either floating in the memories of contemporaries, or buried in the mass of unpublished correspondence and official documents, is an employment for which I have had neither the opportunity nor the leisure. The task which I have assigned to myself is much less laborious, but scarcely less grateful. It is the commemoration of some of those virtuous and enlightened men of Europe, who, long ago, looking with a prophetic eye towards the destinies of this new world, and regarding it as the chosen refuge of freedom and truth, were moved by a holy ambition to become the ministers of the most High, in bestowing upon it the blessings of religion, morals, letters, and liberty.

When we look back upon the earlier European discoveries and conquests in this hemisphere, the mind recoils with horror from the scene of carnage and devastation with which the mighty drama of American history opens. The genius and power of civilized man have scarce ever been displayed to his weaker and untaught brethren, except as ministering to avarice and ferocity; and never were that genius and power put forth in more terrible and guilty superiority, than when the American continent was first laid open to Spanish enterprise and valour. Unrelenting avarice, under the mask of religion, sent forth band after band of ferocious adventurers, to rapine and murder. In the powerful language of Cowper,

The hand that slew, till it could slay no more,
Was glued to the sword-hilt, with Indian gore.

Among these stern and bloody men, there was one of a far different mould. The young Las Casas, whose spirit of adventure had induced him, at the age of nineteen, to accompany Columbus in his second expedition to the West-Indies, was one of those rare compounds

a For the general facts of Las Casas' life, see Robertson's America, passim. Dupin; Bibliotheque des Auteurs Ecclesiastiques, 16me siecle. Rees' Cyclopedia, article, "Las Casas." Nouveau Dictionnaire Historique, Paris, 1789; and especially "Apologie de Barthelemy Las Casas, Eveque de Chiappa," par M. Gregoire, in the Memoirs de l'Institut Nationale," An. 8.

which nature forms, from time to time, for the ornament and consolation of the human race, blending a restless and unwearied energy of mind with a heart alive to every kind affection, elevated by piety, warm with benevolence, and kindling at wrong. He saw, with grief and indignation, the crimes of his countrymen, and the cry of the oppressed entered deep into his heart. From that hour, like the young Hannibal, but in a purer cause, he vowed himself to one sacred object. Rejecting with scorn, every lure which interest or ambition held out to tempt him from his course, refuting, by the blameless sanctity of his life, all the calumnies which were showered upon him, despising danger, disregarding toil, braving alike the sneer of the world and the frown of power, he laboured with a benevolence which never cooled, and a zeal which knew no remission, for more than seventy years, as the protector of the Indian race. Dangerous as the navigation was at that period, he crossed the Atlantic nine times for this purpose, besides traversing Europe, and penetrating, in all directions, the trackless wilds of the new world. We see him at one time breaking through the restraints of courtly form, while he charged his sovereign to his face with the personal guilt of those atrocious measures which had entailed misery upon a numerous and innocent people whom Providence had placed under his protection, and urging this accusation home to his conscience with an impetuous eloquence which made the crafty and cold-hearted Ferdinand tremble before him. Then again, we find him, armed with that mysterious power which virtuous enthusiasm bestows, mastering a stronger mind than his own, and compelling the lofty and stern Ximenes to partake of his zeal. Then he returns back to his suffering people, and, amidst every form of danger and hardship, administers in person his own admirable plans for their protection, conversion, and instruction.

Finding that the impressions of his animated oratory upon his countrymen and their rulers were constantly effaced, and their effects frustrated by the arts, intrigues, and falsehoods of the interested, he addressed himself, through the press, to the whole Christian world. In

one of his publications he described the devastation of those parts of America which had been subjugated by the Spaniards, with a copious and glowing eloquence which kindled the sympathies of all Europe.

b

In other works, he took a larger range of argument, and appealing in turns to the natural rights of man as pointed out by reason, and to that revelation which declares that God is no respecter of persons, without ever losing sight of his main object, he discussed some of the most interesting questions of liberty and public law, with a courage and truth of which modern Europe had seen no example. It is a remarkable fact, and one which bears honourable testimony to the vigour and enlargement of his mind, that a Spanish ecclesiastic, of the fifteenth century, should have maintained that the peculiar form of civil policy in a state ought to be determined by the will of the people, because, although the sanction is from above, the power of the people is the efficient, and their happiness the final cause of all government. In another work, in which he details at length the most probable means of relieving the wrongs, and ameliorating the condition of the Indians, he declares, that as liberty is the greatest of all earthly goods, and as all nations have an equal right to its possession, the attempt to subjugate any of them under the pretexts of religion, or of political expediency, is alike a crime against the natural and against the revealed law; and he adds, in words breathing more of the ancient Roman than of the Spaniard, that he who abuses power is unworthy to exercise it, and that no obedience is due to a tyrant. It is but too well known that these glorious labours in the service of freedom and humanity were in vain. Yet they were not wholly fruitless. Las Casas closed his long course of indefatigable philanthropy in his ninetysecond year, and his virtues and venerable age was soothed by the knowledge that some few of his proposed

a Brieve Relacion de la Destruccion.

b See the "Apologie de Bart. Las Casas," of Gregoire. The abstract of Las Casas' opinions, given by Dupin, seem, in general, to justify Gregoire's eulogy, though it shows a greater mixture of the prejudices of the times, with his purer views of truth, than Mr. Gregoire seems willing to admit.

plans had been carried into successful operation, and had contributed, in no small degree, (as they do to this day,) to relieve the sufferings of the enslaved natives. He enjoyed, moreover, the cheering recollection of having called forth the testimony of the better spirits of his own nation against intolerance and persecution, and of having kindled among them an enlightened zeal for the best interests of mankind—a sacred flame, long cherished “as a light shining in a dark place," but now at last daily kindling into brighter and broader radiance, and, doubtless destined to guide for many an age, the great and free nations of Spanish America to public virtue and true glory.

Johnson is related to have exclaimed, in one of those fine bursts of natural feeling which occasionally overpowered the narrowness of his political creed, "I love the University of Salamanca for their decision on the lawfulness of the Spanish conquests in Amerca." The decision to which Johnson had reference, was that of the two Universities of Salamanca and Alcala, on the public disputation, held at Valladolid, in 1550, between Las Casas and his ablest adversary, the learned Sepulveda, an acute, malignant, and bigoted sophist.

The thesis which Sepulveda maintained, was the right and duty of making war upon Pagans and heretics, in order to propagate the true faith. Las Casas refuted him upon the most liberal principles of universal toleration, and these doctrines received the solemn approbation of the two universities.

It is one of those melancholy instances of the retrogradation of the human mind which chill the hopes of the philanthropist, that about twenty-five years ago, a magnificent edition of all the works of Sepulveda was published by the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, in the introduction to which, that learned body did not hesitate to give their sanction to the doctrines of this apologist of oppression, and to approve of what they term "the exercise of a just and pious violence against Pagans and heretics."

a Boswell's Life of Johnson.

I cannot leave the consideration of the character of Las Casas, without stopping to repel a charge which has attached itself to his fame, and to which the popularity of the several writers by whom it has been made, has given a very wide circulation. Far from us be that base selfishness which joys to see any surpassing excellence brought down to its own low level. Let us ra

ther delight to linger at the good man's grave, and to pluck away with pious reverence "the weeds that have no business there."

The charge cannot be better stated than in the words of Dr. Robertson.

"The impossibility of carrying on any improvement in America, unless the Spanish planters could command the labour of the natives, was an insuperable objection to the plan of treating them as free subjects. In order to provide some remedy for this, Las Casas proposed to purchase a sufficient number of negroes from the Portuguese settlements on the coast of Africa, and to transport them to America, in order that they might be employed as slaves in working the mines and cultivating the ground.

"Cardinal Ximenes, however, when solicited to encourage this commerce, peremptorily rejected this proposition, because he perceived the iniquity of reducing one race of men to slavery, while he was consulting about the means of restoring liberty to another. But Las Casas, from the inconsistency natural to men, who hurry with headlong impetuosity towards a favourite point, was incapable of making this distinction. While he contended earnestly for the liberty of the people born in one quarter of the globe, he laboured to enslave the inhabitants of another region; and in the warmth of his zeal to save the Americans from the yoke, pronounced it to be lawful and expedient to impose one still heavier upon the Africans. Unfortunately for the latter, Las Casas's plan was adopted."a

This accusation has been loudly re-echoed by Ray

a Robertson's America, Vol. I. Book III. p. 317 of London edit. 1800.