d fatal to Las Casas overtook him in the convent of
the Atocha in Madrid, and in the latter days of July, 1566, he died.(76)
Only a few days before he breathed his last he wrote the following
sentences, which were probably the last his prolific pen ever traced.
They portray the character and aspirations of this great man more fully,
perhaps, than any other of his multitudinous compositions.

"For the goodness and mercy of God chose to elect me as His minister,
despite my want of merit, to strive and labour for the infinite peoples,
the possessors and owners of those kingdoms of the countries we call the
Indies, against the burdens, evils, and injuries such as were never seen
or heard of, which we Spaniards brought upon them, contrary to all right
and justice; and to restore them to their pristine liberty, of which they
were unjustly despoiled; and to save them from the violent death which
they still suffer, just as for the same cause, thousands of leagues of
country have been depopulated, many in my own presence. I have laboured
at the Court of the Castilian sovereigns, coming and going between the
Indies and Spain many times during the fifty years since 1514, animated
only by God and by compassion at beholding the destruction of such
multitudes of rational, humble, most kind, and most simple men, all well
adapted to accept our Holy Catholic Faith and moral doctrine, and to live
honestly. God is witness that I have advanced no other reason. Hence I
state my positive belief, for I believe the Holy Roman Church, which is
the rule and measure of our faith, must and does hold that the Spaniards'
conduct towards those peoples, their robberies, murders, usurpations of
the territories of the rightful kings and nobles and other infinite
properties, which they accomplished with such accursed cruelties--has been
contrary to the most strictly immaculate law of Jesus Christ and contrary
to natural right. It has brought great infamy on the name of Jesus Christ
and of the Christian religion, entirely hindering the spread of the faith
and irreparably injuring the souls and bodies of those innocent peoples.
I believe that because of these impious and ignominious acts, perpetrated
unjustly, tyrannously, and barbarously upon them, God will visit His wrath
and ire upon Spain for her share, great or small, in the blood-stained
riches, obtained by theft and usurpation, accompanied by such slaughter
and annihilation of those peoples, unles