been weak and passive. Chaves was
strong and aggressive; as his campaign against his predecessor
demonstrated. In point of morals there was probably little to choose
between them. So far as enforcement of the laws concerning the natives
was concerned, Chaves was worse than De Avila. For De Avila personally
wished to enforce them, but was dissuaded from so doing by the influence
of his wife and the almost unanimous demands of the officials and
people. Chaves, on the other hand, appears to have been personally
opposed to all emancipation laws, and inclined to subject the natives to
ruthless slavery. Although he had savagely attacked De Avila for
acquiescing in the suspension or postponement of the royal decrees,
Chaves himself went even further in the same direction. He declined to
enforce the laws, protested against them, and petitioned for their
repeal on the ground that they would be ruinous to the material welfare
of the island. The rule against employment of natives in the mines was
especially obnoxious to him, and he advised the crown that unless it
were repealed, together with all other such measures, the island would
soon be "possessed of the devil."

Seeing that Chaves was now doing the very thing that he had condemned
his predecessor for doing, the King was disgusted with him, and sent him
the sharpest kind of a reprimand, reminding him of his gross
inconsistency and bidding him to enforce the law without further ado.
Chaves pretended to obey. In fact, he promptly replied that he was
obeying. But he obeyed only in pretence. He did not scruple to
declare--in Cuba--that he was opposed to giving the natives their
freedom. He did not consider them fit for it. Why? Because they were not
Christians, and if set free they would not become Christians, and
therefore would infallibly be damned eternally. Therefore to save their
souls from hell fire, their bodies must be enslaved, so that they could
find salvation through being physically compelled to conform with the
external practices of Christianity. Particularly necessary was it, he
argued, for this system of spiritual salvation through corporeal bondage
to prevail in the provinces of Trinidad, Sancti Spiritus and Puerto del
Principe, because they had no agricultural interests but were dependent
upon mining, and if they could not compel the Indians to work in the
mines, they would be ruined.

This logic, more ingenious than ingenuous, did not favorably impress the
Ki