to obtain the favorable notice of all these
bodies, who were instinctively hostile to the diffusion of all
information, particularly in regard to the New World. Nor was this the
end of the difficulty; the license of any one of these officials could
be revoked at pleasure, and, when republished, the work had to be
re-"_vised_." Even as late as the year 1825, a Spanish standard author
could not be republished without expurgation.[24] With such facts
before us, it is safe to declare that not a single statement of fact
that affected either the interests of the king or the Church was ever
published in Spain or her colonies during the three hundred years of
the existence of the Inquisition; but every thing published was
modified to suit the wishes of the censors, without any regard to the
sentiments of the putative author.

But who was Bernal Diaz? How came he to be familiar with the writings
of Las Casas that never saw the light? Had he access to the secret
archives of the convent? He refers to the account of Las Casas as
follows:

"These [the slaughters at Cholula] are, among others, those abominable
monstrosities which the Bishop of Chiapas, Las Casas, can find no end
in enumerating. But he is wrong when he asserts that we gave the
Cholulans the above-mentioned chastisement without any provocation, and
merely for pastime."[25] The history of Diaz is among the standard
literary productions of that age, and is a very picture of candor and
simplicity. On every page there are such evident efforts at
truthfulness as to raise a suspicion that something more than, a simple
narrative was the object of writing this book fifty years after the
conquest. By supposing the author to be only sixteen years old when he
came to America, Lockhart makes him only seventy years of age when he
wrote the work. But if we suppose him to have been of a reasonable age
when he began his adventures, he must have been between eighty and
ninety years old when this book is alleged to have been written. Gomara
had overdone the matter in the superhuman achievements which he had
ascribed to Cortez, while Las Casas had proved the conqueror and his
party to have been a gang of cruel monsters. Now, something had to be
done to avert the odium that was beginning to attach to this crusade
against the enemies of the Church. In Spain, where a padlock was upon
every man's mouth, and where each one buried his suspicions in the most
secret recesses of his heart, and