s more powerfully than
the spectacle of actual enormities happening daily for years under his
very eyes, though doubtless the influence of these many occurrences was
cumulative and had led him, gradually and unconsciously, up to the state
when but a touch was necessary to strip the last disguise from the heinous
abuses practised in the colony. Until then he had been zealous in
protecting the Indians against massacre and pillage, but to the injustice
of the servitude imposed upon them, he was insensible, and he recounts
humbly enough that he had himself once been refused the sacraments by a
Dominican friar in Hispaniola--possibly the redoubtable Montesinos
himself--because he was a slave-holder. He sustained a discussion on the
subject with the obdurate monk, whom he describes as a worthy and learned
man, but to little purpose, and the Dominican wound up by telling him that
"the truth has ever had many enemies, and falsehood many defenders." Las
Casas, though somewhat impressed by what had passed between them, took no
heed of the admonition to release his Indians, and sought absolution from
a more lenient confessor.

Much time and many terrible experiences were required to germinate and
develop the seed the Dominicans had sown in his soul, but the day of
fruition came with the peaceful preparation of a discourse suitable for
the glorious feast of Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, into whose
perpetual custody were committed the doctrines of Christ, to be infallibly
guarded. Instead of disbursing these spiritual treasures to the humble
Indians amongst whom he lived as a superior being, almost deified in their
simple minds, he had profited by their labours as selfishly as the most
godless layman in the island, without making an effort to gather them into
one fold, under one shepherd, which, as a Christian priest, should have
been his chief occupation. But if the awakening was slow, it was complete,
and Las Casas was not one to shrink from following his beliefs to their
logical conclusions; not only was his newly formed conviction that the
treatment accorded to the Indians was a flagrant violation of all justice,
and one that merited condemnation in this world and condign punishment in
the next, absolute, but the first consequence following from it, and which
seemed to him imperative, was that he should forthwith set the example to
his fellow-colonists of freeing his serfs; the second was the devotion of
all his power