His enemies were not slow in seizing upon these definitions and in twisting them into a denial of the sovereign rights of the Crown. Formal denuncia­tions of the teachings contained in the Confesionario were laid before the India Council, 66 and that body having summoned Las Casas to explain his doctrines in writing, he submitted an exposition of the contents of his book, in the form of thirty propositions, the substance of which may be summarised as follows: 67

Without pausing to examine the origin or trace the development of the papal claim to dispose of the western hemisphere, which Las Casas admits in these Thirty Propositions, it should be borne in mind that Alexander VI. made no unusual exercise of his prerogative in so doing, nor was there anybody, whether philosopher, jurist, or statesman, who, at that time, contested his pretension; arguments which Las Casas presented as almost axiomatic are now obsolete, and of interest merely as illustrating the political doctrines of his times. He was, perhaps, the first to limit the exercise of the papal power by describing it as conditional, and in denying that the bull gave the sovereigns of Castile any property rights in the New World. According to his doctrines, the Pope was exercising his purely spiritual power. Charged by the Founder of Christianity with the obligation to cause the Gospel to be preached to every creature, he might delegate to the sovereign of his choice the right, or rather the duty of send­ing his subjects to convert the heathen within a [pg 285] prescribed portion of the Indies—but for no other purpose. Equally clear is the limitation he places to the action of the prince. The latter receives no authorisation from the Pope to invade, occupy, or govern territory in America. His mission is exclu­sively religious, and any advantage accruing to him­self must be merely incidental. Since he may not rightfully use force to establish his rule over the Indians, the rights of sovereignty conferred by the Bull, only become effective in cases where the native rulers, after their conversion, voluntarily acknow­ledge them.

In these definitions, Las Casas had gone far, but his adversaries despite their subtlety were impo­tent either to force or inveigle him into a position, where even constructive heresy and disloyalty might be imputed to him. More adroit than they, he skil­fully evaded their snares, without sacrificing one jot of his contention. The India Council was well satisfied with his defence of the Confesionario, but the resentment of his enemies was inflamed the more by his victory, and it was felt to be more than ever necessary to fix upon some one able to refute his arguments and discredit him in the estimation of statesmen and theologians.

One of the foremost of Spanish theologians and Jurists at that period was Gines de Sepulveda, whose distinction as a master of Latin style had caused Erasmus to describe him as the Spanish Livy. Born in Cordoba of noble parents in 1490, he had passed many years in Italy and had but recently returned to Spain, where he was named royal historiographer [pg 286] by Charles V. During his sojourn in Rome, Sepulveda had published a dialogue entitled Democrates, in which he sought to prove that war was consonant with the doctrines of Christianity: “De convenientia, disciplinæ militaris cum cristiana religione.”

Whether or no Sepulveda was deliberately chosen by the opponents of Las Casas to dispute the Bishop's propositions in defence of the Indians, does not positively appear, 69 but just before the latter returned from America, he composed a second dialogue, Democrates II. De justis belli causis apud Indios, in which he upheld the right of the Spaniards to make war on the Indians. This dialogue was apparently written in Valladolid and called forth an episcopal reprimand from the Bishop of Segovia. The fraternal admonition of the Bishop, instead of disposing of the subject, provoked a reply from Sepulveda in the form of an Apologia of an Democrates II.

The India Council having refused to permit the publication of this dialogue, Sepulveda petitioned the Emperor, who referred the matter to the Council of Castile. That body having given its assent, the Emperor signed a royal cedula at Aranda de Duero, authorising the printing of the book.

In the midst of the interest excited by this con­troversy, Las Casas arrived in Spain. He prevailed upon the Council of Castile to reconsider its decision, and to submit Sepulveda's work to the universities of Salamanca and Alcala, for an opinion on the soundness of his doctrine. The reply of the [pg 287] universities was adverse, and the authorisation to publish was consequently annulled. 70

Prohibited from publishing his book in Spain, Sepulveda sent it to Rome where the censorship of the press was freer and where, in fact, the condemned dialogue was printed, together with the author's Apologia addressed to the Bishop of Segovia. An edition of the work was prepared in Spanish for the benefit of those who did not read Latin, but the Emperor forbade the entrance of the one and the other into Spain.

Las Casas took but the time necessary to master the propositions of Sepulveda, before he seized the cudgels in defence of his Indians. From this moment the controversy took another complexion. Sepulveda had so far crossed weapons with learned theologians, men of study rather than of action, who carried on the dispute along purely scholastic lines and according to the recognised rules governing debates between scholars.

His new adversary, who was the best informed man in the world on the special subject under dis­pute, transferred the debate from academic to practical ground, of every foot of which he was mas­ter. Though inferior in learning to the polished humanist, who affected to regard him as a furious fanatic whose crude Latin shocked his scholarly [pg 288] sensibilities, Las Casas was his match in fervid eloquence, overmatched him in the ardour of his feelings, and ended by pulverising him under the weight of facts he hurled upon him.

The controversy assumed such proportions that the Emperor, in the fashion of the times, ordered the India Council to assemble in Valladolid in conjunction with certain theologians and scholars, to decide whether or no wars for conquest might be justly waged against the Indians. 71 Before this learned jury both Las Casas and Sepulveda were summoned to appear in 1550.

In the first session of the assembly, Sepulveda stated his propositions and expounded his defence of them, presenting, under four heads, his reasons why it was lawful to make war on the Indians:

These reasons were defended by their author in an able discourse, in which all the resources of his vast [pg 289] learning and forensic ability were called into play.

Las Casas occupied five sessions in reading his Historia Apologetica, after which the assembly directed the Emperor's confessor, Fray Domingo de Soto, to prepare a summary of the arguments of both parties, of which fourteen copies should be made for distribution to the members of the conference.

After the reading of Fray Domingo's summary, which was drawn up with perfect impartiality and great clearness, Sepulveda presented twelve objec­tions to the arguments of Las Casas, each of which he argued with great subtlety and erudition. The refutation of these twelve objections by Las Casas, closed this memorable controversy; in none of his writings is the character of the Protector of the Indians more fully revealed than in this final discourse before the conference at Valladolid. To give it in its entirety would occupy too much space in this place, but the following translation of the speech with which he introduced his twelve answers, is worthy of our closest attention.

After the introductory phrases required by the etiquette of such debates he continued: “So enor­mous are the errors and scandalous propositions, contrary to all evangelical truth and to all Christian­ity that the Doctor Sepulveda has accumulated, set forth, and coloured with misguided zeal in the royal service, that no honest Christian would be surprised should we wish to combat him, not only with lengthy argument, but likewise as a mortal enemy of Christendom, [pg 290] an abettor of cruel tyrants, extirpator of the human race, and disseminator of fatal blindness throughout this realm of Spain. But the least we could do, having regard to the obligations imposed by the law of God, is to answer each point here presented, and this will complete his confusion.”

From this vigorous opening, the Bishop went on to examine the nature of the Bull of donation and the intention of Alexander VI. in granting it. He demonstrated the irrefutable fact that the Catholic sovereigns and the Pope were in absolute agreement, and that the clearness of the language of the Bull left no room for two interpretations. The better to illustrate and drive home this argument, he cited articles from the last will of Queen Isabella, of which the following translation proves the truth of his contention:

“Forasmuch as when the islands and terra-firma dis­covered, or to be discovered, in the Ocean Sea, were granted to us by the Holy Apostolic See, our principal intention, when we asked the said concession from Pope Alexander VI. of happy memory, was to provide for attracting and winning to us the natives, and to convert them to our holy Catholic faith; and to send to the said islands and and terra-firma, prelates, religious, clerics, and other learned and God-fearing men, to instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic faith: and to use all necessary diligence in teaching them and in introducing good customs among them; all this according as may be more fully seen in the wording of the said concession. I there­fore very affectionately beseech my lord the King, and I charge and command the said Princess, my daughter, [pg 291] and the said Prince, her husband, that they shall execute and accomplish this, making it their principal object, and using the greatest diligence therein. They shall not consent, or furnish occasion that the Indian natives and inhabitants of the said islands and and terra-firma, sustain any injury, either in their persons or their belongings, but they shall rather order that they be well and justly treated. And if they [the Indians] have received any injury, they shall correct it and shall take measures to prevent what is conceded to and enjoined upon us by the wording of the said concession, from being exceeded.”

Reviewing the conditions in the colonies, Las Casas described the richness of the soil and the vast resources of the Indies, declaring that what was wanted there, were industrious, honest, and frugal emigrants, who would develop the agricultural sources of wealth, instead of the horde of rapacious adventurers and dissolute soldiery then engaged in depopulating and ruining them. One by one he stripped Sepulveda's propositions of their brilliant rhetoric, exposing the hollowness and sham beneath the specious reasoning, with which the latter sought to cloak his poverty of facts. Las Casas closed his case with the following brilliant and prophetic peroration:

“The injuries and loss which have befallen the Crown of Castile and Leon will be visited likewise on all Spain, because the tyranny wrought by their devastations, massacres, and slaughters is so mon­strous, that the blind may see it, the deaf hear it, and the dumb recount it, while after our brief existence, [pg 292] the wise shall judge and condemn it. I invoke all the hierarchies and choirs of angels, all the saints of the Celestial Court, all the inhabitants of the globe and especially those who may live after me, to wit­ness that I free my conscience of all that has been done; and that I have fully exposed all these woes to his Majesty; and that if he abandons the govern­ment of the Indies to the tyranny of the Spaniards, they will all be lost and depopulated—as we see Hispaniola, and other islands and three thousand leagues of the continent destitute of inhabitants. For these reasons, God will punish Spain and all her people with inevitable severity. So may it be!”72

Language worthy of a saint and a statesman, in which there breathed the spirit of prophecy, for the system of government, once initiated by the Spanish officials, was persisted in till the end, while one by one the great possessions of Spain in the New World were torn from the mother country. In no land where freedom of speech was a recognised right, could an orator have used plainer language, and it shows both the Spanish civil and ecclesiastical [pg 293] authorities of that age in a somewhat unfamiliar light that Las Casas not only escaped perilous censures but even won a moral victory over his talented opponent. What would have become of the champion of such unpopular doctrines, attacking as he did the material interests of thousands of the greatest men in the land, had there been daily newspapers in those times, it is not difficult to imagine. Examples of the defenders of forlorn causes are not wanting in our own day, and the fate of those who lead an unpopular crusade is the pil­lory of the press, which spares no less than did the fires of the mediaeval stake.

The discovery and conquest of the American dominions brought ruin to Spain as a nation; be­yond the tribute of glory which those early achieve­ments yielded to the Spanish name, the results were disastrous to her power. During centuries, much of the best blood of her prolific people was drained by the Americas, so that the population of the penin­sula to-day is little more numerous than in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, whereas her territory and natural resources might maintain triple their number.

Although the forensic encounter with Sepulveda was the most dramatic incident in the latter years of the life of Las Casas after his return to Spain, its conclusion was not followed either by his disappearance or by any diminution of his activity as Protector of the Indians. His habitual residence from that time on became the College of San Gregorio at Valladolid, where he had the companionship of his devoted friend Ladrada and the support of an important community of his Order. Fray Rodrigo, who also acted as confessor to his old friend, would seem to have been something of a wag, as it is related of him that when the Bishop had become somewhat deaf, the confessor might be heard admonishing his penitent: “Don't you see, Bishop, that you will finish up in hell because of your want of zeal in defending the Indians whom God has placed in your charge?”73

[pg 294] The royal India Council likewise sat in Valladolid, and this fact may possibly have influenced the indefatigable Bishop's choice of that city for his residence. He had made repeated efforts to obtain from the Council some positive proclamation or declaration, affirming the freedom of the Indians as a natural and inalienable right, and at this time, he succeeded in moving that somewhat lethargic body to express a desire for more explicit information on this subject, before reaching a decision. In re­sponse to an order from the Council, Las Casas wrote his treatise entitled, The Liberty of the Enslaved Indians (De la libertad de los Indios que han sido reducidos à la esclavitud) which, for greater convenience, he divided into three parts. The first part treated of the nullity of the title on which such slavery was based; the second dealt with the duties of the Spanish sovereign towards the Indians, and the third was devoted to the obligations of the bishops of the American dioceses.

In none of his writings are the opinions of Las Casas on questions of the rights of man and the functions of government more lucidly set forth, and while many of the arguments on which he rested his propositions, and which were consonant with the prevalent spirit of his times, would not secure uni­versal assent in our day, there is not one of the essential principles of his thesis, that has not since been recognised as inherently and indisputably just.

His treatise opened as follows:

“I propose in this article to demonstrate three proposi­tions; first, that all the Indians who have been enslaved [pg 296] since the discovery of the New World, have been reduced to this sad condition without right or justice; second that the majority of Spaniards who hold Indian slaves do so in bad faith; and third, that this imputation is also applicable to such Spaniards as have not acquired their slaves by right of repartimiento but have obtained them from other Indians.”

He combated the almost universally accepted theory that justifiable conquest conferred the right of enslaving the conquered, and he maintained that the most that might be exacted from a conquered people, even from those who had actively resisted, was recognition of the government established by the victorious party; taxes were justifiable and must be paid, and prisoners of war might be held until the close of hostilities, while extra burdens might be laid upon the country during the period of military occupation. Not one of these principles was at that time acted upon by any Christian power engaged in war with uncivilised nations, yet every one of them is now placed beyond dispute by the universally accepted principles of international law.

Wars unjustly undertaken, according to Las Casas, could confer no rights, because right is not founded upon injustice, and he defined war as unjust when undertaken without the sanction of legitimate authority, or even when ordered by legitimate au­thority, but without sufficient motive or provocation. This touched the question of the Indians very closely, for most of the Spanish invasions of the different islands and the countries of the main­land were begun without any authority from, or [pg 297] even the knowledge of the Spanish government. No Spanish sovereign ever authorised the invasion or conquest of any of the countries, on which their distant and self-styled representatives embarked, for motives of personal aggrandisement or in a pure spirit of adventure. Both Velasquez in Cuba and Cortes in Mexico were destitute of any royal author­ity for their undertakings, and only the splendour of their successes sufficed to condone their license, when they were able to confront the King with a profitable fait accompli. The royal instructions to all governors and representatives of the Spanish Crown were, on the contrary, filled with injunctions to treat the Indians humanely, to provide for their conversion and instruction by pacific means, and on no account to employ force save for self-defence.

Las Casas arraigned the conduct of all the colonial governors and officials, mercilessly attacking and exposing the various deceits and subterfuges, by means of which they evaded or overstepped their instructions, provoking the Indians by their inhuman cruelties to acts of resistance, in order to enslave them as rebels against the royal authority. He illustrated his accusations with numerous incidents of which he had himself been a witness.

His denunciations of the judges described them as corrupt and venal, ready to wink at the scandalous abuses and the violations of the Spanish laws, which were daily perpetrated under their very eyes, con­senting the while to fill their own pockets with a share of the illicit profits.

Describing the horrors and ravages of the slave-trade, [pg 298] he declared that the provinces of Guatemala and Nicaragua had been depopulated, while in the provinces of Jalisco, Yucatan, and Panuco, similar outrages had been perpetrated, adding that the Germans in Venezuela were even more adroit than the Spaniards in the nefarious art of raiding Indian villages to carry off the inhabitants into slavery. “Your Majesty will see that I do not exag­gerate when I affirm that more than four million men have been reduced to slavery, all of which has been accomplished in defiance of your Majesty's royal instructions.”

Throughout this treatise, Las Casas supports his contentions on citations from Scripture, and in the second article, dealing with the obligations of the King towards his Indian subjects, he defines in very plain language the sanctions on which the royal claims to obedience rest: “The law of God imposes on the king the obligation to administer his kingdoms in such wise that small and great, poor and rich, the weak and the powerful, shall all be treated with equal justice”;—such is his Statement of the King's duty and he supports it with quotations from Deuteronomy, Leviticus, the prophet Isaias, and St. Jerome, concluding with these words: “In fact, history furnishes examples of God chastising the nations and kingdoms which have refused justice to the poor and the orphan. Who shall venture to say that such may not be the fate of Spain, if the King denies the poor Indians their just dues and fails to give them the liberty, to which they have an incontestable right?”

Nor does he limit the King's responsibility to his personal acts in cases which may come directly to his knowledge; he is obliged also to see that his subjects observe one another's rights and live ac­cording to the laws of civil order and public morality. The object for which society and rulers exist is to insure the common weal of all, and no sovereign can secure this, who does not base his government on the principles of virtue and justice. The Spanish king is therefore not only obliged to secure the liberty of the Indians because justice exacts this of him, but also because he is bound to prevent his Spanish subjects from acts of usurpation of the rights of others. Christian kings have greater duties than those which weigh upon heathen or heretical rulers, for they are bound to protect religion, favour its ministers, and spread the faith for the sanctification of the whole world. By securing liberty to the Indians, their conversion would be assured and, all causes of enmity and hatred against Spaniards being removed, the natives would eagerly welcome the missionaries and receive their teaching.

The third article of his argument, dealing with the conduct of bishops in America, rehearses their apos­tolic duties towards their flocks and concludes by defining it as an episcopal obligation to represent the sufferings and wrongs of their defenceless people to the King and the India Council, and to insist on Justice being done them.

It is a noteworthy fact that such writings and speeches seem to have given no offence to the Spanish monarch, at that time the most absolute [pg 300] sovereign in Christendom, and that, not only before the members of the India Council, but in the estima­tion of the impartial men of his times, Las Casas succeeded in disproving the charge of disputing the rights of the Spanish Crown to sovereignty in the Indies, which his enemies had maliciously sought to fasten upon him.

Charles V. had already conceded much to the venerable Bishop's unceasing and energetic repre­sentations. A royal decree had abolished slavery, reduced very considerably the number of encomiendas, and had restricted the authority of the holders of these concessions over their Indians; the labours of the natives held in encomienda had been greatly lightened and their rights had been placed on a sure basis, strict instructions having been given to the civil authorities to correct abuses of power and to protect the weak. Wise laws and humane instruc­tions had, however, at no time been wanting but the benevolent intentions of the Emperor were never adequately fulfilled by the Spanish colonial officials. Nevertheless, much had been accomplished and the condition of the Indians—those of them who sur­vived—was very different in 1550, from that which prevailed when Las Casas took up their cause in 1510. Spaniards and Indians were equal before the com­mon law of the land, the papal bull had defined, once for all, the moral status of the latter as responsible beings, and it was henceforth heresy to sustain the contrary. The supports on which those who had contended in favour of tightening the hold of the Spanish colonists on the natives had, one by one, [pg 301] been knocked from under them and the way was open for the more complete and practical application of the royal provisions for the protection of the oppressed peoples.

Prince Philip, to whom the Emperor had granted the sovereignty of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia and who was already styled Philip II., left Spain on July 12, 1554, to celebrate his marriage with the English Queen, Mary Tudor. He took in his suite several renowned theologians, amongst whom was Carranza de Miranda, at that time his confessor and later raised to the primatial See of Toledo. The relations between Las Casas and this important ecclesiastic had been most cordial and the latter had given the weight of his approval on more than one occasion to the Bishop in his furious controversies; notably during his contest with Sepulveda and by defending his Confesionario. Carranza, in his quality of confessor, exercised a great influence over the mind of Philip II.

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.

The life of the great Bishop was nearing its end. He had long outlived all his early contemporaries, he had enjoyed the confidence and respect of three of the most remarkable sovereigns, Ferdinand of Aragon, Charles V. and Philip II., all of whom had received his fearless admonitions, not only with docility, but had responded with cordial admiration. Cardinal Ximenez, Pope Adrian VI., the powerful [pg 305] Flemish favourites, the discoverers and conquerors from Columbus to Cortes and Pizarro, were all long since dead, and he had seen numbers of his most powerful enemies in disgrace and in their graves. The Spain on which he closed his aged eyes was a different country from that on which he had first, opened them; the colonial development in America, the Reformation in Germany, the rise of England—all these and a hundred events of minor but far-reaching importance, had changed the face of the world.

The illness which proved fatal to Las Casas over­took him in the convent of the Atocha in Madrid, and in the latter days of July, 1566, he died.76 Only a few days before he breathed his last he wrote the following sentences, which were probably the last his prolific pen ever traced. They portray the character and aspirations of this great man more fully, perhaps, than any other of his multitudinous compositions.

“For the goodness and mercy of God chose to elect me as His minister, despite my want of merit, to strive and labour for the infinite peoples, the possessors and owners of those kingdoms of the countries we call the Indies, against the burdens, evils, and injuries such as were never seen or heard of, which we Spaniards brought upon them, contrary to all right and justice; and to restore them to their pristine liberty, of which they were unjustly [pg 306] despoiled; and to save them from the violent death which they still suffer, just as for the same cause, thousands of leagues of country have been depopulated, many in my own presence. I have laboured at the Court of the Castilian sovereigns, coming and going between the Indies and Spain many times during the fifty years since 1514, animated only by God and by compassion at beholding the destruction of such multitudes of rational, humble, most kind, and most simple men, all well adapted to accept our Holy Catholic Faith and moral doctrine, and to live honestly. God is witness that I have advanced no other reason. Hence I state my positive belief, for I believe the Holy Roman Church, which is the rule and measure of our faith, must and does hold that the Spaniards' conduct towards those peoples, their robberies, murders, usurpations of the territories of the rightful kings and nobles and other infinite proper­ties, which they accomplished with such accursed cruel­ties—has been contrary to the most strictly immaculate law of Jesus Christ and contrary to natural right. It has brought great infamy on the name of Jesus Christ and of the Christian religion, entirely hindering the spread of the faith and irreparably injuring the souls and bodies of those innocent peoples. I believe that because of these impious and ignominious acts, perpetrated un­justly, tyrannously, and barbarously upon them, God will visit His wrath and ire upon Spain for her share, great or small, in the blood-stained riches, obtained by theft and usurpation, accompanied by such slaughter and annihila­tion of those peoples, unless she does much penance.”

This last profession of the faith he had kept un­falteringly for more than half a century, was his own supreme vindication and a warning to his countrymen. [pg 307]

A great concourse of people assembled for the obsequies of the venerable Bishop, which were celebrated by the Superior of the Monastery, Fray Domingo de la Para, and his mortal remains, clothed in modest episcopal vestments, with a wooden crozier in his hand, were laid to rest in the Capilla Mayor of the church of Atocha. 77

The remains of great men are frequently denied a permanent resting place anywhere, and the frequent translations of their bodies not uncommonly end in their final whereabouts becoming a matter of dispute. Records are lost, graves are disturbed, witnesses are untrustworthy, and it finally becomes impossible to ascertain the last resting place of some great personage, whose whereabouts during almost every hour of his life were a matter of public interest and notoriety. Thus it has happened with the remains of this illustrious Spaniard and holy Bishop. According to a statement made by Juan Antolines de Burgos in his manuscript history of the city of Valladolid, 78 the bones of Las Casas were afterwards removed from the Atocha and buried in San Gregorio. The college buildings were in part alienated, thus necessitating another removal of the body, which was then buried in the cloister where the remains of the monks commonly found sepulture. In 1670, Fray Gabriel de Cepedo dedicated a work entitled Historia de la milagrosa y Venerable Virgin de Atocha to Charles II., in which he contradicts the statement of Juan Antolines by affirming that Las Casas rested [pg 308] at that time in the church of Atocha. He does this as one referring to a commonly known and undisputed fact and his published statement has never been contradicted. The old church of Atocha no longer exists, having been demolished to make way for a new edifice, still in process of construction.

The will of Las Casas was opened on July 31, 1566, at the instance of Fray Juan Bautiste, Procurator of the College of San Gregorio in Valladolid, he being the executor. It was found that Las Casas had left all his manuscripts to the college.79 He requested the rector to have his vast correspondence, consisting of letters and reports sent to him by friars, missionaries, and others throughout all America and covering a period of many years, chronologically arranged and collected in the form of a book, as these documents [pg 309] would illustrate and confirm the truth of all he had alleged against the Spaniards and in favour of the Indians. “Let them be placed,” he wrote, “in the college library ad perpetuam rei memoriam, for should God decree the destruction of Spain, it may be seen that it is because of our destruction of the Indies, and His justice may be made apparent.”