The memory of Las Casas has suffered greatly from many of those unthinking, unsearching plagues, who are ever ready to confess what "it is due to candor to state," etc. A dozen at least might be counted of names high in the roll of literature: Llorente, Washington Irving, Mr. Prescott, are among the number. The time has come to explode this bubble about his want of fixed principles. All are pleased to admit he was a good man, leading a virtuous life, with a noble purpose in view; but that he was inconsistent in recommending negro slavery, while advocating the emancipation of the Indians. Now, if one be in his right mind, and yet inconsistent in opinions or conduct, he cannot be virtuous in principle or practice. The expressions are incongruous. How can he be accounted virtuous, if at times he is vicious? How can he be received as good, when he has advised what is bad? Rectitude is wanting. In public life an inconsistent man is dangerous; because he destroys order and promotes disorder; he creates distrust in the absence of integrity in purpose. In private life no dependence can be reposed in him; he is not respected, and if the infirmity be great, his friends send him to an asylum for the insane.
Navarete thus states the charge against Las Casas:
"It is this expedient of Las Casas which has drawn down severe censure upon his memory. He has been charged with gross inconsistency, and even with having originated the inhuman traffic in the new world. This last is a grievous charge; but historical facts and dates remove the original sin from his door, and prove that the practice existed in the colonies, and was authorized by royal decree long before he took part in the question." [Footnote 78]
[Footnote 78: Navarete, Viages and Descubriamentos. Tom. iii. p. 418.]
This charge was first made against the bishop by Dr. Robertson, in his History of America, in 1777. The doctor therein contrasts him with Cardinal Ximenes, Prime Minister of Spain, observing:
"Cardinal Ximenes, when solicited to encourage this commerce, peremptorily rejected the proposition, because he perceived the iniquity of reducing one race of men to slavery, while he was consulting about the means of restoring liberty to another. (Herrera Dec. ii. lib. ii. cap. 8.) But Las Casas, from the inconsistency natural to men who hurry with headlong impetuosity toward a favorite point, was incapable of making the distinction." (Herrera Dec. lib. ii. cap. 20.)
If Ximenes had been living when this exalted morality was accorded to him, his astonishment would have been great; he claimed no morality of that kind.
In turning to Herrera, at the eighth chapter, referred to by Dr. Robertson, it will be found the doctor has drawn upon his imagination for the paragraph on Ximenes. The cardinal was not thinking about morality, but about money. Herrera states it thus:
"At the same time it was ordered that negro slaves should not pass to the Indies; which order was understood at once; for, as they went out, in the scarcity of Indians, and as it was known that one negro did the work of four, whereby a great demand had arisen for them, it appeared to the Cardinal Ximenes, that he might place some tax on their exportation, from whence would result a benefit to the treasury."