ey were
put by taskmasters eager for gold. Entire villages committed suicide
together; and the Spaniards favoured a mode of correction which
consisted in burning Indians alive by a slow fire. Las Casas, who
makes these statements, and who may be trusted for facts and not for
figures, affirms that fifty millions perished in his time, and fifteen
millions were put to death.

Without a fresh labour supply, the colony would be ruined. It was the
office of the clergy to prove that this treatment of the natives was
short-sighted and criminal, and their cause was taken up by the
Dominican missionaries. In 1510 the preacher Montesino, taking for
his text the words, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness,"
denounced the practice. Their mouthpiece with the Home Government,
their immortal mouthpiece with posterity, is Las Casas, whose
narrative is our authority. The government was anxious to preserve
conquests that began to yield some profit. They appointed Commissions
to advise, and followed sometimes one report, sometimes the other,
taking generally the line of least resistance. The most important
Commission of all, in which Las Casas asserted the duties of
Christians and the rights of savages, against Sepulveda, who denied
them, never came to a decision.

Failing the native supply, the Spaniards substituted negroes. The
slaves forwarded by Columbus had been sent back with tokens of the
queen's displeasure, and Ximenes would not permit the importation of
Africans. But the traffic went on, and the Indies were saved. Under
Charles V 1000 slaves were allotted to each of the four islands.
It did not seem an intolerable wrong to rescue men from the
devil-worshippers who mangled their victims on the Niger or the Congo.
Las Casas himself was one of those who advised that the negro should be
brought to the relief of the Carib, and he would have allotted twelve
slaves to each settler. He survived half a century, lived to lament
his error, and declared his repentance to the world. He repented from
motives of humanity rather than from principle; his feelings were more
sensitive than his conscience, and he resembled the imperious
Parliaments of George III which upheld the slave trade until
imaginations were steeped in the horrors of the middle passage.

The supreme moment in the conquest of America is the landing of Cortez
at Vera Cruz in 1521. He was an insubordinate officer acting in
defiance of orders, and the