atment
to be shown them, and the wages to be paid them, the royal order was
finally issued. It is evident that the misinformed and deluded sovereign
regarded the labour of the Indians almost as a pretext for bringing them
into contact with the Spaniards, solely for their own spiritual and moral
advantage.

The discovery of America, following as it did so closely upon the
development of the negro slave traffic, had given great impetus to it and,
during the three succeeding centuries, Portuguese, Italians, Spaniards,
English, and Dutch quickly became close rivals for an ignominious primacy
in the most heinous of crimes. The highest figures I have found, assign
to England one hundred and thirty vessels engaged in the trade, and
forty-two thousand negroes landed in the Americas during the year 1786
from English ships. The annals of slavery are so uniformly black, that
among all the nations there is not found one guiltless, to cast the first
stone. More than their due proportion of obloquy has been visited upon
the Spaniards for their part in the extension of slavery and for the
offences against justice and humanity committed in the New World, almost
as though they alone deserved the pillory. Consideration of the facts
here briefly touched upon should serve to restrain and temper the
condemnation that irreflection has too often allowed us to heap
exclusively upon them for their share in these great iniquities. If they
were pitiless towards individuals, we have shown ourselves merciless
towards the race; as a nation, they recognised moral duties and
responsibilities towards Indian peoples which our forefathers ignored or
repudiated; the failure of the benevolent laws enacted by Spanish
sovereigns was chiefly due to the avarice and brutality of individuals,
who were able to elude both the provisions of the law and the punishment
their crimes merited. On the other hand, Las Casas thrilled two worlds
with his denunciations of crimes which our own enlightened country
continued for three centuries to protect. His apostolate was prompted,
not by the horrors he witnessed nor by merely emotional sympathy, but by
meditation on the fundamental principles of justice. The Scripture texts
that startled him from the moral lethargy in which he had lived during
eight years, revealed to him the blasphemy involved in the performance of
acts of formal piety and works of benevolence, by men who degraded God's
image in their fellow-men a