, was sanctioned expressly
by royal ordinances. Ferdinand sent over fifty slaves to labor in the
royal mines: Las Casas pleaded for the further employment of negroes,
and consequent extension of the slave trade. "But covetousness," says
Bancroft, "and not a mistaken benevolence, established the slave trade,
which had nearly received its development before the charity of Las
Casas was heard in defence of the Indians. Reason, policy and religion
alike condemned the traffic."

Cardinal Ximenes, the grand inquisitor of Spain, protested against the
introduction of negroes in Hispaniola, foreseeing the dangers incident
to their increase; and three centuries later the successful revolt of
the slaves of Hayti, the first place in America which received African
slaves, justified his intelligent predictions and forebodings. England
embarked largely in the slave trade, and Queen Elizabeth shared in the
guilty profits of the traffic. In the year 1713, when, after a period of
rest, the slave trade was resumed, the English purchased of Spain a
monopoly of the trade with the Spanish colonies, and she carried it on
with great vigor and pecuniary success, until she had completely stocked
these islands with blacks. In the year 1763 their number was estimated
at sixty thousand. This fact will enable us to appreciate as it deserves
the extreme modesty of the British government in fomenting abolition
schemes in the island of Cuba, after contributing so largely to the
creation of an evil which appears almost irremediable. We say a
realizing sense of the circumstances of the case will enable us rightly
to appreciate the character of the British government's philanthropy. We
applaud England for her efforts at the suppression of the slave
trade,--a traffic which all the powers of Christendom, Spain excepted,
have united to crush,--but we cannot patiently contemplate her efforts
to interfere with the internal economy of other countries, when she
herself, as in the case of the Spanish colonies and of the United
States, has so weighty a share of responsibility in the condition of
things as they now exist; to say nothing of the social condition of her
own subjects, which so imperatively demands that her charity should
begin at home.

We have said that Spain alone, of the great powers, has not done her
part in the suppression of the slave trade.[52] She is solemnly pledged
by treaty stipulations, to make unceasing war against it, and