![]() On the other hand, few of those who left Spain, animated by high motives, resistedĪmbition, amidst conditions so singularly favourable to their gratification, and ing, as ridiculous Thought their singular methods would procure the conversion of the Indians. Perverted as their conception of the true spirit of Christian propaganda may appear to us, it may not be doubted that many of these mated by honest missionary zeal Pound the doctrines or Christian religion.ĭeeds of blood by championing the unity and purity of the faith ^two things that were held to be of paramount importance, especially in Spain, whereĬommunion with the Church a Jew or a Mahometan, or in other Strikingly disproportionate to their fitness to ex. The mailed conquerors and eager treasure-seekers who followed in the wake of Columbus were con-Īvarice and ambition alone, however, do not adequately explain their undertakings, and we find The conditions under which Las Casas and his co-workers laboured were discouragingly adverse. Very Indians whose cause they championed protomartyrs of liberty in the new world. Times falling victims to the blind violence of the History has made but scant and infrequent mention of these first obscure heroes, who faced obloquy and even risked starvation in the midst of irate colonists, whose avarice and brutality they fearlessly rebuked in the name of religion and humanity: they sank, after in the Vanguard of Spanish colonial expansion in America, but such was the fact. The popular with conception the foundation and extension of the Inquisition, the Dominicans may appear in a understanding. To defend the liberty of the Indian and his moral ![]() On the eternal homage of all lovers of liberty, and it is the figure of a victor, who served God and loved his fellow-men. Practical application of all his principles, yet theĭevoted champion of freedom stands on a pedestal of enduring fame, of which the foundafigure of this The fruits of his victories were not always immediate or satisfying, nor did he live to see the His moral triumph was complete, and he issued from every encounter victorious. Pelled, he girded his loins to meet his enemies with undiminished courage, on the battle-ground they themselves had selected. When his dream of an ideal colony, peopled by permodel was dis-įect Christians labouring for the conversion of True, he also had a vision of Utopia, and his flights of imaginative altruism frequently elevated him so far above the realities of this world, that the incorrigible frailties of human nature seemed to vanish from his calculations, but when the rude awakening came, he neither forsook the fight nor failed to profit by the bitter lesson. He was preeminently a man of action to whom nothing humanĪnd whose gift of universal sympathy an uncommon practical abilityĪttention and won the approval of the foremost statesmen and moralists of his time. Bom in an age of both civil and religious despotism, his voice was incessantly raised in vindication of the inherent and inalienable right of every humanīeing to the enjoyment of liberty. It in no degree lessens the glory of Las Casas to insist upon the historical fact that he was neither the first Spaniard to defend the liberty of the American Indians, nor was he' alone in sustaining the struggle, to which the best years of a life that all but spanned a century were exclusively dedicated. ![]() Have defended and advanced the cause of just liberty, and, at the same time, to depict the conditions under which the curse of slavery was first introduced into North America. It is sought in the present work to assign to the noblest Spaniard who ever landed in the western world, his true place Study the events of his tempestuous life with serene and impartial temper, solely for the important light they throw on the history of human progress. PREFACE controversies which Bartholomew de Las THECasas was, more than a century, the of WITHDRAWN BY METROPOLITAN TORONTO LIBRARYīartholomew de Las Casas his life, apostolate,
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