Note 911 — Chapter VI

There is a valuable life of Las Casas in Quintana, “Vidas de Españoles Célebres” (Madrid, 1833, 12mo, Tom. III. pp. 255-510). The seventh article in the Appendix, concerning the connection of Las Casas with the slave-trade, will be read with particular interest; because, by materials drawn from unpublished documents of unquestionable authenticity, it makes it certain, that, although at one time Las Casas favored what had been begun earlier,—the transportation of negroes to the West Indies, in order to relieve the Indians,—as other good men in his time favored it, he did so under the impression, that, according to the law of nations, the negroes thus brought to America were both rightful captives taken by the Portuguese in war and rightful slaves. But afterwards he changed his mind on the subject. He declared “the captivity of the negroes to be as unjust as that of the Indians,”—“ser tan injusto el cautiverio de los negros como el de los Indios,”—and even expressed a fear, that, though he had fallen into the error of favoring the importation of black slaves into America from ignorance and good-will, he might, after all, fail to stand excused for it before the Divine Justice. Quintana, Tom. III. p. 471.