APPENDIX.
419
ber of slaves required, which was limited to four thousand, and the Flem ings obtained a monopoly of the trade, which they afterwards farmed out to the Genoese. Dr. Robertson, in noticing this affair, draws a contrast between the con duct of the cardinal Ximenes and that of Las Casas, strongly to the disad vantage of the latter.
" T h e cardinal," he observes, "when solicited to
encourage this commerce, peremptorily rejected the proposition, because he perceived the iniquity of reducing one race of men to slavery, when he was consulting about the means of restoring liberty to another ; but Las Casas, from the inconsistency natural to men who hurry with headlong impetuosity towards a favorite point, was incapable of making this distinc tion.
In the warmth of his zeal to save the Americans from the yoke, he
pronounced it to be lawful and expedient to impose one still heavier on the Africans."* This distribution of praise and censure is not perfectly correct.
Las
Casas had no idea that he was imposing a heavier, nor so heavy, a yoke upon the Africans.
T h e latter were considered more capable of labor, and
less impatient of slavery.
W h i l e the Indians sunk under their tasks, and
perished by thousands in Hispaniola, the negroes, on the contrary, thrived there.
Herrera, to whom Dr. Robertson refers as his authority, assigns a
different motive, and one of mere finance, for the measures of cardinal Ximenes.
H e says that he ordered that no one should take negroes to the
Indies, because, as the natives were decreasing, and it was known that one negro did more work than four of them, there would probably be a great demand for African slaves, and a tribute might be imposed upon the trade, from which would result profit to the royal treasury.]
This meas
ure was presently after carried into effect, though subsequent to the death of the cardinal, and licenses were granted by the sovereign for pecuniary considerations.
Flechier, in his life of Ximenes, assigns another but a
mere political motive for this prohibition.
T h e cardinal, he says, objected
to the importation of negroes into the colonies, as he feared they would corrupt the natives, and by confederacies with them render them formida ble to government.
D e Marsolier, another biographer of Ximenes, gives
* Robertson, Hist. America, p. 3 . t Porque como iban faltando los Indios i se conocia que un negro trabajaba, mas que quatro, por lo qual h'abia gran dem anda de ellos, parecia que se podia poner algun tributo en la saca, de que resultaria provecho â la Rl. Hacienda. Herrera, decad. ii. lib. ii. cap. 8.
n D 2