Page:The West Indies, and Other Poems.djvu/90

freedom that ever existed, 'while he contended earnestly for the liberty of the people born in one quarter of the globe, laboured to enslave the inhabitants of another region, and, in his zeal to save the Americans from the yoke, pronounced it to be lawful and expedient to impose one still heavier on the Africans.'—Robertson's History of America, Vol. I., Part III. But the circumstance connected by Dr Robertson with this supposed scheme of Las Casas is unwarranted by any authority, and makes his own of no value. He adds,—'the plan of Las Casas was adopted. Charles V. granted a patent to one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right of importing four thousand negroes into America.' Herrera, the only author whom Dr Robertson pretends to follow, does not, in any place, associate his random charge against Las Casas with this acknowledged and most infamous fact. The crime of having first recommended the importation of African slaves into the American islands is attributed, by three writers of the life of Cardinal Ximenes, (who rendered himself illustrious by his opposition to the trade in its infancy,) to Chievres, and by two others to the Flemish nobility themselves, who obtained the monopoly aforementioned, and which was sold to some 'Genoese merchants for 25,000 ducats: and they were the first who brought into a regular form that commerce for slaves, between Africa and America, which has since been car-