finitimi tantum Persae et Arabes, sed Europaei etiam, praecipue Veneti noverant.
Praeterea inventio nihil iuris tribuit, nisi in ea quae ante inventionem nullius fuerant.[23a] Atqui Indi cum ad eos Lusitani venerunt, etsi partim idololatrae, partim Mahumetani erant, gravibusque peccatis involuti, nihilominus publice atque privatim rerum possessionumque suarum dominium habuerunt, quod illis sine iusta causa eripi non potuit.[24a] Ita certissimis rationibus post alios auctores maximi nominis concludit Hispanus Victoria:[25a] ‘Non possunt’, inquit, ‘Christiani saeculares aut Ecclesiastici potestate civili et principatu privare infideles, eo dumtaxat titulo, quia infideles sunt, nisi ab eis alia iniuria profecta sit’.
Fides enim, ut recte inquit Thomas[26a] non tollit ius naturale aut humanum ex quo dominia profecta sunt. Immo credere infideles non esse rerum suarum dominos, haereticum est; et res ab illis possessas illis ob hoc ipsum eripere furtum est et rapina, non minus quam si idem fiat Christianis.
Recte igitur dicit Victoria[27a] non magis ista ex causa Hispanis ius in Indos quaesitum, quam Indis fuisset in Hispanos, si qui illorum priores in Hispaniam venissent. Neque vero sunt Indi Orientis amentes et insensati, sed
Persians and Arabs, but even Europeans, particularly the Venetians, knew them long before the Portuguese did.
But in addition to all this, discovery per se gives no legal rights over things unless before the alleged discovery they were res nullius.[23] Now these Indians of the East, on the arrival of the Portuguese, although some of them were idolators, and some Mohammedans, and therefore sunk in grievous sin, had none the less perfect public and private ownership of their goods and possessions, from which they could not be dispossessed without just cause.[24] The Spanish writer Victoria,[25] following other writers of the highest authority, has the most certain warrant for his conclusion that Christians, whether of the laity or of the clergy, cannot deprive infidels of their civil power and sovereignty merely on the ground that they are infidels, unless some other wrong has been done by them.
For religious belief, as Thomas Aquinas[26] rightly observes, does not do away with either natural or human law from which sovereignty is derived. Surely it is a heresy to believe that infidels are not masters of their own property; consequently, to take from them their possessions on account of their religious belief is no less theft and robbery than it would be in the case of Christians.
Victoria then is right in saying[27] that the Spaniards have no more legal right over the East Indians because of their religion, than the East Indians would have had over the Spaniards if they had happened to be the first foreigners to come to Spain. Nor are the East Indians stupid and unthinking; on the contrary they are intelligent and shrewd,