es, which we have just
striven to do, and next, the style of treatment in converting and in
enslaving them, which gave its first chapter of horrors to San Domingo,
and laid violent hands on the whole sequence of her history.

What influence could the noble elements of the Spanish character have,
when theology, avarice, and lust controlled the conquest? Pure minds and
magnanimous intentions went in the same ships with adventurers, diseased
soldiers, cold and superstitious men of business, and shaven monks with
their villanous low brows and thin inquisitorial smile. The average
character speedily obtained ascendency, because the best men were to
some extent partakers of it. Columbus was eager to make his great
discovery pay well, to preserve the means of continued exploration. In
one hand he lifted high the banner of possession with its promise of a
cross, which direful irony fulfilled; with the other he kept feeding the
ravenous nation with gold, to preserve its sympathy and admiration, that
the supply of men and vessels should not fail. Las Casas himself, a just
and noble man, the first advocate of the natural rights of men in the
New World, soon found that the situation was too strong and cruel; his
wishes and struggles went under before the flood of evil passions which
swept the island. He maintained his fight against Indian slavery by not
discountenancing negro slavery. And his fight was unavailing, because
mercy had no legitimate place upon the new soil. The logic of events
was with the evil majority, which was obliged at last to maintain its
atrocious consistency in self-defence. He might as well have preached
the benefits of Lenten diet to shipwrecked men upon a raft, insane with
thirst and the taste of comrade's flesh. It was a Devil's problem, which
is the kind that cannot hold back from its devilish conclusion.

But bad passions were not alone to blame. The Spanish notion of
conversion desolated like avarice. The religious bodies which from time
to time controlled the affairs of the island differed in their humanity
and general policy: the Dominicans were friends of the Indian and haters
of the turbulent oppressor; the Franciscans were the instruments of the
bad men whose only ambition was to wring pleasure and fortune out of the
Indian's heart; the monks of St. Jerome undertook in vain a neutral
and reconciling policy. But they all agreed that the Indians must be
baptized, catechized, and more or less chastise