From a photograph of the original portrait by Pantoja in the Prado Museum. (by permission of J. Laurent & Co., Madrid)
At this time a movement was set on foot by the Spanish colonists in America to obtain from the Crown the establishment of the encomienda system in perpetuity. The movement was opportune, for Spanish finances were at a low ebb and the King, being hard pressed for ready money, might be tempted to yield his consent to this simple means tor raising the considerable sum the petitioners would gladly pay. This important question seemed likely to be submitted to Philip during his stay in England, where an agent of the colonists in Peru, Don Antonio Ribera, was ready to open negotiations. [pg 302] Las Casas, who was sleepless where the interests of his protégés were concerned, perceived how vitally their welfare was threatened by this nefarious scheme and vividly realised that Philip must be prevented, at all costs, from giving his decision during his absence from Spain.
It would seem from his letter to Carranza, begging him to use his influence with the King to defer judgment until his return, that the latter had applied to him for an opinion on the subject. The correspondence between the two extended over the several years of the King's absence, but of the letters of Las Casas to Carranza, only the first one, written in 1555, has been preserved. Its language is no less vigorous than that which the Protector was accustomed to use when roused to the duties of his position.
After reviewing the history of the colonists' relations with the Indians and recalling the solemn pledge given by Charles V. that his Indian subjects should never be enslaved, he vehemently threatens the King and his ministers with the eternal pains of hell if they break that royal engagement. In enumerating the obstacles opposed by the Spaniards to the conversion of the Indians, he writes:
“The third difficulty opposed to the conversion of the Indians is, that the system of oppression and cruelty followed in dealing with them, makes them curse the name of God and our holy religion: as the friars in Chiapa write me, nothing short of a miracle can make the Indians believe in Jesus Christ, when they see the execrable and manifest contradiction that exists between His gentle and beneficent doctrines and the [pg 303] conduct of the Christians, their enemies. What a scandal is it for them to see the faith preached by fifteen or twenty monks who are poor, despised, miserably clad, and reduced to begging their bread, while the crowd of so-called Christians living in opulence, arrayed in silks, mounted on their horses, inspires respect, submission, and fear everywhere, and acts in defiance of the law of God and the teachings of His ministers!”
The Bishop expresses the hope that Carranza will read any passage of his letter, or indeed the entire composition to the King, if he judges it wise. An analogous letter on the same subject, written shortly afterwards by Las Casas and Fray Domingo de Santo Tomas jointly, was addressed to Philip II. Victory crowned the Bishop's efforts, for the royal decision, given after King Philip's return to Spain, was adverse to making the encomiendas hereditary or perpetual.
Although he had chosen San Gregorio as his residence, Las Casas must have been frequently and for lengthy periods absent from Valladolid. A royal order dated from Toledo on the fourteenth of December, 1562, and signed by Philip II. directs that the Bishop of Chiapa, on account of his services to the late Emperor and of those he continues to render to the King, shall always be provided with lodgings suitable to his rank, in Toledo or wherever else in the Spanish realm the court may happen to reside. The attendance of Las Casas at court would seem, from this document, to have been frequent.
In 1563, the annual life pension of 200,000 maravedis granted him by Charles V. in 1555, was increased [pg 304] by Philip II. to the sum of 350,000 maravedis.
In the early months of 1564 Las Casas was in Madrid, lodged in the Convent of Our Lady of Atocha just outside the city walls. It was on the seventeenth of March of that year that he there formally delivered a sealed document, which he declared to be his signed will, in the presence of a notary, Gaspar Testa, and seven other witnesses.[74]
At the age of ninety he wrote his treatise in defence of the Peruvians, the last of his known compositions, and which was written, as is stated in its text, in 1564.[75] The style and arguments of this work are identical with those that characterised all his writings. The last negotiation in behalf of American interests that Las Casas undertook and saw to a successful finish, was to obtain the restoration of the Audiencia of the Confines, to Gracias á Dios, whence it had been recently transferred to Panama, thus leaving the whole of the former province with no superior tribunal for the administration of justice. This business called him from Valladolid to Madrid in the spring of 1566.