ase
and repeated mention of their presence in the colonies is found in
different passages throughout the history of Herrera and in other early
writers.

Since the first half of the fifteenth century (about 1440) (33) the
Portuguese had been engaged in bringing negroes from the west coast of
Africa and selling them in Lisbon and Seville, so that during half a
century before Las Casas appeared on the scene where he was destined to
play so distinguished a part, Andalusia and the southern provinces of
Spain were well provided with slaves and a flourishing trade was carried
on. The condition of such slaves was not a particularly hard one and the
children born in Spain of slave parents were Christians. Since this
system was recognised by the laws of the kingdom, and indeed by those of
all Christendom at that time, no additional injury would be done to the
negroes by permitting Spaniards who might own them in Spain, to take them
also to the colonies. Las Casas was a man of such humane temperament that
oppression and injustice everywhere of whatever kind revolted him, but it
can hardly be required, even of him, to be several centuries in advance of
his times in denouncing a commonly accepted usage which presented, as far
as we know, few crying abuses. Toleration of an established order, even
though an essentially evil one, is a very different thing from the
extension of its worst features in regions where it is unknown and amongst
people ill-fitted to support its burdens. A small group of men, chiefly
Dominican monks, with Las Casas at their head, courageously championed the
cause of freedom and humanity in a century and amongst a people hardened
to oppression and cruelty; they braved popular fury, suffered calumny,
detraction, and abuse; they faced kings, high ecclesiastics, and all the
rich and great ones of their day, incessantly and courageously
reprimanding their injustice and demanding reform. Since the memorable
day when Fray Antonio de Montesinos proclaimed himself "vox clamantis in
deserto" before the astonished and incensed colonists of Hispaniola, the
chorus of rebuke had swelled until it made itself heard, sparing none
amongst the offenders against equity and humanity. The development of the
collective moral sense of a people is only slowly progressive, and the
betterment of racial conditions is more safely accomplished by evolution
than revolution, hence if the moral vision of Las Casas did not detect the
in