els, all the saints of the Celestial
Court, all the inhabitants of the globe and especially those who may live
after me, to witness that I free my conscience of all that has been done;
and that I have fully exposed all these woes to his Majesty; and that if
he abandons the government of the Indies to the tyranny of the Spaniards,
they will all be lost and depopulated--as we see Hispaniola, and other
islands and three thousand leagues of the continent destitute of
inhabitants. For these reasons, God will punish Spain and all her people
with inevitable severity. So may it be!"(72)

Language worthy of a saint and a statesman, in which there breathed the
spirit of prophecy, for the system of government, once initiated by the
Spanish officials, was persisted in till the end, while one by one the
great possessions of Spain in the New World were torn from the mother
country. In no land where freedom of speech was a recognised right, could
an orator have used plainer language, and it shows both the Spanish civil
and ecclesiastical authorities of that age in a somewhat unfamiliar light
that Las Casas not only escaped perilous censures but even won a moral
victory over his talented opponent. What would have become of the
champion of such unpopular doctrines, attacking as he did the material
interests of thousands of the greatest men in the land, had there been
daily newspapers in those times, it is not difficult to imagine. Examples
of the defenders of forlorn causes are not wanting in our own day, and the
fate of those who lead an unpopular crusade is the pillory of the press,
which spares no less than did the fires of the mediaeval stake.

The discovery and conquest of the American dominions brought ruin to Spain
as a nation; beyond the tribute of glory which those early achievements
yielded to the Spanish name, the results were disastrous to her power.
During centuries, much of the best blood of her prolific people was
drained by the Americas, so that the population of the peninsula to-day is
little more numerous than in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, whereas
her territory and natural resources might maintain triple their number.

CHAPTER XXI. - SAN GREGORIO DE VALLADOLID. LAST LABOURS. THE DEATH OF LAS
CASAS

Although the forensic encounter with Sepulveda was the most dramatic
incident in the latter years of the life of Las Casas after his return to
Spain, its conclusion was not followed either by his d