George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

[170] colonies? And would the purchaser be scrupulously

Chap. V.}

inquisitive of the birthplace and instruction of his laborers? Besides, the culture of sugar was now successfully begun; and the system of slavery, already riveted, was not long restrained by the scruples of men in power. King Ferdinand himself sent from Seville

1510.

fifty slave¹ to labor in the mines; and, because it was said, that one negro could do the work of four Indians, the direct traffic in slaves between Guinea and Hispaniola was enjoined by a royal ordinance,² and de-

1511.

liberately sanctioned by repeated decrees.³ Was it

1512-3

not natural that Charles V., a youthful monarch, surrounded by rapacious courtiers, should have readily granted licenses to the Flemings to transport Negroes

1516.

to the colonies? The benevolent Las Casas, who had seen the native inhabitants of the New World vanish away, like dew, before the cruelties of the Spaniards, who felt for the Indians all that an ardent charity and the purest missionary zeal could inspire, and who had seen the African thriving in robust⁴ health under the sun of Hispaniola, returning from America to plead

1517.

the cause of the feeble Indians, in the same year which saw the dawn of the Reformation in Germany, suggested the expedient,⁵ that negroes might still further be employed to perform the severe toils which they alone could endure. The avarice of the Flemings greedily seized on the expedient; the board of trade