The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862

It is pleasanter to dwell upon those points in which the brave and humane Las Casas surpassed his age, and prophesied against it, than upon those which he held in common with it, as he acquiesced in its instinctive life. At first it seems unaccountable that the argument which he framed with such jealous care to protect his Indians and recommend them to the mercy of Government was not felt by him to apply to the negroes with equal force. Slavery uses the same pretexts in every age and against whatsoever race it wishes to oppress. The Indians were represented by the colonists as predestined by their natural dispositions, and by their virtues as well as by their vices, to be held in tutelage by a superior race: their vices were excuses for colonial cruelty, their virtues made it worth while to keep the cruelty in vigorous exercise. In refuting this interested party, Las Casa anticipates the spirit and reasoning of later time. He was the first to utter anti-slavery principles in the Western hemisphere. We have improved upon his knowledge, but have not advanced beyond his essential spirit, for equity and iniquity always have the same leading points to make through their advocates. When we see that such a man as Las Casas was unconscious of the breadth of his own philanthropy, we wonder less at the liability of noble men to admit some average folly of their age. This is the ridiculous and astonishing feature of their costume, the exceptional bad taste which their spiritual posterity learn to disavow.

The memory of Las Casas ought to be cherished by every true democrat of these later times, for he announced, in his quality of Protector of the Indian, the principles which protect the rights of all men against oppressive authority. He was eager to convince a despotic court that it had no legal or spiritual right to enslave Indians, or to deprive them of their goods and territory. In framing his argument, he applied doctrines of the universal liberty of men, which are fatal to courts themselves; for they transfer authority to the people, who have the best of reasons for desiring to be governed well. It is astonishing that the republicanism of Las Casas has not been more carefully noted and admired; for his writings show plainly, without forced construction or after-thought of the enlightened reader, that he was in advance of Spain and Europe as far as the American theory itself is. Our Declaration of the Rights of Man shows nothing which the first Western Abolitionist had not proclaimed in the councils and conferences of Seville.

It is worth while to show this as fully as the purpose of this article will admit. One would expect to find that he counselled kings to administer their government with equal regard to the little and the great, the poor and the rich, the powerful and the miserable; for this the Catholic Church has always done, and has held a lofty theory before earthly thrones, not-withstanding its own ambitious derelictions. But Las Casas tells the Supreme Council of the Indies that no charge, no servitude, no labor can be imposed upon a people without its previous and voluntary consent; for man shares, by his origin, in the common liberty of all beings, so that every subordination of men to princes, and every burden imposed upon material things, should be inaugurated by a voluntary pact between the governing and the governed; the election of kings, princes, and magistrates, and the authority with which they are invested to rule and to tax, anciently owed their origin to a free determination of people who desired to establish thereby their own happiness; the free will of the nation is the only efficient cause, the only immediate principle and veritable source of the power of kings, and therefore the transmission of such power is only a representative act of a nation giving free expression to its own opinion. For a nation would not have recourse to such a form of government, except in accordance with its human instinct, to secure the advantage of all; nor does it, in thus delegating power, renounce its liberty, or have the intention of submitting to the domination of another, or of conceding his right to impose burdens and contributions without the consent of those who have to bear them, or to command anything that is contrary to the general interest. When a nation thus delegates a portion of its power to the sovereign, it is not done by subscribing any written contract or transaction, because primitive right presides, and there are natural reserves not expressed by men, such as that of preserving intact their individual independence, that of their property, and the right of never submitting to a privation of good or an establishment of taxes without a previous consent. People existed before kings and magistrates. Then they were free, and governed themselves according to their untrammelled intent. In process of time people make kings, but the good of the people is the final cause of their existence. Men do not make kings to be rendered miserable by their rule, but to derive from them all the good possible. Liberty is the greatest good which a people can enjoy: its rights are violated every time that a king, without consulting his people, decrees that which wounds the general interest; for, as the intention of subjects was not to grant a prince the ability to injure, all such acts ought to be considered unjust and altogether null. "Liberty is inalienable, and its price is above that of all the goods of this world."[11 - Fifth Memoir: Upon the Liberty of the Indians who have been reduced to the Condition of Slavery; Morente, Tom. II. pp. 34, 35. Sixth Memoir: Upon the Question whether Kings have the Power to alienate their Subjects, their Towns and Jurisdiction, pp. 64 et seq. Letter of Las Casas to Miranda, resident in England with Philip, in 1555.–The Sixth Memoir is a remarkable production. Its closing words are these: "The dignity of a king does not consist in usurping rights of which he is only the administrator. Invested with all the necessary power to govern well and to make his kingdom happy, let him fulfil that fine destiny, and the respect of the people will be his reward."]

Las Casas follows the fashion of his time in resting all his glorious axioms upon the authority of men and councils. He quotes Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, the different Popes, the Canons, and the Scriptures; but it is astonishing to find how democratic they all are to the enthusiastic Bishop, or rather, how the best minds of all ages have admitted the immutable principles of human nature into their theology and metaphysics. When will the Catholic Church, which has nourished and protected so many noble spirits, express in her average sentiment and policy their generous interpretations of her religion, and their imputations to her of being an embodiment of the universal religion of mankind?

Men complained of Las Casas for being severe and unsparing in his speech. In this respect, of calling the vices and enormities of Slavery by their simple names, and of fastening the guilt of special transactions not vaguely upon human nature, but directly upon the perpetrators who disgraced the nature which they shared, he also anticipated the privilege and ill-repute of American Abolitionists. He told what he saw, or what was guarantied to him by competent witnesses. His cheek grew red when it was smitten by some fierce outrage upon humanity, and men could plainly read the marks which it left there. Nor did they easily fade away; he held his branded cheek in the full view of men, that they might be compelled to interpret the disgrace to which they were so indifferent. Men dislike to hear the outcries of a sensitive spirit, and dread to have their heathenism called by Christian names. How much better it would be, they think, if philanthropy never made an attack upon the representatives of cruelty! they would soon become converted, if they were politely let alone. No doubt, all that the supporters of any tyranny desire is to be let alone. They delight in abstract delineations of the vices of their system, which flourishes and develops while moral indignation is struggling to avoid attacking it where only it is dangerous, in the persons of its advocates. If there were nothing but metaphysical wickedness in the world, how effective it would be never to allude to a wicked man! If Slavery itself were the pale, thin ghost of an abstraction, how bloodless this war would be! Fine words, genteel deprecation, and magnanimous generality are the tricks of villany. Indignant Mercy works with other tools; she leaps with the directness of lightning, and the same unsparing sincerity, to the spot to which she is attracted. What rogue ever felt the clutch of a stern phrase at his throat, with a good opinion of it? Shall we throttle the rascal in broad day, or grope in the dark after the impersonal weasand of his crime?

And those amiable people who think to regenerate the world by radiating amenity are the choice accomplices of the villains. They keep everything quiet, hush up incipient disturbances, and mislead the police. No Pharisee shall be called a Devil's child, if they can help it: they say "Fie!" to the scourge of knotted cord in the temple, or eagerly explain that it was used only upon the cattle, who cannot, of course, rebel. "These people who give the fine name of prudence to their timidity, and whose discretion is always favorable to injustice!"[12 - "Ces hommes qui donnent le beau nom de prudence à leur timidité, et dont la discrétion est toujours favorable à l'injustice."–Hilliard d'Aubertueil, Considérations sur l'Ètat Présent de la Colonie Françoise de St. Domingue, 1776.]

"I have decided to write this history," says Las Casas, in his "Memoir upon the Cruelty of the Spaniards," "by the advice of many pious and God-fearing persons, who think that its publication will cause a desire to spring up in many Christian hearts to bring a prompt remedy to these evils, as enormous as they are multiplied." He designates the guilty governors, captains, courtiers, and connects them directly with their crimes. He does not say that they were gentlemen or Christians: "these brigands," "executioners," "barbarians," are his more appropriate phrases. If he had addressed them as gentlemen, the terrible scenes would have instantly ceased, and the system of Repartimientos would have been abandoned by men who were only waiting to be converted by politeness! He calls that plan of allotting the natives, and reducing them to Spanish overseership, "atrocious." Yet for some time it was technically legal: it was equivalent to what we call constitutional. So that it was by no means so bad as the anarchical attack which Las Casas made upon it! He tells where an infamous overseer was still living in Spain,–or at least, he says, "his family was living in Seville when I last heard about him." What a disgraceful attack upon an individual! how it must have hurt the feelings of a respectable family!–"How malignant!" cried the hidalgos; "How coarse!" the women; and "How ill-judged!" the clergy. He speaks of Cortés with contempt: why should he not? for he was only the burglar of a kingdom. But we read these sincere pages of Las Casas with satisfaction. The polished contemporaries of Abolitionists turn over the pages of antique denunciation, and their lymph really quickens in their veins as they read the prophetic vehemence of an Isaiah, the personality of a Nathan, the unmeasured vernacular of Luther, the satire and invective of all good upbraiders of past generations, until they reach their own, which yet waits for a future generation to make scripture and history of its speech and deeds. Time is the genial critic that effaces the contemporary glosses of interested men. It rots away the ugly scaffolding up which the bold words climbed, and men see the beautiful and tenacious arch which only genius is daring enough and capable to build. It is delightful to walk across the solid structure, with gratitude and taste in a glow. We love to read indictments of an exploded crime which we have learned to despise, or which we are committing in a novel form.

Charlevoix takes up this complaint of the imprudence of Las Casas, and, to illustrate it, thinks that he could not have anticipated the bad effects of the publication of his "Memoir upon the Cruelty of the Spaniards," for it appeared during the war with the revolted Netherlands, and was translated into Dutch by a Frenchman. "Nothing," he says, "so animated those people to persist in their rebellion, as the fear, that, if they entered into any accommodation with Spain, they would be served as the natives had been in the American Provinces, who were never so badly oppressed as when they felt most secure upon the faith of a treaty or convention." If the book of Las Casas really lent courage and motive to that noble resistance, as it undoubtedly did by confirming the mistrust of Spanish rule in the Low Countries, the honorable distinction should be preserved by history.

While a bad institution is still vigorous and aggressive, the divine rage of conscientious men is not so exhilarating. A different style of thought, like that which prevailed among the French missionaries to the Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is more acceptable to colonial susceptibility. A South-side religion is a favorable exposure for delicate and precarious products like indigo, sugar, coffee, and cotton. Las Casas had not learned to wield his enthusiastic pen in defence of the negro; but when the islands became well stocked with slaves, later Catholics eagerly reproduced the arguments of the Spanish encomiendas, and vindicated afresh the providential character of Slavery. "I acknowledge," says one, "and adore with all humility the profound and inconceivable secrets of God; for I do not know what the unfortunate nation has committed to deserve that this particular and hereditary curse of servitude should be attached to them, as well as ugliness and blackness." "It is truly with these unfortunates that the poet's saying is verified,–

"'Dimidium mentis Jupiter illis aufert,'–

"as I have remarked a thousand times that God deprives slaves of half their judgment, lest, recognizing their miserable condition, they should be thrown into despair. For though they are very adroit in many things which they do, they are so stupid that they have no more sense of being enslaved than if they had never enjoyed liberty. Every land becomes their country, provided they find enough to eat and drink, which is very different from the state of mind of the daughters of Zion, who cried, on finding themselves in a foreign country,–'Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini in terra aliena?'"[13 - Histoire Générale des Isles de St. Christophe, etc., 1654, par Du Tertre.]

Another missionary, in describing his method of administering baptism, says: "After the customary words, I add, 'And thee, accursed spirit, I forbid in the name of Jesus Christ ever to dare to violate this sacred sign which I have just made upon the forehead of this creature, whom He has bought with His blood.' The negro, who comprehends nothing of what I say or do, makes great eyes at me, and appears confounded; but to reassure him, I address to him through an interpreter these words of the Saviour to St. Peter: 'What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.'"

He complains that they do not appear to value the mystery of the Trinity as a necessary means of salvation: the negro does not understand what he is made to repeat, any more than a parrot. And here the knowledge of the most able theologian will go a very little ways. "Still, a missionary ought to think twice before leaving a man, of whatever kind, to perish without baptism; and if he has scruples upon this point, these words of the Psalmist will reassure his mind: 'Homines et jumenta salvabis, Domine': 'Thou, Lord, shall save both man and cattle!'"[14 - From a letter by the Jesuit father Le Pers, quoted by Charlevoix, Histoire de St. Domingue, Tom. IV. p. 369. Amsterdam, 1733.]

Father Labat is scandalized because the English planters refused to have their slaves baptized. Their clergymen told him, in excuse, that it was unworthy of a Christian to hold in slavery his brother in Christ. "But may we not say that it is still more unworthy of a Christian not to procure for souls bought by the blood of Jesus Christ the knowledge of a God to whom they are responsible for all that they do?" This idea, that the negroes had been first bought by Christ, must have been consoling and authoritative to a planter. The missionary has not advanced upon the Spanish theory, that baptism introduced the natives into a higher life.[15 - Upon the reputed effects of baptism, and some anecdotes connected with the administration of this rite, see Humboldt's Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, London, 1811, Vol. I. p. 165, note.] "However," says Labat, "this notion of the English does not affect them, whenever they can get hold of our negroes. They know very well that they are Christians, they cannot doubt that they have been made by baptism their brothers in Christ, yet that does not prevent them from holding them in slavery, and treating them like those whom they do not regard as their brothers."[16 - Nouveau Voyage aux Isles de l'Amerique, A la Haye, 1724, Tom. V. p. 42. Father Labat is delighted because the Dutch asked him to confess their slaves; and he records that many masters take great pains to have their Catholic slaves say their prayers morning and evening, and approach the sacrament; nor do they undertake to indoctrinate them with Calvinism.] This English antipathy to baptizing slaves, for fear of recognizing them as men by virtue of that rite, appears to have existed in the early days of the North-American Colonies. Bishop Berkeley, in his "Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations," etc., alludes to the little interest which was shown in the conversion of negroes, "who, to the infamy of England and scandal of the world, continue heathen under Christian masters and in Christian countries; which could never be, if our planters were rightly instructed and made sensible that they disappointed their own baptism by denying it to those who belong to them." This receives an explanation in a sermon preached by the Bishop in London, where he speaks of the irrational contempt felt for the blacks in the Plantation of Rhode Island, "as creatures of another species, who had no right to be instructed or admitted to the sacraments. To this may be added an erroneous notion that the being baptized is inconsistent with a state of slavery. To undeceive them in this particular, which had too much weight, it seemed a proper step, if the opinion of his Majesty's attorney and solicitor-general could be procured. This opinion they charitably sent over, signed with their own hands; which was accordingly printed in Rhode Island, and dispersed throughout the Plantation. I heartily wish it may produce the intended effect."[17 - A Sermon preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propogation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday, February 18, 1731.]

In a speech upon West-Indian affairs, which Lord Brougham delivered in the House of Commons in 1823, there is some account of the religious instruction of the slaves as conducted by the curates. He alludes in particular to the testimony of a worthy curate, who stated that he had been twenty or thirty years among the negroes, "and that no single instance of conversion to Christianity had taken place during that time,–all his efforts to gain new proselytes among the negroes had been in vain; all of a sudden, however, light had broken in upon their darkness so suddenly that between five and six thousand negroes had been baptized in a few days. I confess I was at first much surprised at this statement. I knew not how to comprehend it; but all of a sudden light broke in upon my darkness also. I found that there was a clue to this most surprising story, and that these wonderful conversions were brought about, not by a miracle, as the good man seems himself to have really imagined, and would almost make us believe, but by a premium of a dollar a head paid to this worthy curate for each slave that he baptized!"

We return to Las Casas once more, to state precisely his complicity in the introduction of the race whose sorrows have been so fearfully avenged by Nature in every part of the New World. Many of the writers who have treated of these transactions, as Robertson, for instance, have accused Las Casas, on the strength of a passage in Herrera, of having originated the idea that the blacks could be profitably substituted for the Indians. It is supposed, that, in his eagerness to save the Indians from destruction, he sought also to save colonial interests, by procuring still a supply of labor from a hardier and less interesting race. Thus his indignation at the rapid extinction of the Indians appears sentimental; to indulge his fancy for an amiable race, he was willing to subject another, with which he had no graceful associations, to the same liabilities. We have seen, however, that the practice of carrying negroes to Hayti was already established, seven years before Las Casas suggests his policy. The passage from Herrera has been misunderstood, as Llorente, Schoelcher, the Abbé Grégoire, and others, conclusively show. That historian says that Las Casa, disheartened by the difficulties which he met from the colonists and their political and ecclesiastical friends at home, had recourse to a new expedient, to solicit leave for the Spaniards to trade in negroes, "in order that their labor on the plantations and in the mines might render that of the natives less severe." This proposition, made in 1517, has been wrongly supposed to signalize the first introduction of blacks into America. Nor was Las Casas the first to make this proposition; for another passage of Herrera discloses that three priests of St. Jerome, who had been despatched to the colony by Cardinal Ximenes, for the experiment of managing it by a Board instead of by a Governor, recommended in 1516 that negroes should be sent out to stock the plantations, in order to diminish the forced labor of the natives. This was a concession by the Jeromites to the public opinion which Las Casas had created.[18 - Oviedo says nothing about this Jeromite proposition, but records the arrival of this priestly commission, (Hist. Ind., Book IV. ch. 3,) and that one object of it was to provide for the Indians,–"buen tractamiento é conserveçion de los indios." He says that all the remedial measures which it undertook increased the misery and loss of the natives. He was not humane. It seemed absurd to him that the Indians should kill themselves on the slightest pretext, or run to the mountains; and he can find no reason for it, except that their chief purpose in life (and one which they had always cherished, before the Christians came among them) was to eat, drink, "folgar, é luxuriar, é idolatrar, é exercer otras muchas suçiedades bestiales."] Negroes already existed there; the priests perceived their value, and that the introduction of a greater number would both improve the colony and diminish the anti-slavery agitation of the Dominicans. The next year this project was taken up by Las Casas, borrowed from the Jeromites as the only alternative to preserve a colony, to relieve the natives, and to keep the people interested in the wholesome reforms which he was continually urging upon the colonial administration.

He had no opportunity to become acquainted with the evils of negro slavery, but it is strange that he did not anticipate them. It was taken for granted by him that the blacks were enslaved in Africa, and he accepted too readily the popular idea that their lot was improved by transferring them from barbarous to Christian masters. Their number was so small in Hayti, and the island fell so suddenly into decay, that no formidable oppression of them occurred during his lifetime to replace his recollections of the horrors of Indian servitude. His plan did not take root, but it was remembered. Thus the single error of a noble man, committed in the fulness of his Christian aspirations, and at the very moment when he was representing to a generation of hard and avaricious men the divine charity, betrayed their victims to all the nations that sought wealth and luxury in the West, and pointed out how they were to be obtained. His compromise has the fatal history of all compromises which secure to the present a brief advantage, whose fearful accumulation of interest the future must disgrace, exhaust, and cripple itself to pay.

In 1519 the colony had already begun to decay, though all the external marks of luxury and splendor were still maintained. That was the date of a famous insurrection of the remnant of Indians, who occupied the mountains, and defended themselves for thirteen years against all the efforts of the Spaniards to reduce them. It was hardly worth while to undertake their subjection. Adventurers and emigrants were already leaving San Domingo to its fate, attracted to different spots of the Terra Firma, to Mexico and Peru, by the reported treasures. That portion of the colony which had engaged in agriculture found Indians scarce and negroes expensive. There was no longer any object in fitting out expeditions to reinforce the colony, and repair the waste which it was beginning to suffer from desertion and disease. The war with the natives was ignominiously ended by Charles V. in 1533, who found that the colony was growing too poor to pay for it. He despatched a letter to the cacique who had organized this desperate and prolonged resistance, flattered him by the designation of Dom Henri[19 - The priests gave him the name of Henri, when they baptized him, long previous to his revolt. He was called Henriquillo by way of Catholic endearment. But the consecrating water could not wash out of his remembrance that his father and grandfather had been burnt alive by order of a Spanish governor. What, indeed, can quench such fires? Yet this dusky Hannibal loved the exercises and pure restraints of the religion which had laid waste his family.] and profuse expressions of admiration, sent a Spanish general to treat with him, and to assign him a district to inhabit with his followers. Dom Henri thankfully accepted this pacification, and soon after received Las Casas himself, who had been commissioned to assure the sole surviving cacique and representative of two million natives that Spain was their friend! At last the Protector of the Indians has the satisfaction of meeting them with authoritative messages of peace. And this was the first salutation of Dom Henri, after his forty years' experience of Spanish probity, and thirteen years of struggle for existence: "During all this war, I have not failed a day to offer up my prayers, I have fasted strictly every Friday, I have watched with care over the morals and the conduct of my subjects, I have taken measures everywhere to prevent all profligate intercourse between the sexes";[20 - Oviedo, Hist. Ind., Book V. ch. 11, who gives the cacique little credit for some of his prohibitions, but on the whole praises him, and, after mentioning that he lived little more than a year from the time of this pacification, and died like a Christian, commends his soul to God. Oviedo hated the Indians, and wrote about colonial affairs coldly and in the Spanish interests.] thus nobly trying to recommend himself to the good Bishop, who had always believed in their capacity for temporal and spiritual elevation. He retired to a place named Boya, a dozen leagues from the capital. All the Indians who could prove their descent from the original inhabitants of the island were allowed to follow him. A few of them still remained in 1750; their number was only four thousand when Dom Henri led them away from Spanish rule to die out undisturbed.[21 - Histoire Politique et Statistique. Par Placide Justin.]

After its passionate and blood-thirsty life, the colony was sinking to sleep, not from satiety nor exhaustion, for the same race was holding its orgies in other countries, but from inability to gather fuel for its excesses. A long list of insignificant governors is the history of the island for another century. They did nothing to improve the condition of the inhabitants, whose distress was sometimes severe; but they continued to embellish the capital, which Oviedo described to Charles V. as rivalling in solidity and beauty any city in Spain. He wrote in 1538, and possessed a beautiful residence in the plain of St. John. The private houses were built substantially, in several stories, of stone, embowered in charming gardens; the public edifices, including the cathedral, displayed all the strength and rich ornamentation which had been common for a hundred years in the Spanish cities. There were several well-endowed convents, and a fine hospital. When Sir Francis Drake took possession of San Domingo in 1586, he attempted to induce the inhabitants, who had fled into the country, to pay an enormous ransom for their city, by threatening to destroy a number of fine houses every day till it was paid. He undertook the task, but found that his soldiers were scarcely able to demolish more than one a day, and he eventually left the city not materially damaged.

Antonio Herrera, in his "Description of the West Indies," gives the number of inhabitants of the city in 1530 as six hundred, and says that there were fourteen thousand Castilians, many of them nobles, who carried on the different interests of the colony. He has a list of seventeen towns, with brief descriptions of them.

It appears by this that the island had speedily recovered from the ill reports of the early emigrants, many of whom returned to Spain broken in purse and person, with excesses of passion and climate chronicled in their livid faces[22 - "The Indies are not for every one! How many heedless persons quit Spain, expecting that in the Indies a dinner costs nothing, and that there is nobody there in want of one; that as they do not drink wine in every house, why, they give it away! Many, Father, have been seen to go to the Indies, and to have returned from them as miserable as when they left their country, having gained from the journey nought but perpetual pains in the arms and legs, which refuse in their treatment to yield to sarsaparilla and palo santo, [lignum vitae,] and which neither quicksilver nor sweats will eject from their constitution." From a Spanish novel by Yanez y Rivera, "Alonzo, el Donado Hablador": "Alonzo, the Talkative Lay-Brother," written in 1624. New York, 1844.]. There was a period when everybody who could get away from the colony left it in disgust, and with the expectation that it would soon become extinct. It was to prevent such a catastrophe, which would have effectually terminated the explorations of Columbus, that he proposed to the Government, in 1496, to commute the punishments of all criminals and large debtors who were at the time in prison to a perpetual banishment to the island, persons convicted of treason or heresy being alone excepted. The advice was instantly adopted, without a thought of the consequences of reinforcing the malignant ambition of the colony with such elements. Persons capitally convicted were to serve two years without wages; all others were to serve on the same terms for one year; and they went about with the ingenious clog of a threat of arrest for the old crimes in case they returned to Europe.

The Government improved upon the hint of Columbus by decreeing that all the courts in Spain should condemn to the mines a portion of the criminals who would in the course of nature have gone to the galleys.[23 - Charlevoix, Histoire de St. Domingue, 1733, Tom.I. p.185, who notices the admission of Herrera that the Admiral made a great mistake, since malefactors should not be selected for the founders of republics. No, neither in Virginia nor in any virgin world.] Thus a new country, which invited the benign organization of law and religion, and held out to pure spirits an opportunity richer than all its crops and mines, was poisoned in its cradle. What wonder that its vigor became the aimless gestures of madness, that a bloated habit simulated health, and that decrepitude suddenly fell upon the uneasy life?

At the same time it was expressly forbidden to all commanders of caravels to receive on board any person who was not a born subject of the crown of Castile. This was conceived in the exclusive colonial policy of the time. It was a grotesque idea to preserve nationality by insisting that even criminals must respect the Spanish birthright. History counts the fitful pulses of this bluest blood of Europe, and hesitates to declare that such emigrants misrepresented the mother-country.

But after the middle of the sixteenth century, the inhabitants were pillaged by the public enemies of the mother-country, and by private adventurers of all lands. And yet, in 1587, the year after Drake's expedition, their fleet carried home 48 quintals of cassia, 50 of sarsaparilla, 134 of logwood, 893 chests of sugar, each weighing 200 pounds, and 350,444 hides of every kind. There is no account of indigo, and the cultivation of cotton had not commenced. Coffee was first introduced at Martinique during the reign of Louis XIV., who died in 1715. Its cultivation was not commenced in Jamaica till 1725.[24 - Some slips of Mocha fell into the hands of Europeans first by being carried to Batavia. It was then transplanted to Amsterdam in the end of the sixteenth century; and a present of some shrubs was made to Louis XIV., at the Peace of Utrecht. They flourished in his garden, and three shrubs were taken thence and shipped to Martinique in the care of a Captain de Cheu. The voyage was so prolonged that two of them died for want of moisture, and the captain saved the third by devoting to it his own ration of water.]

The negroes whom Hawkins procured on his first voyage to Africa were carried by him to San Domingo. This was in 1563, the date of England's first venture in the slave-trade. The English had sent vessels to the African coast as early as 1551, on private account, for gold and ivory; but as they had no West-Indian colony, and the trade in slaves was a monopoly, they had no object to increase the risks of a voyage which infringed upon the Portuguese right to Africa by carrying negroes away. Vessels were fitted out in 1552 and 1553 to trade for ivory and pepper; in the two following years the English interest in Africa increased, and a negro was occasionally carried away and brought to England.[25 - Hüne, Geschichte des Sclavenhandels, I. 300.] This appears to have been the first circumstance which attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth, and drew remonstrances from her before it became clear that a good deal of money could be made out of such transactions. She blamed Captain Hawkins, who had succeeded by treachery and violence in getting hold of three hundred negroes whom he carried to San Domingo, and disposed of in the ports of Isabella, Puerto-de-Plata, and Monte Christi. Her virtue was proof against this first speculation, although it was an exceedingly good one, for Hawkins filled his three vessels with hides, ginger, and a quantity of pearls, and freighted two more with hides and other articles which he sent to Spain. It was after his third voyage, in 1567, when he sold his negroes in Havana at a profit greater than he could derive from the decaying San Domingo, that the Queen forgot her scruples, and gave Hawkins a crest symbolical of his wicked success: "a demi-Moor, in his proper color, bound with a cord," made plain John a knight.[26 - When John's son, Richard, was fitting out a vessel for a voyage into the South Sea, ostensibly to explore, his mother-in-law had the naming of it at his request; and she called it "The Repentance." Sir Richard was puzzled at this; but his mother would give him no other satisfaction "then that repentance was the safest ship we could sayle in to purchase the haven of Heaven." The Queen changed the name to "Daintie."–Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knight, in his Voyage into the South Sea, A. D. 1593.]

But the Portuguese jealously watched their privilege to export men from Africa, so that only about forty thousand negroes were brought yearly by lawful and contraband channels to the different islands. Cuba obtained most of these. The greater part of the Portuguese trade took the direction of Brazil, for the sugar-cane had been carried from Madeira to Rio Janeiro in 1531. Formidable rivalry in selfishness was thus sown in every direction by the early splendor of San Domingo. When the Genoese merchants bought the original privilege to transport four thousand, they held the price of negroes at two hundred ducats. Their monopoly ceased in 1539, when a great market for slaves was opened at Lisbon; Spain could buy them there at a price varying from ten to fifty ducats a head, but their price delivered in good condition at San Domingo, including the inevitable percentage of loss, made them almost as expensive as before.

The capital was shattered by an earthquake in 1684. The people melted away, and fine houses, which were deserted by their owners, remained tenantless, and went to ruin. Valverde,[27 - Idea del Valor, etc., Madrid, 1785: An Idea of the Value of the Spanish Island, etc. By A.S. Valverde.] a Creole of the island, is the chronicler of its condition in the middle of the eighteenth century. He observes that the Spanish Creoles were living in such poverty that mass was said before daylight, so that mutual scandal at dilapidated toilets might not interfere with the enjoyment of religion. The leprosy was common, and two lazarettos were filled with its victims. The negro blood had found its way into almost every family; a female slave received her freedom as a legacy of piety or of lust. She could also purchase it for two hundred and fifty dollars; and if she was with child, an additional twelve dollars and fifty cents would purchase for the new-comer all the glories and immunities of Creole society. These were to doze and smoke in hammocks, and to cultivate listlessly about twenty-two dilapidated sugar-plantations and a little coffee. The trade in cattle with the French part of the island absorbed all the business and enterprise that remained. Still Valverde will not admit that the Spanish Creole was indolent: it is in consequence of a deficiency of negroes, he explains, that they cannot labor more!

A great injury was inflicted upon the colony by the exclusive commercial spirit of the mother-country. Spain was the first European government which undertook to interfere with the natural courses of trade, on the pretence of protecting isolated interests. In the eleventh century a great commercial competition existed between some Italian, French, and Spanish cities. To favor the last, when they were already enjoying their just share of trade, the King of Aragon prohibited, in 1227, "all foreign vessels from loading for Ceuta, Alexandria, or other important ports, if a Catalan ship was able and willing to take the cargo"; the commerce of Barcelona was in consequence of this navigation act seriously damaged.[28 - McCullagh's Industrial History of Free Nations; the Dutch, Vol. II. p. 51.] Spain treated her colonies afterward in the same spirit; and other countries, France in particular, pursued this narrow and destructive policy, wherever colonial success excited commercial jealousy and avarice.

"The commerce of the colony was all confined to the unwise arrangement of a Government counting-house, called the Casa de la Contratacion, (House of Trade,) through which all exports were sent out to the colonies and all remittances made in return. By this order of things, the want of free competition blasted all enterprise, and the exorbitant rates of an exclusive traffic paralyzed industry. The cultivation of the vine, the olive, and other staple productions of Spain, was prohibited. All commerce between the colonies was forbidden; and not only could no foreigner traffic with them, but death and confiscation of property were decreed to the colonist who should traffic with a foreigner,–slave-vessels alone being excepted."[29 - The History and Present Condition of St. Domingo, by J. Brown, M. D., 1837, p. 40. Even this exception in favor of slave-traders appears afterwards to have been withdrawn; for Charlevoix relates (Histoire de St. Domingue, Tom. III. p. 36) that the Governor of San Domingo got Tortuga away from the French, in 1654, by means of two negroes whom he had purchased cheap from some Dutchmen, and who showed him a path by which he drew up two cannon to command the fort. He was recalled, and beheaded at Seville, because he had bought negroes of foreigners.]

Thus the policy which ought to have favored the island first settled by Spaniards, against the attractions of Peru, Mexico, and Cuba, towards which the mother-colony was rapidly emptying her streams of life, was not forthcoming. These Spaniards, who were enslaved by the tenacious fancy that El Dorado still glittered for them in some distant place, needed to be attached to the soil by generous advantages, such as premiums for introducing and sustaining the cultivation of new productions, immunity from imposts either by Government or by the middle-men of a company, and liberty to exchange hides, tallow, and crops of every kind with the French, Dutch, and English, in every port of the island, to convert a precarious illicit trade with those nations into a natural intercourse, so that different articles of food, which were often scarce, and sometimes failed entirely, might be regularly supplied, until by such fostering care the colony should grow strong enough to protect itself against its own and foreign adventurers. But if all these measures had been accordant with the ideas of that age, they would have been defeated by its passions.

Other people now appear upon the scene, to put the finishing touch to this decay, while they freshen the old crimes and assume the tradition of excess and horror which is the island's history.

[To be continued.]

MY LOST ART

I was born in a small town of Virginia. My father was a physician, more respected than employed; for it was generally supposed, and justly, that he was more devoted to chemical experiment and philosophical speculation than to the ordinary routine of his profession. It was quite natural, that, in course of time, another physician should come to dash by, with fine turnout, my father's humble gig; and such, indeed, was the result. It was equally natural, that, as the dear old man looked his own fate straight in the eyes, and saw his patients falling away one by one, he should adjourn practical success to his only son,–myself. Quiet, but unremitting, were his efforts to make me avoid the rock on which his worldly fortunes had been wrecked. In vain: to me there was a light in his eye which lured me on to those visionary shores from which he warned me; and whilst he was holding out the labors and duties of a regular and steadfast practitioner as merciful and honorable among the highest, there was an undertone in his voice, of which he was unconscious, which told me plainly that the knowledge he most valued in himself was that apparently most unproductive. My mother had died several years before; my father's affection, pride, and hope rested utterly upon me. I knew not then how sad it was to disappoint him. Often, when he returned to his office, hoping to find me studying the "Materia Medica," I was discovered poring over some old volumes on the "Human Humors, or the Planetary Sympathies of the Viscera." A sincere grief filled his eyes at such times, but I could not help feeling that it was mingled with respect. The heaviest cross I had to bear was that the curious old volumes which attracted me were gradually abstracted from the library.

One day, walking with my father on the outskirts of the town, we found a merry throng gathered about the car of a travelling daguerrotypist. Having nothing more entertaining on hand, we entered the car and sat, whilst the village belles, and the newly affianced, and the young brides came for their miniatures. This was interesting; but when they were gone, my father and the artist entered upon a conversation which was far more absorbing to me, and indeed colored the whole of my subsequent life. My father made inquiries concerning the materials used in daguerrotyping, and the progress of the art; and the artist, finding him an intelligent man, entered with spirit upon his relation.

"It is, indeed, wonderful," he said, "that more has not been accomplished through this discovery; and I can attribute this to nothing but the lack amongst our poor fraternity of the capital necessary for carrying on and out the many experiments suggested to us daily in the course of our operations."

"About what point," asked my father, "do these suggestions usually gather?"

"That which chiefly excites our speculation is the unfathomed mystery of the nitrate of silver. The story of this wonderful agent is not half unfolded; and every artist knows that its power is limited only by the imperfection of the materials with which it has to act. Its sensitiveness approaches that of thought itself. I have a very small quantity of highest quality which I use on rare occasions and generally for experiments. A few days ago I caught with it this first flash of sunrise,–see, is it not perfect?"

The picture which he showed us was, indeed, beautiful. A wave of light bursting upon the plate to a foamy whiteness, almost beyond the power of the eye to bear. But that which excited me most was the photograph of a star, which he had fixed after highly magnifying it. What a fascination there was about that little point of fire!

It turned out to be the star under which I was born: its fatal influences were already upon me: I returned home to pass a night sleepless, indeed, but not without dreams.

Why is it that a new idea, taking possession of the young, raising some new object for their pursuit, does, in the proportion of its power, foreclose even the most accustomed confidences? My father was precisely the one man living who would have sympathized in the purpose which from the time of this visit sucked into its whirl all my desires and powers; but that purpose seemed at once to turn my heart to stone. For a week I was acting a part before the kindest and simplest of men; and I deliberately went forward to reach my object over his happiness and even life.

When the daguerrotypist left town, I easily found the direction he had taken; and, after waiting several days to prevent any suspicious coincidence in the time of our departure, I one night, soon after midnight, crept from my bed and followed him. I overtook him at a village some twenty miles distant, where he was remaining a day or two, and easily procured an engagement with him, since I desired nothing but to serve him and be taught the mechanical details of his art. My father had no clue whatever to my direction, for he had not dreamed of anything unusual in my thoughts or plans. He was now entirely alone. But I knew that I was helpless against the phantom which was leading me forth; it also contained a stimulant which was able to bear me safely through seasons of self-reproach and depression.

For about six months I got along with the artist very well. My desire to learn made me attentive, prompt, and respectful. But at the end of that time I had learned all that he could teach me, and, as I had engaged with him for an ulterior object, the business began to lose its interest for me, and the inconveniences of wandering about in a car, hitherto unthought of, were now felt. The relations between my master and myself had been so agreeable that for a long time this change in my feelings was not alluded to in words. He was a thrifty Yankee, and with a Yankee's sense of justice; so he offered me a fair proportion of the profits. But at the end of the year he told me that he thought I was "too much of a Virginian" ever to follow this occupation, and that, having seen my father and known his position, he was surprised that he had ever favored such a pursuit for me. This was, indeed, the falsehood I had told him.

It was in a Canadian village that I parted with this gentlemanly and generous New-Englander. When I left him, I was not penniless, but a bitter sense of my loneliness was upon me, and a consciousness of the uncandid and cruel turn I had done my father brought me almost to the verge of suicide. On Sunday morning I entered a church in Toronto, and tears flowed down my face as I heard the minister read the parable of the Prodigal Son. It seemed to me as a voice from home, and I determined to go to my father. Without hesitating, or stopping an hour, I took all the money I had to pay my way, and in about six days afterward, sitting beside the driver on the stage-coach, looked from a hill upon the house in which I was born. A pang shot through my heart at that instant. Until that moment I had dreamed of my father's seeing me whilst I was yet a great way off, of resting my weary head upon his warm, infolding heart. But now the dream faded, and a pain as of an undying worm gnawed already on my soul. I paused at the gate, nearly paralyzed by fear. Was he dead? No; I felt this was not the case; but I felt that something worse than this was about to befall me. I gained strength to enter the hall, and sat down there. I heard several voices. I went on to the well-known chamber. A physician and a nurse were there. Standing in the door a moment, I heard my father say in a whisper, "If he ever comes back, let him have all; tell him his father loved him to the last; but do not tell him more, do not make him suffer,–mark you!" A moment more, and I was kneeling by his dying bed. "My father, my father, I have murdered you!" After some moments it was impressed upon the old man that his penitent son was by his side. I almost looked for the curse that I deserved; but a peaceful light was on his face as he said,–"I'm sorry I hid the books from you, child. I meant well,–I meant well,–I erred. If I can help you from up there, I will." Life departed with these words.

It will not be wondered that I became a recluse. The recluse is usually one cast up from such bleak experiences of sin and grief that he fears to launch upon life again, and only seeks to hide him in any cavern that may be found along the shore that has received him. Thus it was with me, at least. I dreaded to look one of my townsmen in the face,–they knew all: and many years after, when the harsh judgments which would have received me were softened by my lonely penance and sadness, and proffers came from society, my solitude had become sacred to me; and that old star which the daguerrotypist had shown me still reigned.

My father had left me enough property to enable me to carry forward the investigations and experiments to which all voices seemed to call me. I had an upper room prepared with a skylight and all other appliances. I purchased an excellent instrument, and some very strong diameters for magnifying photographs. The trials I had made convinced me that the minuteness and extent of objects photographed were limited only by the comparative coarseness of the materials through and on which the object passed. So I was very particular in selecting lenses. Further trials, however, led me to believe that the plate was still more important. Obtaining a steel of perfect grain, I spent days in giving it the highest polish it would bear, and kept it ready for any important office. By means of a long and bright tin reflector, (the best,) my artificial light was ready, in case I should desire to photograph at night; and, indeed, it was the hope of making some astronomic discovery that was leading me on.

Calm and clear was the night on which I brought these my treasures forth. Jupiter was blazing in the heavens, and challenged Art to seize his majestic lineaments. It turned out a point of fire much like that which my master had exhibited to me. I mixed a finer nitrate, repolished my plate, and was this time rewarded by seeing, under all the diameters which I had, the satellites also. Very much thrilled even with this degree of success, and taking the picture on paper, I put my plate away, and set myself to study what I should do next. It had not yet occurred to me to inquire of myself what definite thing I really was after. My deepest hope was in the undefinableness of its object: I knew only that a clear idea (and Plato says all clear ideas are true) of the subtile susceptibilities of nitrate of silver, limited only by materials, had engendered within me, through much pondering, an embryo idea, to the development of which my life was intuitively consecrated. I would not define it to myself, because I felt (intuitively, also) that it was something illimitable, therefore indefinable.

I began to experiment now with lenses, placing various kinds and powers one above another. It occurred to me that I had hitherto brought their power to bear only upon whole, objects. But what would be the result of magnifying an object daguerrotyped until it covered the disc of the reflector, then photographing it, and afterward magnifying a central segment of the picture to its utmost, and again renewing the experiment on this? An infinite series of analyses might be carried into the heart of an image; and might not something therein, invisible not only to the naked eye, but to the strongest magnifier, be revealed? Following this reflection, I took a common stereoscopic view and subjected it to my lenses. It was an ordinary view of a Swiss hamlet, the chief object of which was an inn with a sign over the door surmounted by a bush. The only objects upon the sign discernible with a common convex eye-glass were a mug of beer on one side and a wine-bottle on the other. Their position indicated that something else was on the sign: the stronger diameters presently brought out "CARL ELZNERS"; the strongest I had were exhausted in bringing out "GARTEN UND GASTHAUS." When this, the utmost dimension, was reached, I photographed it. Then, taking ordinary magnifiers, I began upon that part of the sign where, if anything remained unevoked, it would be found. The reader will observe, that, each time that the result of one enlargement was made the subject for another, the loss was in the field or range which must be paid for intensity and minuteness. Thus, in the end, there might appear but one letter of a long sentence, or a part of a letter. In this case, however, the result was better than I had expected: I read distinctly, "–EIN, WEI–"; and Luther's popular lines, "Wer liebt nicht wein, weib," etc., were brought to my mind at once. Thus I had the sign in full: the powerful agent of the sun on earth had fixed Carl Elzner and his Protestant beer-garden on the stereoscopic view forever, whether the dull eyes of men could read them or not.

Thrilled and animated by this success, I hastened to apply the same plan of magnifying segment by segment to my photograph of Jupiter. But, alas, although something suggestive did appear, or so I fancied, the image grew dimmer with each analysis, until, under the higher powers, it disappeared, and the grainings of the card superseded the planet. Had I not proved that my principle was good in the case of the Swiss sign-board, I should now have given it up as the whim of an over-excited brain. But now I thought only of the assertion of the daguerrotypist, that "the nitrate was limited in sensitiveness only by the imperfection of the materials," (i. e. plates, glass, reflectors, etc.,) and I had heard the same repeated by the paper which had finally replaced the picture it held. I now determined to risk on the experiment the elegant steel plate on whose polish I had spent so much pains and time. I took the portrait of Jupiter thereon, and fixed it forever. This time I could not be mistaken in supposing that as the field of vision shrank some strange forms appeared; but I could be certain of none which were essentially different from those revealed by the largest telescopes. My narrowing and intensifying process then began to warn me of another failure: when I had reached the last point at which the image could be held at all, the grain of the steel plate was like great ropes, and it was only after resting my eyes for some time, then suddenly turning them upon it, that I could see any picture at all. For an instant it would look like an exceedingly delicate lichen,–then nothing was visible but huge bars of steel.

Ah, with what despair did I see the grand secret which had so long hovered before me and led my whole life now threatening to elude and abandon me forever! "But," I cried, "it shall not go so easily, by Heaven! If there be a genius in the casket, unsealed it shall be!"