Bartholomeo de las Casas rose, and made our vassals, even let them be so; the law

the following reply:

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of the conqueror indeed authorizes thus ; "ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE: I was one of but then what have they done to deserve the first who went to America, when it slavery? He adds, that they are stupid, was discovered under the reign of the invin- brutal, and addicted to vices of every kind; cible monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, your but is this to be wondered at? Can better majesty's predecessors. Neither curiosity things be expected from a nation deprived nor interest prompted me to undertake so of gospel light? Let us pity, but not oplong and dangerous a voyage, the saving press them; let us endeavor to instruct, of the souls of heathens being my sole ob- enlighten, and reform them; let us disciject. Why was I not allowed to labor as pline, but not plunge them into despair. assiduously as the ample harvest required? All this time religion is used as a cloak to Why was I not permitted, even at the ex- cover such crying acts of injustice. How! pense of my blood, to ransom so many shall chains be the first fruits which these thousand souls, who fell unhappy victims people reap from the gospel? But will it to avarice or lust? Some would persuade be possible for us to inspire them with a us that barbarous executions were neces- love for its dictates, now they are so ensary, in order to punish or check the re-venomed by hatred, and exasperated at bellion of the Americans: but let us inquire their being dispossessed of that invaluable to whom they are owing. Did not these blessing, LIBERTY? Did the apostles nations receive the Spaniards, who came employ such methods in their conversion among them, with gentleness and humani- of the gentiles? They themselves subty? Did they not show more joy in pro-mitted to chains, but loaded no man with portion, in lavishing treasures upon them, them; Christ came to free, not to enslave than the Spaniards did greediness in re-us; submission to the faith he left us ought ceiving them? But our avarice was not yet satiated though they gave up to us their lands, their settlements, and their riches, we also would tear from them their wives, their children, and their liberties. Could we imagine them so miserable as not to show any resentment, though we hanged and burnt them?

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to be a voluntary act, and should be propagated by persuasion, gentleness, and reason; violence and force will make hypocrites only, but never true worshippers.

"Permit me now to ask the bishop, whether the Americans, since their being enslaved, have discovered a stronger desire to become Christians? Whether their several masters have endeavored to dispel their ignorance, by pouring instruction into their minds? And what advantage have either religion or the state reaped, from this distribution of the slaves? At my first arrival in Hispaniola, it contained millions of inhabitants, and there now remain scarce an hundredth part of them.

"To blacken these unhappy people, their enemies assert, that they are scarce human creatures but it is we who ought to blush, for having been less men, and more barbarous than they. What have they done? only defended themselves when attacked, and repulsed injuries and violence by force of arms. Despair always furnishes those who are drove to the last extremity with weap"Thousands have perished by want, ons; but the Romans are instanced to give fatigue, merciless punishments, cruelty, and a sanction to our enslaving these nations. barbarity: these men are murdered in The person who speaks thus is a Christian, sport; they are dragged into dreadful cavand a bishop. Is this gospel? What erns, and there denied the light of the right have we to enslave a people who were skies, and that of the gospel. If the blood born free, and whom we disturbed, though { unjustly shed of one man only, calls loudly they never offended us? If they must be for vengeance, how strong must be the

cry of that of so many unhappy creatures, anguish, have refused all sustenance till which is shedding daily? I therefore they perished. humbly implore your highness's clemency, for subjects so unjustly oppressed, and take the liberty to declare, that if you do not afford them the relief in your power, heaven will, one day, call you to an account for the numberless acts of cruelty which you might have prevented."

Prince Charles highly applauded the good bishop's zeal, and promised to redress the grievances complained of. His promise, however, appeared to be that of a courtier, rather than of a generous prince ;quently mean enough to steal the tools and for he totally forgot to perform: so that the poor Hispaniolans dwindled away beneath oppression and barbarity, or if they fled to the woods or mountains, were hunted and destroyed like wild beasts.

Some let them out to work to other masters, who never failed to make them earn While the poor people of Hispaniola { what they paid for their hire. Others were were thus oppressed, the Spaniards rev-let out to travellers, who harassed them in elled in luxuries, and lived in the utmost long journies, and through rugged ways, splendor, till the mines were drained of their treasures, and most of the natives were worn out by working them, or had fallen martyrs to the cruelty of their ty

Incredible as the following circumstances { put to death, and destroyed, eight hundred may appear, they are as well authenticated { thousand of the inhabitants of that country.

as any facts that ever were delivered by the pen of history, and are even attested by many of the Roman catholic missionaries themselves, as well as by the beforementioned Bartholomeo de las Cases, viz:— 1. The Spaniards stripped a large and very populous town of all its inhabitants, whom they drove to the mines, leaving all the children behind them, without the least idea of providing for their subsistance, by which inhuman proceeding six thousand helpless infants perished.

Between the years 1523 and 1533, five hundred thousand natives of Nicaragua were transported to Peru, where they all perished by incessant labor in the mines.

In the space of twelve years, from the first landing of Cortez on the continent of America, to the entire reduction of the populous empire of Mexico, the amazing number of four millions of Mexicans perished, through the unparalleled barbarity of the Spaniards. To come to particulars, the city of Cholula consisted of thirty thousand. 2. As the Spaniards were marching tow- houses, by which its great population may ard a large town, the inhabitants came be imagined. The Spaniards seized on out to meet them with refreshments, not-all the inhabitants, who refusing to turn withstanding which they fell upon these Roman catholics, as they did not know the defenceless people, and put them all in- meaning of the religion they were ordered discriminately to the sword. to embrace, the Spaniards put them all to 3. A Spanish officer, having three hun-death, cutting to pieces the lower sort of dred Americans allotted to him as slaves, people, and burning those of distinction. he, in only three months, killed two hundred and sixty of them, by excessive labor, and hard living, in the mines.

4. A Spanish commander, in 1514, destroyed all the inhabitants of a tract of land of above five hundred miles in length.

5. An officer, under the above commander, murdered above two thousand persons in one expedition.

Whenever the people of any town had the reputation of being rich, an order was immediately sent, that every person in it should turn Roman catholic: if this was not directly complied with, the town was instantly plundered, and the inhabitants murdered; and if it was complied with, a pretence was soon after made to strip the inhabitants of their wealth.

One of the Spanish governors seized upon a very worthy and amiable Indian prince, and in order to extort from him where his treasures were concealed, caused his feet to be burnt till the marrow dropped from his bones, and he expired through the extremity of the torments he underwent.

In the interval, between the years 1514 and 1522, the governor of Terra Firma

Pedro de Alvarado, one of the officers under the command of Cortez, laid waste a whole province, and committed innumerable murders and barbarities on the poor defenceless natives.

In the province of Honduras, near two millions of the natives perished, the Spaniards setting fire to the towns, and burning the inhabitants in their houses.

Sometimes the Spaniards spared the handsomest American women, not through motives of humanity, but merely to gratify their lusts, or make them domestic drudges. Exasperated at the cruelties exercised on them, some of the Mexicans dug pits across the public roads, in which they set sharp stakes, and then covered them slightly over so artfully, that the danger could not be perceived. A few of the Spanish horse falling into these holes, the Spaniards were so enraged, that they seized a great number of the natives, filled the pits with them, and buried them alive.

One of the Spanish commanders, in a few years, destroyed eight thousand Mexicans, by half starving them, and making them work hard, to build him a superb

Romish missionaries have been continually sent to America, not so much (in reality) to propagate religion, as to aggrandize the

palace, and lay out elegant gardens to it. what was meant by the Roman catholic Twenty thousand of the natives being em- persuasion, very naturally refused. ployed to carry the baggage of the Span-refusal was immediately made a handle of iards upon an expedition, all except two by the Spaniards, who thereupon seized hundred were harassed to death by their their persons, plundered the houses, rancruel masters, before the return of the troops. sacked the temples, murdered many of the The governor of Jucatan, in 1526, not inhabitants, and enslaved the rest. finding any gold in that province, seized upon a great number of the inhabitants, and sold them for slaves, to make amends for his disappointment. To account for papal power; for, on the first discovery of these cruelties, the Spaniards absurdly al-America, the pope invested the kings of ledged: "That the inhuman butcheries formerly committed by the Americans, in sacrificing so many rational creatures to their wicked idols, was a sufficient warrant to justify those who should divest them of their country."-" But (says an intelligent writer) the same argument might, with much greater reason, be urged against the Spaniards themselves, who sacrificed so many millions of Indians to their darling idol, gold."

Spain with the sovereignty of it, under the title of the royal patrimony, upon condition that the catholic monarchs should maintain a multitude of priests, friars, jesuits, &c., in America, to fascinate the people, and advance the power and authority of the Roman pontiffs.

Multitudes of secular priests in South America, live with all the splendor of men of the greatest opulence.

In some towns they have had such power as frequently to reverse the sentence of the civil magistrate, whether it related to fines, imprisonment, whipping, or death; and if the civil magistrates appeared in the least refractory, these ecclesiastical tyrants

The Spanish officers, upon their first entering into any country, or province, began their operations by summoning the people to submit to the pope, and the king of Spain, and to turn Roman catholics. The people, not knowing who the pope and {would imprison them for contempt of the the king of Spain were, not understanding church.

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JUDGMENTS OF GOD ON PERSECUTORS.

HOUGH the Omnipotent, Almighty displeasure, from such actions through his mercy and as our consciences tell us must certainly justice, does not always offend his holy laws. punish in this world those In scarcely any instance has this been. who have, in the most more remarkably conspicuous, than the flagrant manner, offended punishments he has thought proper to inhis holy ordinances, but reserves to himself flict on those who have been the persecutheir punishment in a future state; yet the tors of his children in holiness and truth. numerous instances that might be brought, Many examples may be produced from where it has, even in this life, pleased his history, both sacred and profane, of all divine will to show us his terrible judg-ages, some of the most distinguished of ments on such offenders, may serve to which we shall lay before our readers. deter us, by these dreadful examples of his

The examples of this kind to be deduced.

period, let us take notice of the hand of God on Sigismund, emperor of Germany, for his unjustifiable treatment of John Huss, and Jerome of Prague. After the martyr

from the Holy Scriptures, as of Pharaoh, Saul, Jezebel, with many others in the Old Testament, and of Herod, Judas, Pilate, &c., in the New, are, we trust, so generally known in this Christian country,dom of those eminent lights of the reformaas not to need particularizing.

tion, by his orders, nothing he took in
hand succeeded, but a series of the most
unhappy events attended him and his
family, which, in one generation, became
extinct: he, in his wars, was
ever the
loser; and his empress Barbara turned out
so infamously lewd, as to be a lasting in-
famy to her family, and disgrace to her sex.
In the reign of Henry II. of France, the

Waving, therefore, a further mention of the sacred histories, we shall examine the profane. In the Roman history, what can be more striking on this subject than the miserable end of the emperor Nero, that bitter persecutor of Christianity, whose agonies were so great, from the shocking barbarity with which he was treated, even by his own subjects, that he, in vain, im-Chancellor Oliver, who, at the instigation plored to be eased by death from his sufferings; and when he could find neither friend nor enemy to grant even this request, he added the crime of suicide to his enormous vices, and, unlamented, perished by his own hand.

of Cardinal Lorrain, brother to that implacable enemy of the gospel the duke of Guise, had stretched the authority of the laws to bring many worthy persons to utter destruction, for their adherence to the truth: this unjust judge, being struck with great

fell sick, and so great were the horrors of his tormented conscience for his cruel decrees against the righteous, that he could not rest day or night, for the torture of his wounded mind, but shortly expired, horri bly shrieking out with a loud cry, in his last moments: "Oh! cardinal, thou wilt make us all to be damned," with which words he gave up the ghost.

The two emperors, Diocletian and Maxi-remorse and self-conviction of his misdeeds, minian, rigid enemies to the Christian faith, after abdicating, through vexatious circumstances, their thrones, both died unhappily: the latter, in particular, in his attempting to restore himself, unnaturally falling by the means of his own son Maxentius, who likewise came to as untimely an end as his parent, being drowned, in the prime of his life, and the very meridian of his sins and impieties.

Neither did the cardinal himself, nor his brother the duke of Guise, long triumph in the success of their bloody machinations, as the former shortly after died, and the latter fell a sacrifice to the daggers of his exasperated countrymen.

The example of the emperor Maximinus, another persecutor of Christ's church, deserves recital. Soon after his setting forth his impious decrees against the unoffending Christians, which were engraved in brass, he was, by the just judgment of the Most Hoimeister, an arch papist, and a chief High, afflicted with a dreadful and unnat-pillar of the pope's anti-christian doctrine, ural disease, having lice, and other shock- as he was proceeding on his journey to ing vermin, crawling from his very entrails, Ratisbon, to be present at a council held in so terrible a manner, as to render abor- there, and to defend the Roman superstitive every method to afford him relief; and tions against the defenders of Christ's attended with so horrid a putrescent stench, gospel, was prevented from executing his that for several days before his death no impious purpose, being suddenly seized in person would hazard their lives to give him his progress, near the city of Ulmes, with the least assistance. an extreme illness, of which he almost instantly expired, in great agonies, crying out in the most horrid manner.

To leave the Roman history, and turn our eyes on transactions nearer the present