's efforts to exclude Las Casas and the Franciscan being thus
defeated, for it was impossible for him to insist further, he began as
follows: "Most potent lord, the Catholic King, your grandfather (may he
rest in holy glory) commanded the construction of an armada to go and make
settlements on the mainland of the Indies and solicited our very Holy
Father to create me Bishop of that first settlement; besides the time
occupied in coming and going, I have been there five years, and as a
numerous company went and we only had provisions enough for the journey,
all the rest of our people died of hunger: the remainder of us who
survived, in order to escape the fate of the others, have done nothing
during all that time but rob and kill and eat. As I perceived that that
country was going to perdition and that its first governor was bad and the
second worse, I determined to return and report these things to our King
and Lord in whom is all the hope of a remedy. As for the Indians, judging
by the accounts of those in that country whence I come, and those of
others whom I saw on my way, they are a natura slaves." The remainder of
this speech has not been preserved, but the opening of it was singular
enough, considering that it was delivered by the advocate of the colonists
and one of the bitterest opponents of Las Casas. At its conclusion the
ceremony of taking the royal orders was repeated and the Chancellor
commanded Micer Bartholomew in the King's name to speak.

The speech which Las Casas then delivered is given, in part, in the third
part of his _Historia General_. (38) In it he declared that he had
accepted his vocation not to please the King but to serve God and that he
renounced, once for all, any temporal honour or favour his Majesty might
ever wish to confer upon him. A remarkably bold sentence followed: "It is
positive, speaking with all the respect and reverence due to so great a
King and Lord, that I would not move from here to that corner to serve
your Majesty, saving my fidelity as a subject, unless I thought and
believed I would render service to God by so doing." The chief point in
the Bishop's discourse which he controverted, was the assertion that the
Indians were by nature slaves. He was supported throughout, and
especially on this point, by the Franciscan; and even the Admiral Diego
Columbus, who had himself held encomiendas and whose renowned father had
indeed initiated the very abuses which were being den