rma discovered, or to be
discovered, in the Ocean Sea, were granted to us by the Holy Apostolic
See, our principal intention, when we asked the said concession from Pope
Alexander VI. of happy memory, was to provide for attracting and winning
to us the natives, and to convert them to our holy Catholic faith; and to
send to the said islands and and terra-firma, prelates, religious,
clerics, and other learned and God-fearing men, to instruct the
inhabitants in the Catholic faith: and to use all necessary diligence in
teaching them and in introducing good customs among them; all this
according as may be more fully seen in the wording of the said concession.
I therefore very affectionately beseech my lord the King, and I charge and
command the said Princess, my daughter, and the said Prince, her husband,
that they shall execute and accomplish this, making it their principal
object, and using the greatest diligence therein. They shall not consent,
or furnish occasion that the Indian natives and inhabitants of the said
islands and and terra-firma, sustain any injury, either in their persons
or their belongings, but they shall rather order that they be well and
justly treated. And if they [the Indians] have received any injury, they
shall correct it and shall take measures to prevent what is conceded to
and enjoined upon us by the wording of the said concession, from being
exceeded."

Reviewing the conditions in the colonies, Las Casas described the richness
of the soil and the vast resources of the Indies, declaring that what was
wanted there, were industrious, honest, and frugal emigrants, who would
develop the agricultural sources of wealth, instead of the horde of
rapacious adventurers and dissolute soldiery then engaged in depopulating
and ruining them. One by one he stripped Sepulveda's propositions of
their brilliant rhetoric, exposing the hollowness and sham beneath the
specious reasoning, with which the latter sought to cloak his poverty of
facts. Las Casas closed his case with the following brilliant and
prophetic peroration:

"The injuries and loss which have befallen the Crown of Castile and Leon
will be visited likewise on all Spain, because the tyranny wrought by
their devastations, massacres, and slaughters is so monstrous, that the
blind may see it, the deaf hear it, and the dumb recount it, while after
our brief existence, the wise shall judge and condemn it. I invoke all
the hierarchies and choirs of ang