CHAP. I V . ]
CHRISTOPHER
COLUMBUS.
217
at sea, where he did not exercise the office of viceroy—there had been two trials relative to the insurrection, and the insurgents having been condemned as traitors, it was not in the power of the admiral to absolve them from their criminality—the capitulations treated of matters touching the royal revenue, over which he had no control, without the intervention of the proper officers ;—lastly, Francisco Roldan and his companions, on leaving Spain, had taken an oath to be faithful to the sovereigns, and to the admiral in their name, which oath they had violated. For these and sim ilar reasons, some just, others rather sophistical, he urged the sovereigns not to consider themselves bound to ratify the compul sory terms ceded to these profligate men, but to inquire into their offences, and treat them accordingly.* He repeated the request made in a former letter, that a learned judge might be sent out to administer the laws in the island, since he himself had been charged with rigor, although conscious of having always observed a guarded clemency. He requested also that discreet persons should be sent out to form a council, and others for certain fiscal employments, entreating, however, that their powers should be so limited and defined, as not to interfere with his dignity and privileges. He bore strongly on this point ; as his prerogatives on former occasions had been grievously in vaded. It appeared to him, he said, that princes ought to show much confidence in their governors ; for without the royal favor to give them strength and consequence, every thing went to ruin under their command ; a sound maxim, forced from the admiral by his recent experience, in which much of his own perplexities, and the triumph of the rebels, had been caused by the distrust of the crown, and its inattention to his remonstrances. * Herrera, decad. i. lib. iii. cap. 16.
VOL. II.