subjects; and the Spanish ambassador was informed that his master might
proceed against them as he saw fit. In consequence of the transactions
of the buccaneers with the people of Jamaica, England went farther, and
actually removed the governor of that colony. But, whether with the
connivance of the civil authorities or not, the intercourse between the
pirates and the people continued without serious interruption. Some of
the buccaneers, however, pretended to hold commissions both from the
French and the Dutch; but it was mere pretext. Their authority was in
truth nothing more than what the sailors are wont jocosely to call 'a
commission from the Pope.' Yet they affected to consider themselves in
lawful war against Spain, for the reason that the Spaniards had debarred
them from the privileges of hunting in the forests and fishing in the
waters of St. Domingo--thus depriving them of the exercise of what they
called their lawful rights. In regard to the cruelties which they
frequently inflicted upon the prisoners who fell into their hands, they
pleaded in justification those enormities which the conquerors of
Spanish America inflicted upon the aborigines there. The horrible
cruelties of Cortez and Pizarro are familiar to every student of
history. 'I once,' says Las Casas, speaking of the conquest of the New
World, 'beheld four or five chief Indians roasted alive at a slow fire;
and as the miserable victims poured forth their dreadful yells, it
disturbed the commandant in his siesta, and he sent an order that they
should be strangled; but the officer on duty would not do it, but,
causing their mouths to be gagged that their shrieks might not be heard,
he stirred up the fire with his own hands, and roasted them deliberately
until they all expired.' The conquerors had resorted to these dreadful
executions under the cloak of religious zeal, but in reality to make the
poor wretches disclose the secret depositories of their treasures.
Instances of the same refined cruelty, at the contemplation of which
humanity shudders, marked the history of the buccaneers. Their motives
were the same as those which had governed the conduct of Cortez; and
they, too, found a salvo for their consciences by persuading themselves
that they were commissioned as a court of vengeance--the instruments of
retributive justice in the hands of Providence--to punish the Spaniards
for the remorseless cruelties practised upon the unoffending Mexicans.
And her