CHAP. I V . ]
CHRISTOPHER
257
COLUMBUS.
tended discoveries. It was suggested that his assassination might easily be accomplished without incurring any odium; advantage might be taken of his lofty deportment to pique his pride, pro voke him into an altercation, and then dispatch him as if in casual and honorable encounter. It is difficult to believe that such wicked and dastardly coun sel could have been proposed to a monarch so upright as John II, but the fact is asserted by various historians, Portuguese as well as Spanish,* and it accords with the perfidious advice formerly given to the monarch in respect to Columbus.
There is a spu
rious loyalty about courts, which is often prone to prove its zeal by its baseness; and it is the weakness of kings to tolerate the gross est faults when they appear to arise from personal devotion. Happily, the king had too much magnanimity to adopt the iniquitous measure proposed.
He did justice to the great merit
of Columbus, and honored him as a distinguished benefactor of mankind; and he felt it his duty, as a generous prince, to protect all strangers driven by adverse fortune to his ports.
Others of
his council suggested a more bold and martial line of policy. They advised that Columbus should be permitted to return to Spain; but that, before he could fit out a second expedition, a powerful armament should be dispatched, under the guidance of two Portuguese mariners who had sailed with the admiral, to take possession of the newly-discovered country; possession being after all the best title, and an appeal to arms the clearest mode of settling so doubtful a question. This counsel, in which there was a mixture of courage and
* Vasconcelos, Vida del Rei, Don Juan II., lib. vi. Garcia de Resende.vida do Dom Joam II.
VOL. I.
Las Casas, Hist. Ind., lib. i. cap. 74, M S .
R