Page:The West Indies, and Other Poems.djvu/88

indeed the only accuser of Las Casas, nineteen years before the epoch of his pretended project.

Herrera (from whom other authors have negligently taken the fact for granted, on his bare word) does not quote a single authority in support of his assertion, that Las Casas recommended the importation of negroes into Hispaniola. The charge itself was first published thirty-five years after the death of Las Casas. All writers antecedent to Herrera, and contemporary with him, are silent on the subject, although several of these were the avowed enemies of Las Casas. Herrera's veracity on other points is much disputed, and he displays violent prejudices against the man whom he accuses. It may be added, that he was greatly indebted to him for information as an historian of the Indies.

In the numerous writings of Las Casas himself, still extant, there is not one word in favour of slavery of any kind, but they abound with reasoning and invective against it in every shape; and, among his eloquent appeals and comprehensive plans on behalf of the oppressed Indians, there is not a solitary hint in recommendation of the African Slave Trade. He only twice mentions the negroes through all his multifarious writings: in one instance he merely names them as living in the islands, (in a manuscript in the National Library at Paris;) and in the same work he proposes no other remedy for the miseries of the aboriginal inhabitants, than the