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COLONIZATION AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
COLONIZATION AND CHRISTIAN 
 
 A 
 POPULAR HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES 
 
 BY THE EUROPEANS 
 IN ALL THEIR COLONIES. 
 
 WILLIAM HOWITT. En.^^ 
 
 Have we not all one father^ — hath not one God created us ? 
 Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother ? 
 
 Malachi ii. 10. 
 
 LONDON : 
 LON.GMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS. 
 
 1838. 
 
V 
 
 H7 
 
 HENRY MORSt STErHKW© 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY MANNING AND SMITHSON, 
 IVY-LANK, PATBBNOSTER-ROW. 
 
The object of this volume is to lay open to the public 
 the most extensive and extraordinary system of crime 
 which the world ever witnessed. It is a system which 
 has been in full operation for more than three hundred 
 years, and continues yet in unabating activity of evil. 
 The apathy which has hitherto existed in England upon 
 this subject has proceeded in a great measure from want 
 of knowledge. National injustice towards particular 
 tribes, or particular individuals, has excited the most 
 lively feeling, and the most energetic exertions for its 
 redress, — ^but the whole wide field of unchristian opera- 
 tions in which this country, more than any other, is 
 engaged, has never yet b'een laid in a clear and compre- 
 hensive view before the public mind. It is no part of 
 the present volume to suggest particular plans of remedy. 
 The first business is to make known the nature and the 
 extent of the evil, — that once perceived, in this great 
 country there will not want either heads to plan or hands 
 to accomplish all that is due to the rights of others, or 
 the honour and interest of England. 
 
 IFest End Cottage, Esher, 
 June &th, 1838. 
 
 514509 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 Introduction 1 *~^' 
 
 II. 
 The Discovery of the New World 11 ^^ 
 
 III. 
 The Papal Gift of all the Heathen World to the Portuguese 
 
 and Spaniards 19 L--"^ 
 
 IV. 
 The Spaniards in Hispaniola 28 ^^ 
 
 V. 
 The Spaniards in Hispaniola and Cuba 43 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Spaniards in Jamaica and other West Indian Islands ... 56 
 
 VII. 
 The Spaniards in Mexico 62 
 
 VIII. 
 The Spaniards in Peru ^ 92 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Spaniards in Peru — (contimied) , 104 
 
 X. 
 
 The Spaniards in Paraguay , 119 
 
X CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER XI. PAGE 
 
 The Portuguese in Brazil ]45 
 
 XII. 
 The Portuguese in Brazil — (continued) 158 
 
 \ 
 
 \ 
 
 The Portuguese in India 173 
 
 XIV. 
 The Dutch in India 185 
 
 \. 
 
 \ 
 
 The English in India. — System of Territorial Acquisition ... 202 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The English in India — (coniimced). — Treatment of the 
 
 Natives 252 
 
 \ XVII. 
 
 V The English in India. — Treatment of the Natives — (con- 
 tinued) 272 
 
 \ XVIII. 
 The English in India — (continued) 285 
 
 XIX. 
 
 The English in India — (concluded) 298 
 
 \. 
 
 \ 
 
 The French in their Colonies 312 
 
 XXI. 
 The English in America 330 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The English in America — Settlement of Pennsylvania 356 
 
 XXIII. 
 The English in America till the Revolt of the Colonies 367 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. pagb 
 
 Treatment of the Indians by the United States 386 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Treatment of the Indians by the United States— (continued)... 402 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 The English in South Africa 417 
 
 XXVII. 
 The English in South Africa — (continued) 443 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 The English in New Holland and the Islands of the Pacific... 469 
 
 XXIX. 
 Conclusion 499 
 
COLONIZATION AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 These are they, O Lord ! 
 Who in thy plain and simple gospel see 
 All mysteries, but who find no peace enjoined, 
 No brotherhood, no wrath denounced on them 
 Who shed their brethren's blood ! Blind at noon«day 
 As owls; lynx-eyed in darkness. — Sovthey. 
 
 Christianity has now been in the world upwards of 
 One Thousand Eight Hundred Years. For 
 more than a thousand years the European nations 
 have arrogated to themselves the title of Christian ! 
 some of their monarchs, those of most Sacred and 
 MOST Christian Kings ! We have long laid to our 
 souls the flattering unction that we are a civilized 
 and a Christian people. We talk of all other nations 
 in all other quarters of the world, as savages, bar- 
 barians, uncivilized. We talk of the ravages of the 
 Huns, the irruptions of the Goths ; of the terrible 
 desolations of Timour, or Zenghis Khan. We talk of 
 Alaric and Attila, the sweeping carnage of Mahomet, 
 or the cool cruelties of more modern Tippoos and 
 Alies. We shudder at the war-cries of naked Indians, 
 and the ghastly feasts of Cannibals ; and bless our 
 
2 . . . , .c , ... .COJ.ONI^ATION 
 
 souls that we are redeemecl from all these things, and 
 made models of beneficence, and lights of God in the 
 earth ! 
 
 It is high time that we looked a little more rigidly 
 into our pretences. It is high time that we examined, 
 on the evidence of facts, whether we are quite s6 
 refined, quite so civilized, quite so Christian as we 
 have assumed to be. It is high time that we look 
 boldly into the real state of the question, and learn 
 actually, whether the mighty distance between our 
 goodness and the moral depravity of other people 
 really exists. Whether, in fact, we are Chris- 
 tian AT ALL ! 
 
 Have bloodshed and cruelty then ceased in Eu- 
 rope ? After a thousand years of acquaintance with 
 the most merciful and the most heavenly of religions, 
 do the national characters of the Europeans reflect 
 the beauty and holiness of that religion ? Are we 
 distinguished by our peace, as the followers of the 
 Prince of Peace ? Are we renowned for our eager- 
 ness to seek and save, as the followers of the universal 
 Saviour? Are our annals redolent of the delightful 
 love and fellowship which one would naturally think 
 must, after a thousand years, distinguish those who 
 pride themselves on being the peculiar and adopted 
 children of Him who said, " By this shall all men know 
 that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another?" 
 These are very natural, but nevertheless, very awk- 
 ward questions. If ever there was a quarter of the 
 globe distinguished by its quarrels, its jealousies, its 
 everlasting wars and bloodshed, it is Europe. Since 
 these soi-disajit Christian nations have risen into any 
 degree of strength, what single evidence of Christian- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 3 
 
 ity have they, as nations, exhibited? Eternal warfare ! 
 — is that Christianity? Yet that is the history of 
 Christian Europe. The most subtle or absurd pre- 
 tences to seize upon each other's possessions, — the 
 contempt of all faith in treaties, — the basest policy, — 
 the most scandalous profligacy of public morals, — the 
 most abominable international laws ! — are they Chris- 
 tianity? And yet they are the history of Europe. 
 Nations of men selling themselves to do murder, that 
 ruthless kings might ravish each other's crowns — na- 
 tions of men, standing with jealous eyes on the perpe- 
 tual watch against each other, with arms in their hands, 
 oaths in their mouths, and curses in their hearts ; — are 
 those Christian ? Yet there is not a man acquainted 
 with the history of Europe that will even attempt to 
 deny that that is the history of Europe. For what are 
 all our international boundaries ; our lines of demar- 
 cation; our frontier fortresses and sentinels; our mar- 
 tello towers, and guard-ships ; our walled and gated 
 cities ; our bastions and batteries ; and our jealous 
 passports ? These are all barefaced and glaring testi- 
 monies that our pretence of Christianity is a mere 
 assumption ; that after upwards of a thousand years of 
 the boasted possession of Christianity, Europe has not 
 3^et learned to govern itself by its plainest precepts ; 
 and that her children have no claim to, or reliance in 
 that spirit of " love which casteth out all fear." It is 
 very well to vaunt the title of Christian one to another 
 — every nation knows in its own soul, it is a hollow 
 pretence. While it boasts of the Christian name, 
 it dare not for a moment throw itself upon a Christian 
 faith in its neighbour. No ! centuries of the most 
 unremitted hatred, — blood poured over every plain of 
 
4 COLONIZATION 
 
 Europe, and sprinkled on its very mountain tops, cry 
 out too dreadfully, that it is a dismal cheat. Wars, 
 the most savage and unprovoked; oppressions, the 
 most desperate ; tyrannies, the most ruthless ; massa- 
 cres, the most horrible ; death-fires, and tortures the 
 most exquisite, perpetuated one on another for the 
 faith, and in the very name of God; dungeons and 
 inquisitions; the blood of the Vaudois, and the flaming 
 homes of the Covenanters are all in their memories, 
 and give the lie to their professions. No ! Poland *ent ^ 
 in sunder; the iron heel of Austria on the prostrate 
 neck of Italy ; and invasions and aggressions without 
 end, make Christian nations laugh with a hollow 
 mockery in their hearts, in the very midst of their 
 solemn professions of the Christian virtue and faith. 
 
 But I may be told that this character applies rather 
 to past Europe than to the present. What ! are all 
 these things at an end ? For what then are all these 
 standing armies ? What all these marching armies ? 
 What these men-of-war on the ocean? What these 
 atrocities going on from year to year in Spain ? Has 
 any age or nation seen such battles waged as we have 
 witnessed in our time? How many Waterlogs 
 can the annals of the earth reckon ? What Timour, 
 or Zenghis Khan, can be compared to the Napoleon 
 of modern Europe? the greatest scourge of nations 
 that ever arose on this planet; the most tremendous 
 meteor that ever burnt along its surface ! Have the 
 multitude of those who deem themselves the philoso- 
 phical and refilled, as well as the Christian of Europe, 
 ceased to admire this modern Moloch, and to forget 
 in his individual and retributory sufferings at St. 
 Helena, the countless agonies and the measureless 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 5 
 
 ruin that he inflicted on innocent and even distant 
 nations? While we retain a blind admiration of 
 martial genius, wilfully shutting our senses and our 
 minds to the crimes and the pangs that constitute its 
 shadow, it is laughable to say that we have progressed 
 beyond our fathers in Christian knowledge. At this 
 moment all Europe stands armed to the teeth. The 
 peace of every individual nation is preserved, not by 
 the moral probity and the mutual faith which are the 
 natural growth of Christian knowledge, but by the 
 jealous watch of armed bands, and the coarse and 
 undisguised force of brute strength. To this moment 
 not the slightest advance is made towards a regular 
 system of settling national disputes by the head in- 
 stead of the hand. To this moment the stupid prac- 
 tice of settling individual disputes between those who 
 pride themselves on their superior education and 
 knowledge, by putting bullets instead of sound reasons 
 into each other's heads, is as common as ever. If we 
 really are a civilized people, why do we not abandon 
 barbarian practices? If we really are philosophical, 
 why do we not shew it? It is a poor compliment to 
 our learning, our moral and political philosophy, and 
 above all, to our religion, that at this time of day if 
 a dispute arise between us as nations or as men, we 
 fall to blows, instead of to rational inquiry and adjust- 
 ment. Is Christianity then so abstruse ? No ! " He 
 that runneth may read, and the way-faring man, 
 though a fool, cannot err therein." Then why, in the 
 name of common sense, have we not learned it, see- 
 ing that it so closely concerns our peace, our security, 
 and our happiness ? Surely a thousand years is time 
 enough to teach that which is so plain, and of such 
 
6 COLONIZATION 
 
 immense importance ! We call ourselves civilized, 
 yet we are daily perpetrating the grossest outrages ; 
 we boast of our knowledge, yet we do not know how 
 to live one with another half so peaceably as wolves ; 
 we term ourselves Christians, yet the plainest injunc- 
 tion of Christ, " to love our neighbour as ourselves," 
 we have yet, one thousand eight hundred and thirty- 
 eight years after his death, to adopt ! But most 
 monstrous of all has been the moral blindness or the 
 savage recklessness of ourselves as Englishmen. 
 
 Secure from actual warfare, we have loved 
 
 To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war ! 
 
 Alas ! for ages ignorant of all 
 
 Its ghastlier workings (famine or blue plague, 
 
 Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,) 
 
 We, this whole people, have been clamorous 
 
 For war and bloodshed ; animating sports. 
 
 The which we pay for as a thing to talk of. 
 
 Spectators and not combatants ! Abroad 
 
 Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names. 
 
 And adjurations of the God in heaven, 
 
 We send our mandates for the certain death 
 
 Of thousands and ten thousands ! Boys and girls, 
 
 And women, that would groan to see a child 
 
 Pull off an insect" s leg, all read of war. 
 
 The best amusement for our morning's meal ! 
 
 The poor wretch who has learnt his only prayers 
 
 From curses, who knows scarce words enough 
 
 To ask a blessing from his heavenly Father, 
 
 Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute, 
 
 Technical in victories, and deceit. 
 
 And all our dainty terms for fratricide ; 
 
 Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues 
 
 Like mere abstractions, empty sounds, to which 
 
 We join no feeling, and attach no form ! 
 
 As if the soldier died without a wound ; 
 
 As if the fibres of this god-like frame 
 
 W^ere gored without a pang; as if the wretch 
 
 Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. . 7 
 
 Passed off to heaven, translated and not killed ; 
 As though he had no wife to pine for him, 
 No God to judge him ! Therefore evil days 
 Are coming on us, O my countrymen ! 
 And what, if all-avenging Providence, 
 Strong and retributive, should make us know 
 The meaning of our words, force us to feel 
 The desolation and the agony of our fierce doings ? 
 
 Coleridge. 
 
 This is the aspect of the Christian world in its most 
 polished and enlightened quarter : — there surely is 
 some need of serious inquiry; there must surely be 
 some monstrous practical delusion here, that wants 
 honestly encountering, and boldly dispersing. 
 
 But if such is the internal condition of Christian 
 Europe, what is the phasis that it presents to the rest 
 of the world ? With the exception of our own tribes, 
 now numerously scattered over almost every region 
 of the earth, all are in our estimation barbarians. 
 We pride ourselves on our superior knowledge, our 
 superior refinement, our higher virtues, our nobler 
 character. We talk of the heathen, the savage, and 
 the cruel, and the wily tribes, that fill the rest of the 
 earth ; but how is it that these tribes know us ? Chiefly 
 by the very features that we attribute exclusively to 
 them. They know us chiefly by our crimes and our 
 cruelty. It is we who are, and must appear to them 
 the savages. What, indeed, are civilization and 
 Christianity ? The refinement and ennoblement of 
 our nature ! The habitual feeling and the habitual 
 practice of an enlightened justice, of delicacy and 
 decorum, of generosity and aff'ection to our fellow 
 men. There is not one of these qualities that we 
 have not violated for ever, and on almost all occasions, 
 
8 COLONIZATION 
 
 towards every single tribe with which we have come 
 in contact. We have professed, indeed, to teach 
 Christianity to them; but we had it not to teach, and 
 we have carried them instead, all the curses and the 
 horrors of a demon race. If the reign of Satan, in 
 fact, were come, — if he were let loose with all his 
 legions, to plague the earth for a thousand years, 
 what would be the characteristics of his prevalence ? 
 Terrors and crimes ; one wide pestilence of vice and 
 obscenity ; one fearful torrent of cruelty and wrath, 
 deceit and oppression, vengeance and malignity ; the 
 passions of the strong would be inflamed — the weak 
 would cry and implore in vain ! 
 
 And is not that the very reign of spurious Christianity 
 which has lasted now for these thousand years, and 
 that during the last three hundred, has spread with 
 discovery round the whole earth, and made the name 
 of Christian synonymous with fiend ? It is shocking 
 that the divine and beneficent religion of Christ 
 should thus have been libelled by base pretenders, 
 and made to stink in the nostrils of all people to whom 
 it ought, and would, have come as the opening of 
 heaven ; but it is a fact no less awful than true, that 
 the European nations, while professing Christianity, 
 have made it odious to the heathen. They have 
 branded it by their actions as something breathed up, 
 full of curses and cruelties, from the infernal regions. 
 On them lies the guilt, the stupendous guilt of having 
 checked the gospel in its career, and brought it to a 
 full stop in its triumphant progress through the nations. 
 They have done this, and then wondered at their deed ! 
 They have visited every coast in the shape of rapaci- 
 ous and unprincipled monsters, and then cursed the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. V 
 
 inhabitants as besotted with superstition, because they 
 did not look on them as angels I People have won- 
 dered at the slow progress^ and in many countries, 
 the almost hopeless labours of the missionaries; — why 
 should they wonder? The missionaries had Chris- 
 tianity to teach — and their countrymen had been 
 there before them, and called themselves Christians ! 
 That was enough : what recommendations could a 
 religion have, to men who had seen its professors for 
 generations in the sole characters of thieves, mur- 
 derers, and oppressors? The missionaries told them 
 that in Christianity lay their salvation ; — they shook 
 their heads, they had already found it their destruc- 
 tion ! They told them they were come to comfort 
 and enlighten them; — they had already been comforted 
 by the seizure of their lands, the violation of their 
 ancient rights, the kidnapping of their persons ; and 
 they had been enlightened by the midnight flames of 
 their own dwellings ! Is there any mystery in the 
 difficulties of the missionaries ? Is there any in the 
 apathy of simple nations towards Christianity ? 
 
 The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so- 
 called Christian race, throughout every region of the 
 world, and upon every people that they have been 
 able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of 
 any other race, however fierce, however untaught, 
 and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any 
 age of the earth. Is it fit that this horrible blending 
 of the names of Christianity and outrage should con- 
 tinue? Yet it does continue, and must continue, till 
 the genuine spirit of Christianity in this kingdom 
 shall arouse itself, and determine that these villanies 
 shall cease, or they who perpetrate them shall be 
 B 2 
 
10 COLONIZATION 
 
 stripped of the honoured name of — Christian ! If 
 foul deeds are to be done, let them be done in their 
 own foul name; and let robbery of lands, seizure of 
 cattle, violence committed on the liberties or the lives 
 of men, be branded as the deeds of devils and not of 
 Christians. The spirit of Christianity, in the shape of 
 missions, and in the teaching and beneficent acts of 
 the missionaries, is now sensibly, in many countries, 
 undoing the evil which wolves in the sheep's clothing 
 of the Christian name had before done. And of late 
 another glorious symptom of the growth of this divine 
 spirit has shown itself, in the strong feeling exhibited 
 in this country towards the natives of our colonies. 
 To fan that genuine flame of love, is the object of this 
 work. To comprehend the full extent of atrocities done 
 in the Christian name, we must look the whole wide 
 evil sternly in the face. We must not suffer our- 
 selves to aim merely at the redress of this or that 
 grievance; but, gathering all the scattered rays of 
 aboriginal oppression into one burning focus, and 
 thus enabling ourselves to feel its entire force, we 
 shall be less than Englishmen and Christians if we do 
 not stamp the whole system of colonial usage towards 
 the natives, with that general and indignant odium 
 which must demolish it at once and for ever. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 11 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD. 
 
 The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness. 
 
 Jeremiah xii. 12. 
 Forth rush the fiends as with the torrent's sweep, 
 . And deeds are done that make the angels weep. — Rogers. 
 
 We have thus in our first chapter glanced at the scene 
 of crime and abomination which Europe through long 
 ages presented, still daring to clothe itself in the fair 
 majesty of the Christian name. It is a melancholy 
 field of speculation — but our business is not there just 
 now; we must hasten from it, to that other field of 
 sorrow and shame at which we also glanced. For 
 fifteen centuries, during which Christianity had been 
 promulgated, Europe had become little aware of its 
 genuine nature, though boastful of its profession ; but 
 during the latter portion of that period its nations had 
 progressed rapidly in population, in strength, and in 
 the arts of social life. They had, amid all their 
 bickerings and butcherings, found sufficient leisure to 
 become commercial, speculative, and ambitious of still 
 greater wealth and power. Would to ,God, in their 
 
 b2 
 
12 COLONIZATION 
 
 improvements, they could have numbered that of 
 religious knowledge ! Their absurd crusades, nevei- 
 theless, by which they had attempted to wrest the 
 Holy City from the infidels to put it into the posses- 
 sion of mere nominal Christians, whose very act of 
 seizing on the Holy Land proclaimed their ignorance 
 of the very first principles of the divine religion in 
 whose cause they assumed to go forth — these crusades, 
 immediately scandalous and disastrous as they were, 
 introduced them to the East; gave them knowledge of 
 more refined and immensely wealthy nations ; and at 
 once raised their notions of domestic luxury and em- 
 bellishment; gave them means of extended know- 
 ledge ; and inspired them with a boundless thirst for 
 the riches of which they had got glimpses of astonish- 
 ment. The Venetians and Genoese alternately grejv 
 great by commerce with that East of which Marco 
 Polo brought home such marvellous accounts ; and at 
 length, Henry of Portugal appeared, one of the noblest 
 and most remarkable princes in earth's annals ! He 
 devoted all the energies of his mind and the resources 
 of his fortune to discovery ! Fixing his abode by 
 the ocean, he sent across it not merely the eyes of 
 desire, but the far-glances of dawning science. Step by 
 step, year by year, spite of all natural difficulties, dis- 
 asters and discouragements, he threw back the cloud 
 that had for ages veiled the vast sea; his ships brought 
 home news of isle after isle — spots on the wide waste 
 of waters, fairer and more sunny than the fabled 
 Hesperides; and crept along the vast line of the Afri- 
 can coast to the very Cape of Hope. He died ; but 
 his spirit was shed abroad in an inextinguishable 
 zeal, guided and made invincible by the Magnet, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 13 
 
 " the spirit of the stone," the adoption of which 
 he had suggested.* — At once arose Gama and Colum- 
 bus, and as it were at once — for there were but five 
 years and a few months between one splendid event 
 and the other, — the East and the West Indies by the 
 sea-path, and America, till then undreamed of, were 
 discovered ! 
 
 What an era of amazement was that ! Worlds of 
 vast extent and wonderful character, starting as it were 
 into sudden creation before the eyes of growing, in- 
 quisitive, and ambitious Europe ! Day after day, 
 some news, astounding in its very infinitude of good- 
 ness, was breaking upon their excited minds; news 
 which overturned old theories of philosophy and geo- 
 graphy, and opened prospects for the future equally 
 confounding by their strange magnificence ! No single 
 Paradise discovered; but countless Edens, scattered 
 through the glittering seas of summer climes, and 
 populous realms, stretching far and wide beneath new 
 heavens, from pole to pole — 
 
 Another nature, and a new mankind. — Rogers. 
 
 Since the day of Creation, but two events of 
 superior influence on the destinies of the human race 
 had occurred — the Announcement of God's Law on 
 Sinai, and the Advent of his Son ! Providence had 
 drawn aside the veil of a mighty part of his world, 
 and submitted the lives and happiness of millions of 
 his creatures to the arbitrium of that European race, 
 which now boasted of superior civilization — and far 
 more, of being the regenerated followers of his Christ. 
 Never was so awful a test of sincerity presented to the 
 professors of a heavenly creed ! — never was such 
 
 * Mickle's Camoens. 
 
14 . COLONIZATION 
 
 opportunity allowed to mortal men to work in the 
 eternal scheme of Providence ! It is past ! Such 
 amplitude of the glory of goodness can never again be 
 put at one moment into tlie reach of the human will. 
 God's providence is working out its undoubted design 
 in this magnificent revelation of 
 
 That maiden world, twin-sister to the old ; — Montgomery. 
 
 But they who should have worked with it in the be- 
 nignity and benevolence of that Saviour whose name 
 they bore, have left to all futurity the awful spectacle 
 of their infamy ! 
 
 Had the Europeans really at this eventful crisis 
 been instructed in genuine Christianity, and imbued 
 with its spirit, what a signal career of improvement 
 and happiness must have commenced throughout the 
 vast American continent ! What a source of pure, 
 guiltless, and enduring wealth must have been opened 
 up to Europe itself! Only let any one imagine the 
 natives of America meeting the Europeans as they 
 did, with the simple faith of children, and the reve- 
 rence inspired by an idea of something divine in their 
 visitors ; let any one imagine them thus meeting them, 
 and finding them, instead of what they actually were, 
 spirits base and desperate as hell could have possibly 
 thrown up from her most malignant regions — 
 finding them men of peace instead of men of blood, 
 men of integrity instead of men of deceit, men of 
 love and generosity instead of men of cruelty and 
 avarice — wise, enlightened, and just ! Let any one 
 imagine that, and he has before him such a series of 
 grand and delightful consequences as can only be 
 exhibited when Christianity shall really become the 
 actuating spirit of nations ,* and they shall as the direct 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 15 
 
 consequence, "beat their swords into ploughshares, 
 and their spears into pruning-hooks." Imagine the 
 Spaniards and the Portuguese to have been merely 
 what they pretended to be, — men who had been 
 taught in the divine law of the New Testament, that 
 " God made of one blood all the nations of the earth ;" 
 men who, while they burned to " plant the Cross," 
 actually meant by it to plant in every new land the 
 command, '« thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;" 
 and the doctrine, that the religion of the Christian 
 is, to "do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
 before God," Imagine that these men came amongst 
 the simple people of the New World, clothed in all 
 the dignity of Christian wisdom, the purity of Chris- 
 tian sentiment, and the sacred beauty of Christian 
 benevolence ; and what a contrast to the crimes and 
 the horrors with which they devastated and depopu- 
 lated that hapless continent! The historian would not 
 then have had to say — '? The bloodshed and attendant 
 miseries which the unparalleled rapine and cruelty of 
 the Spaniards spread over the New World, indeed 
 disgrace human nature. The great and flourishing 
 empires of Mexico and Peru, steeped in the blood of 
 FORTY MILLIONS of their sons, present a melancholy 
 prospect, which must excite the indignation of every 
 good heart."* If, instead of that lust of gold which 
 had hardened them into actual demons, they had worn 
 the benign graces of. true Christians, the natives would 
 have found in them a higher image of divinity than 
 any which they had before conceived, and the whole 
 immense continent would have been laid open to 
 them as a field of unexampled and limitless glory and 
 
 • Micklc. 
 
16 COLONIZATION 
 
 felicity. They might have introduced their ^rts and 
 sciences — have taught the wonders and the charms of 
 household enjoyments and refinements — have shewn 
 the beauty and benefit of cultivated fields and gardens ; 
 their faith would have created them confidence in the 
 hearts of the natives, and the advantages resulting 
 from their friendly tuition would have won their love. 
 What a triumphant progress for civilization and 
 Christianity ! There was no wealth nor advantage of 
 that great continent which might not have become 
 legitimately and worthily theirs. They would have 
 walked amongst the swarming millions of the south as 
 the greatest of benefactors; and under their enlight- 
 ened guidance, every species of useful produce, and 
 every article of commercial wealth would have sprung 
 up. Spain need not have been blasted, as it were, by 
 the retributive hand of Divine punishment, into the 
 melancholy object which she is this day. That sudden 
 stream of gold which made her a second Tantalus, 
 reaching to her very lips yet never quenching her 
 thirst, and leaving her at length the poorest and most 
 distracted realm in Europe, might have been hers 
 from a thousand unpolluted sources, and bearing along 
 with it God's blessing instead of his curse : and mighty 
 nations, rivalling Europe in social arts and poli- 
 tical power, might have been now, instead of many 
 centuries hence, objects of our admiration, and grate- 
 ful repay ers of our benefits. 
 
 But I seem to hear many voices exclaiming, " Yes ! 
 these things might have been, had men been what 
 they are not, nor ever were!" Precisely so! — that 
 is the point I wish expressly to illustrate before I pro- 
 ceed to my narrative. These things might have been. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 17 
 
 and would have been, had men been merely what they 
 professed. They called themselves Christians, and I 
 merely state what Christians would and must, as a 
 matter of course, have done. The Spaniards pro- 
 fessed *to be, and probably really believed that they 
 were. Christians. They professed zealously that one 
 • of their most ardent desires was to bring the newly- 
 discovered hemisphere under the cross of Christ. 
 Columbus returned thanks to God for having made 
 him a sort of modern apostle to the vast tribes of the 
 West. Ferdinand and Isabella, when he returned and 
 related to them the wonderful story of his discovery, 
 fell on their knees before their throne, and thanked 
 God too ! They expressed an earnest anxiety to esta- 
 blish the empire of the Cross throughout their new 
 and splendid dominions. The very Spanish adven- 
 turers, with their hands heavy with- the plundered 
 gold, and clotted with the blood of the unhappy 
 Americans, were zealous for the spread of their faith. 
 They were not more barbarous than they were self- 
 deluded ; and I shall presently shew whence had 
 sprung, and how had grown to such a blinding thick- 
 ness, that delusion upon them. But the truth which 
 I am now attempting to elucidate and establish, is of 
 far higher and wider concernment than as exemplified 
 in the early adventurers of Spain and Portugal. 
 This grand delusion has rested on Europe for a thou- 
 sand years ; and from the days of the Spaniards to 
 the present moment, has gone on propagating crimes 
 and miseries without end. For the last three hun- 
 dred years, Europe has been boasting of its Christi- 
 anity, and perpetrating throughout the vast extent of 
 territories in every quarter of the globe subjected to 
 
18 COLONIZATION 
 
 its power, every violence and abomination at which 
 Christianity revolts. There is no nation of Europe 
 that is free from the guilt of colonial blood and op- 
 pression. God knows what an awful share rests upon 
 this country ! It remains therefore for us simply to 
 consider whether we will abandon our national crimes 
 or our Christian name. Whether Europe shall con- 
 tinue so to act towards what it pleases to term 
 "savage" nations, as that it must seem to be the very 
 ground and stronghold of some infernal superstition, 
 or so as to promote, what a large portion of the 
 British public at least, now sincerely desires, — the 
 Christianization, and with it the civilization, of the 
 heathen. 
 
 I shall now pass in rapid review, the treatment 
 which the natives of the greater portion of the regions 
 discovered since the days of Columbus and Gama, 
 have received at the hands of the nations styling 
 themselves Christian, that every one may see what 
 has been, and still is, the actual system of these na- 
 tions ; and I shall first follow Columbus and his 
 immediate successors to the Western world, because 
 it was first, though only by so brief a period, reached 
 by the ships of the adventurers. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PAPAL GIFT OF ALL THE HEATHEN WORLD 
 TO THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS. 
 
 "Woe is me, ray mother, that thou hast born me a man of strife, 
 and a man of contention to the whole earth. — JeremiaJi xv. 10. 
 
 Also in their skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor 
 innocents. Jeremiah v. 16. 
 
 Columbus, while seeking for a western track to the 
 East Indies, on Friday , Oct. 12th, 1492, stumbled on 
 a New World ! The discoveries by Prince Henry 
 of Portugal, of Madeira, and of a considerable extent 
 of the African coast, had impressed him with a high 
 idea of the importance of what yet was to be disco- 
 vered, and of the possibility of reaching India by sea. 
 This had led him to obtain a Bull from Pope Eugene 
 IV. granting to the crown of Portugal all the coun- 
 tries which the Portuguese should discover from Cape 
 Non to India. Columbus, having now discovered 
 America, although unknown to himself, supposing it 
 still to be some part of India, his monarchs, Ferdi- 
 nand and Isabella, lost no time in applying for a 
 similar grant. Alexander VI., a Spaniard, was 
 equally generous with his predecessor, and accord- 
 
20 COLONIZATION 
 
 ingly divided the world between the Spaniards and 
 Portuguese ! " The Pope," says Robertson, " as the 
 vicar and representative of Jesus Christ, was sup- 
 posed to have a right of dominion over all the king- 
 doms of the earth. Alexander VI., a pontiff infamous 
 for every crime which disgraces humanity, filled the 
 papal throne at that time. As he was born Ferdi- 
 nand's subject, and very solicitous to procure the 
 protection of Spain, in order to facilitate the execution 
 of his ambitious schemes in favour of his own family, 
 he was extremely willing to gratify the Spanish 
 monarchs. By an act of liberality, which cost him 
 nothing, and that served to establish the jurisdiction 
 and fortunes of the papal see, he granted in full right 
 to Ferdinand and Isabella, all the countries inhabited 
 by infidels which they had discovered, or should dis- 
 cover; and in virtue of that power which he derived 
 from Jesus Christ, he conferred on the crown of 
 Castile vast regions, to the possession of which he 
 himself was so far from having any title, that he was 
 unacquainted with their situation, and ignorant even 
 of their existence. As it was necessary to prevent 
 this grant from interfering with that formerly made 
 to the crown of Portugal, he appointed that a line, 
 supposed to be drawn from pole to pole, a hundred 
 leagues to the westward of the Azores, should serve 
 as a limit between them ; and, in the plenitude of his 
 power, bestowed all to the east of this imaginary line 
 upon the Portuguese, and all to the west of it, upon 
 the Spaniards. Zeal for propagating the Christian 
 faith, was the consideration employed by Ferdinand 
 in soliciting this Bull, and is mentioned by Alexander 
 as his chief motive for issuing it." 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 21 
 
 It is necessary, for the right understanding of this 
 history, to pause upon this remarkable fact, and to 
 give it the consideration which it demands. In this 
 one passage lies the key to all the atrocities, which 
 from that hour to the present have been perpetrated 
 on the natives of every country making no profession 
 of Christianity, which those making such a profession 
 have been able to subdue. An Italian priest, — as the 
 unfortunate Inca, Atahualpa, afterwards observed with 
 indignant surprise, when told that the pope had given 
 his empire to the Spaniards, — here boldly presumes to 
 give away God's earth as if he sate as God's acknow- 
 ledged vicegerent. Splitting this mighty planet into 
 two imaginary halves, he hands one to the Spanish 
 and the other to the Portuguese monarch, as he 
 would hand the two halves of an orange to a couple 
 of boys. The presumption of the act is so outrageous, 
 that at this time of day, and forgetting for a moment 
 all the consequences which flowed from this deed, one 
 is ready to burst into a hearty fit of laughter, as at a 
 solemn farce, irresistibly ludicrous from its grave ex- 
 travagance. But it was a farce which cost, and still 
 costs the miserable natives of unproselyted countries 
 dear. It was considered no farce — there was seen no 
 burlesque in it at the time of its enactment. Not 
 only the kings of Spain and Portugal, but the kings 
 and people of all Europe bowed to this preposterous 
 decision, and never dreamed for a moment of calling 
 in question its validity. 
 
 Edward IV. of England, on receiving a remon- 
 strance from John II. of Portugal on account of some 
 English merchants attempting to trade within the 
 limits assigned to the Portuguese by the pope's bull, 
 
22 COLONIZATION 
 
 SO far from calling in question the right thus derived 
 by the Portuguese from the pope, instantly ordered 
 the merchants to withdraw from the interdicted scene. 
 
 Here then, we have the root and ground of that 
 grand delusion which led the first discoverers of new 
 lands, to imagine themselves entitled to seize on them 
 as their own, and to violate every sacred right of 
 humanity without the slightest perception of wrong, 
 and even in many instances, in the fond belief that 
 they were extending the kingdom of Christ. We 
 have here the man of sin, the anti-Christ, so clearly 
 foretold by St. Paul, — " the son of perdition, who 
 opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called 
 God or that is worshipped ; so that he as God, sitteth 
 in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is 
 God. . . . Even him, whose coming is after the 
 working of Satan with all power, and signs and lying 
 wonders ; and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness 
 in them that perish ; because they received not the 
 love of the truth that they might be saved. And for 
 this cause God shall send them a strong delusion, that 
 they should believe a lie.^^ — Second Epistle to the Thcssa- 
 lonians, ii. 3, 4, 9, 10, 11. 
 
 Strange and abounding in most singular transac- 
 tions as is the history of the Papal church, there is 
 not to be found in it one fact in which the son of per- 
 dition, the proud anti-Christ, is more characteristically 
 shown than in this singular transaction. We have 
 him here enacting the God indeed ! and giving away 
 a world in a breath. Vast and mighty nations, isles 
 scattered through unknown oceans, continents stretch- 
 ing through all climates, and millions on millions of 
 human beings, who never heard of his country or his 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 23 
 
 religion, much less of his name, are disposed of with 
 all their fortunes ; given up as so many cattle to the 
 sword or the yoke of the oppressor — the very ground 
 given from beneath their feet, and no place left them 
 on God's earth — no portion in his heritage, in time 
 or in eternity, unless they acknowledged the mysteri- 
 ous dogmas and more mysterious power of this hoary 
 and shaven priest ! Never was " the son of perdi- 
 tion " more glaringly revealed ; for perdition is the 
 only word that can indicate that fulness of misery, 
 devastation, and destruction, which went forth with 
 this act, upon millions of innocent and unconscious 
 souls. Never was "the deceivableness of unrighte- 
 ousness " so signally exemplified ; for here was all 
 Europe, — monarchs, ministers, — whatever it possessed 
 of wise, or learned, powerful, or compassionate, all 
 blinded with such "a strong delusion," that they 
 could implicitly " believe a lie " of so monstrous and 
 flagrant a kind. 
 
 It is difficult for us now to conceive how so gross a. 
 delusion could have wrapped in darkness all the in- 
 tellect of the most active and aspiring portion of the 
 globe; but it is necessary that we should fix this 
 peculiar psychological phenomenon firmly and clearly 
 in our minds, for on it depends the explication of all 
 that was done against humanity during the reign of 
 Papacy, and much that still continues to be done to 
 this very day by ourselves, even while we are believ- 
 ing ourselves enfranchised from this " strong delu- 
 sion," and too much enlightened to " believe a lie.'* 
 
 We must bear in mind then, that this strange phe- 
 nomenon was the effect of nearly a thousand years' 
 labour of the son of perdition. For ages upon ages, 
 
24 COLONIZATION 
 
 every craft, priestly and political ; every form of regal 
 authority, of arms, and of superstition ; every delusion 
 of the senses, and every species* of play upon the 
 affections, hopes and fears of men, had been resorted 
 to, and exerted, to rivet this " strong delusion " upon 
 the human soul, and to make it capable of " believing 
 a lie." 
 
 In the two preceding chapters, T have denied the 
 possession of Christianity to multitudes and nations 
 who had assumed the name, with a sternness and 
 abruptness, which no doubt have startled many who 
 have now read them ; but I call earnestly upon every 
 reader, to attend to what I am now endeavouring 
 deeply to impress upon him ; for, I must repeat, that 
 there is more of what concerns the progress of Chris- 
 tian truth, and consequently, the happiness of the 
 human race, dependent on the thorough conception of 
 the fact which I am going to state, than probably any 
 of us have been sufficiently sensible of, and which we 
 cannot once become really sensible of, without join- 
 ing heart and hand in the endeavour to free our own 
 great country, and Christendom in general, from the 
 commission of cruelties and outrages that mock our 
 profession of Christ's religion, and brand the national 
 name with disgrace. 
 
 There is no fact then, more clearly developed and 
 established past all controversy, in the history of the 
 Papal church, than that from its very commencement 
 it set aside Christianity, and 'substituted in the words 
 of the apostle, "a strong delusion" and "the belief 
 of a lie." The Bible— that treasury and depository of 
 God's truth — that fountain of all pure and holy and 
 kindly sentiments — that charter of all human rights-— 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 25 
 
 that guardian of hope and herald- of salvation, was 
 withdrawn from the public eye. It was denounced 
 as the most dangerous of two-edged instruments, and 
 feared as the worst enemy of the Papal system. 
 Christianity was no longer taught, the Bible being 
 once disposed of; but an artful and deadly piece of 
 machinery was put in action, which bore its name. 
 Instead of the pure and holy maxims of the New 
 Testament — its sublime truths, full of temporal and 
 eternal freedom, its glorious knowledge, its animating 
 tidings, its triumphant faith — submission to popes, 
 cardinals, friars, monks and priests, was taught — 
 a Confessional and a Purgatory took their place. 
 Christianity was no longer existent ; but the very reli- 
 gion of Satan — the most cunning invention, by which 
 working on human cupidity and ambition, he was en- 
 abled to achieve a temporary triumph over the Gospel. 
 Never was there a more subtle discovery than that of 
 the Confessional and the Purgatory. Once having 
 established a belief in confession and absolution, and 
 who would not be religious at a cheap rate ? — in the 
 Confessional — the especial closet of Satan, every 
 crime and pollution might be practised, and the guilty 
 soul made to believe that its sin was that moment 
 again obliterated. Even if death surprised the sinner, 
 there was power of redemption from that convenient 
 purgatory. Paid prayers were substituted for 
 genuine repentance — money became the medium of 
 salvation, and Beelzebub and Mammon sate and 
 laughed together at the credulity of mankind ! 
 
 Thus, as I have stated, Christianity was no longer 
 taught; but a totally different system, usurping its 
 name. Instead of simple apostles, it produced showy 
 
26 COLONIZATION 
 
 popes and cardinals; instead of humble preachers, 
 proud temporal princes, and dignitaries as proud ; 
 instead of the Bible, the mass-book and the legends 
 of saints; instead of one God and one Saviour Jesus 
 Christ, the eyes of its votaries were turned for help on 
 virgins, saints, and anchorites — instead of the inward 
 life and purity of the gospel-faith, outward ceremonies, 
 genuflexions, and pageantry without end. Every man, 
 however desperate his nature or his deeds, knew that 
 for a certain amount of coin, he could have his soul 
 white- washed ; and, instead of a healthy and availing 
 piety, that spurious and diabolical devotion was gene- 
 rated, which is found at the present day amongst the 
 bandits of Italy and Spain — who one moment plunge 
 their stiletto or bury their bullet in the heart of the un- 
 suspecting traveller, and the next kneel at the shrine of 
 the Virgin, perform some slight penance, offer some 
 slight gift to the church, and are perfectly satisfied 
 that they are* in the way of salvation. It is that 
 spurious devotion, indeed, which marks every super- 
 stition — Hindoo, Mahometan, or Fetish — wherever, in- 
 deed, mere outward penance, or the off'ering of money, 
 is substituted for genuine repentance and a new life. 
 
 Let any one, therefore, imagine the effect of this 
 state of things on Europe through seven or eight cen- 
 turies. The light of the genuine gospel withdrawn — 
 all the purity of the moral law of Christ — all the clear 
 and convincing annunciations of the rights of man — 
 all the feelings of love and sympathy that glow alone 
 in the gospel ; — and instead of these an empty show ; 
 legends and masses, miracle-plays and holiday page- 
 ants ; such doctrines of right and wrong, such maxims 
 of worldly policy preached as suited ambitious digni- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 27 
 
 taries or luxurious friars — and it will account for that 
 singular state of belief and of conscience which existed 
 at the time of the discovery of the new countries of 
 the E^st and West. It would have been impossible 
 that such ignorance, or such shocking perversion of 
 reason and faith, could have grown up and established 
 themselves as the characteristics of the public mind, 
 had every man had the Bible in his hand to refer to, 
 and imbue himself daily with its luminous sense of 
 justice, and its spirit of humanity. 
 
 We shall presently see what effects it had produced 
 on even the best men of the 15th and 16th centuries; 
 but what perhaps is not quite so much suspected, we 
 shall have to learn in the course of this volume to 
 what an extent the influence of this system still con- 
 tinues on the Protestant mind. So thoroughly had it 
 debauched the public morality, that it is to this source 
 that we alone can come to explain the laxity of opinion 
 and the apathy of feeling that have ever since charac- 
 terized Europe in its dealings with the natives of all 
 new countries. To this day, we no more regard the 
 clearest principles of the gospel in our transactions 
 with them, than if such principles did not exist. The 
 Right of Conquest, and such robber-phrases, have 
 been, and even still continue to be, "as smoothly 
 trundled from our tongues," as if we could find them 
 enjoined on our especial approbation in the Bible. 
 But genuine Christianity is at length powerfully 
 awaking in the public mind of England ; and I trust 
 that even the perusal of this volume will strengthen 
 our resolution to wash the still clinging stains of 
 popery out of our garments, and to determine to stand 
 by the morality of the Bible, and by that alone. 
 
28 COLONIZATION 
 
 In closing this chapter, let me say that 1 should be 
 very sorry to hurt the feelings of any modern Catholic. 
 The foregoing strictures have no reference to them. 
 However much or little of the ancient faith of the 
 Papal church any of them may retain, 1 believe that, 
 as a body, they are as sincere in their devotion as any 
 other class of Christians ; but the ancient system, 
 character, and practice of the Church of Rome, are 
 matters of all history, and too closely connected with 
 the objects of this work, and with the interests of mil- 
 lions, to be passed without, what the author believes 
 to be, a faithful exposition. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SPANIARDS IN HISPANIOLA. 
 
 The gathering signs of a long night of woe. — Rogers. 
 
 The terms of the treaty between the Spanish monarchs 
 and Columbus, on his being engaged as a discoverer, 
 signed by the parties on the 17th of April, 1492, are 
 sufficiently indicative of the firm possession which the 
 doctrines of popery had upon their minds. The 
 sovereigns constituted Columbus high-admiral of all 
 the seas, islands, and continents which should be dis- 
 covered by him, as a perpetual inheritance for him 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 29 
 
 and his heirs. He was to be their viceroy in those 
 countries, with a tenth of the free profits upon all the 
 productions -and the commerce of those realms. This 
 was pretty well for monarchs professing to be Chris- 
 tians, and who ought to have been taught — *' thou 
 shalt not covet thy neighbour's house ; thou shalt not 
 covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor 
 his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing 
 that is thy neighbour's." But they had been brought 
 up in another faith : the Pope had exclaimed — 
 
 Creation's heir ! the world, the world is mine ! 
 
 and they took him literally and really at his word. 
 And it will soon be seen that Columbus, though 
 naturally of an honorable nature, was not the less the 
 dupe of this fearful system. He proceeded on his 
 voyage, discovered a portion of the West Indies, and 
 speedily plunged into atrocities against the natives 
 that would have been pronounced shocking in Timour 
 or Attila. James Montgomery, in his beautiful 
 poem, the West Indies, has strongly contrasted the 
 character of Columbus and that of his successors. 
 
 The winds were prosperous, and the billows bore 
 
 The brave adventurer to the promised shore ; 
 
 Far in the west, arrayed in purple light, 
 
 Dawned the New World on his enraptured sight. 
 
 Not Adam, loosened from the encumbering earth. 
 
 Waked by the breath of God to instant birth, 
 
 With sweeter, wilder wonder gazed around, 
 
 When life within, and light without he found ;' 
 
 When all creation rushing o'er his soul. 
 
 He seemed to live and breathe throughout the whole. 
 
 So felt Columbus, when divinely fair 
 
 At the last look of resolute despair. 
 
 The Hesperian isles, from distance dimly blue, 
 
 With gradual beauty opened on his view. 
 
30 COLONIZATION 
 
 In that proud moment, liis transported mind 
 The morning and the evening worlds combined ; 
 And made the sea, that sundered them before, 
 A bond of peace, uniting shore to shore. 
 
 Vain, visionary hope ! rapacious Spain 
 
 Followed her hero's triumph o'er the main ; 
 
 Her hardy sons in fields of battle tried, 
 
 Where Moor and Christian desperately died ; — 
 
 A rabid race, fanatically bold, 
 
 And steeled to cruelty by lust of gold. 
 
 Traversed the waves, the unknown world explored ; 
 
 The cross t/ieir standard, but their Jaith the sxoord ; 
 
 Their steps were graves ; o'er prostrate realms they trod ; 
 
 They worshipped Mammon, while they vowed to God. 
 
 To estimate the effect of his theological education 
 on such a man as Columbus, we have only to pause a 
 moment, to witness the manner of his first landing in 
 the new world, and his reception there. On discover- 
 ing the island of Guanahani, one of the Bahamas, the 
 Spaniards raised the hymn of Te Deum. At sunrise 
 they rowed towards land with colours flying, and the 
 sound of martial music ; and amid the crowds of won- 
 dering natives assembled on the shores and hills 
 around, Columbus, like another Mahomet, set foot on 
 the beach, sword in hand, and followed hy a crucifix, 
 which his followers planted in the earth, and then 
 prostrating themselves before it, took possession of the 
 country in the name of his sovereign. The inhabit- 
 ants gazed in silent wonder on ceremonies so pregnant 
 with calamity to them, but without any suspicion of 
 their real nature. Living in a delightful climate, hid- 
 den through all the ages of their world from the other 
 world of labour and commerce, of art and artifice, of 
 avarice and cruelty, they appeared in the primitive 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 31 
 
 and unclad simplicity of nature. The Spaniards, says 
 Peter Martyr, — "Dryades formossissimas, aut nativas 
 fontium nymphas de quibus fabulatur antiquitas, se 
 vidisse arbitrati sunt :*' — they seemed to behold the 
 most beautiful dryads, or native nymphs of the foun- 
 tains, of whom antiquity fabled. Their forms were 
 light and graceful, though dusky with the warm hues 
 of the sun ; their hair hung in long raven tresses on 
 their shoulders, unlike the frizzly wool of the Africans, 
 or was tastefully braided. Some were painted, and 
 armed with a light bow, or a fishing spear ; but their 
 countenances were full of gentleness and kindness. 
 Columbus himself, in one of his letters to Ferdinand 
 and Isabella, describes the Americans and their coun- 
 try thus : — " This country excels all others, as far as 
 the day surpasses the night in splendour : the natives 
 love their neighbour as themselves; their conversation is 
 the sweetest imaginable; their faces always smiling, and 
 so gentle, so affectionate are they, that I swear to your 
 highnesses there is not a better people in the world." 
 The Spaniards indeed looked with as much amazement 
 on the simple people, and the paradise in which they 
 lived, as the natives did on the wonderful spectacle of 
 European forms, faces, dress, arts, arms, and ships. — 
 Such sweet and flowing streams; such sunny dales, scat- 
 tered with flowers as gorgeous and beautiful as they were 
 novel ; trees covered with a profusion of glorious and 
 aromatic blossoms, and beneath their shade the huts of 
 the natives, of simple reeds or palm-leaves ; the stately 
 palms themselves, rearing their lofty heads on the hill 
 sides; the canoes skimming over the blue waters, and 
 birds of most resplendent plumage flying from tree to 
 tree. They walked 
 
32 COLONIZATION 
 
 Through citron-groves and fields of yellow maize, 
 
 Through plantain-walks where not a sunbeam plays. 
 
 Here blue savannas fade into the sky ; 
 
 There forests frown in midnight majesty ; 
 
 Ceiba, and Indian fig, and plane sublime. 
 
 Nature's first-born, and reverenced by time! 
 
 There sits the bird that speaks ! there quivering rise 
 
 "Wings that reflect the glow of evening skies! 
 
 Half bird, half fly, the fairy king of fl.owers. 
 
 Reigns there, and revels through the fragrant bowers ; 
 
 Gem full of life, and joy, and song divine. 
 
 Soon in the virgin's graceful ear to shine. 
 
 The poet sung, if ancient Fame speaks truth, 
 
 " Come ! follow, follow to the Fount of Youth ! 
 
 I quaflfthe ambrosial mists that round it rise. 
 
 Dissolved and lost in dreams of Paradise !'* 
 
 And there called forth, to bless a happier hour. 
 
 It met the sun in many a rainbow -shower ! 
 
 Murmuring delight, its living waters rolled 
 
 'Mid branching palms, and amaranths of gold ! 
 
 Bogers. 
 
 It were an absurdity to say that they were Christians 
 who broke in upon this Elysian scene like malignant 
 spirits, and made that vast continent one wide theatre 
 of such havoc, insult, murder, and misery as never 
 were before witnessed on earth. But it was not ex- 
 actly in this island that this disgraceful career com- 
 menced. Lured by the rumour of gold, which he 
 received from the natives, Columbus sailed southward 
 first to Cuba, and thence to Hispaniola. Here he was 
 visited by the cazique, Guacanahari, who was doomed 
 first to experience the villany of the Spaniards. This 
 excellent and kind man sent by the messengers which 
 Columbus had despatched to wait on him, a curious 
 mask of beaten gold, and when the vessel of Columbus 
 was immediately afterwards wrecked in standing in to 
 the co£ist, he appeared with all his people on the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 33 
 
 Strand, — for the purpose of plundering and destroying 
 them, as we might expect from savages, and as the 
 Cazique would have been served had he been wrecked 
 himself on the Spanish, or on our own coast at that 
 time ? No ! but better Christian than most of those 
 who bore that name, he came eagerly to do the very 
 deed enjoined by Christ and his followers, — to succour 
 and to save. " The prince," says Herrera, their own 
 historian, " appeared all zeal and activity at the head of 
 his people. He placed armed guards to keep oflf the 
 press of the natives, and to keep clear a space for the 
 depositing of the goods as they came to land : he sent 
 out as many as were needful in their canoes to put 
 themselves under the guidance of the Spaniards, and 
 to assist them all in their power in the saving of their 
 goods from the wreck. As they brought them to 
 land, he and his nobles received them, and set sentinels 
 over them, not suffering the people even to gratify 
 that curiosity which at such a crisis must have been 
 very great, to examine and inspect the curious articles 
 of a new people; and his subjects participating in all 
 his feelings, wept tears of sincere distress for the 
 sufferers, and condoled with them in their misfortune. 
 But as if this was not enough, the next morning, 
 when Columbus had removed to one of his other 
 vessels, the good Guacanahari appeared on board to 
 comfort him, and to offer all that he had to repair his 
 loss V 
 
 This beautiful circumstance is moreover still more 
 particularly related by Columbus himself, in his letter 
 to his sovereigns ; and it was- on this occasion that he 
 gave that character of the country and the people to 
 which I have just referred. Truly had he a great 
 c 2 • 
 
34 COLONIZATION 
 
 right to say that " they loved their neighbour as them- 
 selves." Let us see how the Spaniards and Columbus 
 himself followed up this sublime lesson. 
 
 Columbus being now left on the coast of the new 
 world with but one crazy vessel, — for Pinzon the com- 
 mander of the other, had with true Spanish treachery, 
 set oflf on his way homewards to forestall the glory of 
 being the first bearer of the tidings of this great dis- 
 covery to Europe, — he resolved to leave the number 
 of men which were now inconvenient in one small 
 crowded vessel, on the island. To this Guacanahari 
 consented with his usual good nature and good faith. 
 Columbus erected a sort of fort for them ; gave them 
 good advice for their conduct during his absence, and 
 sailed for Spain. In less than eleven months he 
 again appeared before this new settlement, and found 
 it levelled with the earth, and every man destroyed. 
 Scarcely had he left the island when these men had 
 broken out in all those acts of insult, rapacity, and 
 oppression on the natives which only too soon became 
 the uniform conduct of the Christians! They laid 
 violent hands on the women, the gold, the food of the 
 very people who had even kindly received them; 
 traversed the island in the commission of every species 
 of rapacity and villany, till the astonished and out- 
 raged inhabitants now finding them fiends incarnate 
 instead of the superior beings which they had deemed 
 them, rose in wrath, and exterminated them. 
 
 Columbus formed a fresh settlement for his new- 
 comers, and having defended it with mounds and 
 ramparts of earth, went on a short voyage of discovery 
 among the West Indian isles, and came back to find 
 that the same scene of lust and rapine had been acted 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 35 
 
 over again by his colony, and that the natives were 
 all in arms for their destruction. It is curious to read 
 the relation of the conduct of Columbus on this disco- 
 very, as given by Robertson, a Christian and Protestant 
 historian. He tells us, on the authority of Herrera, 
 and of the son of Columbus himself, that the Spaniards 
 had outraged every human and sacred feeling of these 
 their kind and hospitable entertainers. That in the 
 voracity of their appetites, enormous as compared 
 with the simple temperance of the natives, they had 
 devoured up the maize and cassado-root, the chief 
 sustenance of these poor people ; tliat their rapacity 
 threatened a famine ; that the natives saw them build- 
 ing forts and locating themselves as permanent settlers 
 where they had apparently come merely as guests; 
 and that from their lawless violence as well as their 
 voracity, they must soon suffer destruction in one 
 shape or another from their oppressors. Self preser- 
 vation prompted them to take arms for the expulsion 
 of such formidable foes. " It was now,** adds Robert- 
 son, " necessary to have recourse to arms ; the employing 
 of which against the Indians, Columbus had hitherto 
 avoided with the greatest solicitude.'* Why neces- 
 sary ? Necessary for what ? is the inquiry which must 
 spring indignantly in every rightly-constituted mind. 
 Because the Spaniards had been received with unex- 
 ampled kindness, and returned it With the blackest 
 ingratitude ; because they had by their debauched and 
 horrible outrages roused the people into defiance, 
 those innocent and abused people must be massacred? 
 That is a logic which might do for men who had been 
 educated in the law of anti-Christ instead of Christ, 
 and who went out with the Pope's bull as a title to 
 
36 COLONIZATION 
 
 seize on the property of other people, wherever the 
 abused and degraded cross had not been erected ; but 
 it could never have been so coolly echoed by a Protestant 
 historian, if it had not been for the spurious morality 
 with which the Papal hierarchy had corrupted the world, 
 till it became as established as gospel truth. Hear 
 Robertson's relation of the manner in which Columbus 
 repaid the Christian reception of these poor islanders. 
 " The body which took the field consisted only of 
 two hundred foot, twenty horse, and twenty large 
 dogs ; and how strange soever it may seem to men- 
 tion the last as composing part of a military force, 
 they were not perhaps the least formidable and de- 
 structive on the whole, when employed against naked 
 and timid Indians. All the caziques in the island, 
 Guacanahari excepted, who retained an inviolable 
 attachment to the Spaniards, were in arms, with forces 
 amounting — if we may believe the Spanish historians 
 — to a hundred thousand men. Instead of attempting 
 to draw the Spaniards into the fastnesses of the woods 
 and mountains, they were so improvident as to take 
 their station in the Vega Real, the most open plain in 
 the country. Columbus did not allow them to per- 
 ceive their error, or to alter their position. He attacked 
 them during the night, when undisciplined troops are 
 least capable of acting with union and concert, and 
 obtained an easy and bloodless victory. The consterna- 
 tion with which the Indians were filled by the noise 
 and havoc made by the fire-arms, by the impetuous 
 force of the cavalry, and the fierce onset of the dogs, 
 was so great, that they threw down their weapons, 
 and fled without attempting resistance. Many were 
 slain ; more were taken prisoners and reduced to servi- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 37 
 
 tude ; and so thoroughly were the rest intimidated, 
 that, from that moment, they abandoned themselves 
 to despair, relinquishing all thoughts of contending 
 with aggressors whom they deemed invincible. 
 
 " Columbus employed several months in marching 
 through the island, and in subjecting it to the Spanish 
 government^ without meeting with any opposition. He 
 imposed a tribute upon all the inhabitants above the 
 age of fourteen. Every person who lived in those 
 districts where gold was found, was obliged to pay 
 quarterly as much gold-dust as filled a hawk's bell ; 
 from those in other parts of the country, twenty-five 
 pounds of cotton were demanded. This wsis the first 
 regular taxation of the Indians, and served as a prece- 
 dent for exactions still more intolerable." 
 
 This is a most extraordinary example of tlie Chris- 
 tian mode of repaying benefits ! These were the 
 very people thus treated, that a little time before had 
 received with tears, and every act of the most admir- 
 able charity, Columbus and his people from the wreck. 
 And a Protestant historian says that this was neces.- 
 sary ! Again we ask, necessary for what ? To shew 
 that Christianity was hitherto but a name, and an 
 excuse for the violation of every human right ! There 
 was no necessity for Columbus to repay good with 
 evil; no necessity for him to add the crime of Jezebel, 
 " to kill and take possession.*' If he really wanted to 
 erect the cross in the new world, and to draw every 
 legitimate benefit for his own country from it, he had 
 seen that all that might be effected by legitimate 
 means. Kindness and faith were only wanted to lay 
 open the whole of the new world, and bring all its 
 treasures to the feet of his countrymen. The gold 
 
38 COLONIZATION 
 
 and gems might be purchased even with the toys of 
 European children ; and commerce and civilization, if 
 permitted to go on hand in hand, presented prospects 
 of wealth and glory, such as never yet had been re- 
 vealed to the world. But Columbus, though he 
 believed himself to have been inspired by the Holy 
 Ghost to discover America, — thus commencing his 
 will, " In the name of the most Holy Trinity, who 
 inspired me with the idea, and who afterwards made 
 it clear to me, that by traversing the ocean west- 
 wardly, etc. ;'* though Herrera calls him a man " ever 
 trusting in God ;" and though his son, in his history of 
 his life, thus speaks of him : — " I believe that he was 
 chosen for this great service ; and that because he was 
 to he so trull/ an apostle^ as in effect he proved to be, 
 therefore was his origin obscure ; that therein he might 
 the more resemble tliose who were called to make 
 known the name of the Lord from seas and rivers, 
 and from courts and palaces. And I believe also, 
 that in most of his doings he was guarded hy some 
 special providence ; his very name was not without 
 some mystery ; for, in it is expressed the wonder he 
 performed, inasmuch as he conveyed to the new world 
 the grace of the Holy Ghost.'* Notwithstanding these 
 opinions — Columbus had been educated in the spuri- 
 ous Christianity, which had blinded his naturally 
 honest mind to every truly Christian sentiment. It 
 must be allowed that he was an apostle of another 
 kind to those whom Christ sent out; and that this 
 was a novel way of conveying the Holy Ghost to the 
 new world. But he had got the Pope's bull in his 
 pocket, and that not only gave him a right to half the 
 world, but made all means for its subjection, however 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 39 
 
 diabolical, sacred 'in his eyes. We see him in this 
 transaction, notwithstanding the superiority of his 
 character to that of his followers, establishing himself 
 as the apostle and founder of that system of destruc- 
 tion and enslavement of the Americans, which the 
 Spaniards followed up to so. horrible an extent. We 
 see him here as the first to attack them, in their own 
 rightful possessions, with arms — the first to pursue 
 them with those ferocious dogs, which became so 
 infamously celebrated in the Spanish outrages on the 
 Americans, that some of them, as the dog Berezillo, 
 received the full pay of soldiers ; the first to exact 
 gold from the natives ; and to reduce them to slavery. 
 Thus, from the first moment of modern discovery, 
 and by the first discoverer himself, commenced that 
 apostleship of misery which has been so zealously 
 exercised towards the natives of all newly discovered 
 countries up to this hour ! 
 
 The immediate consequences of these acts of Co- 
 lumbus were these : the natives were driven to des- 
 pair by the labours and exactions imposed upon them. 
 They had never till then known what labour, or the 
 curse of avarice was ; and they formed a scheme to 
 drive out their oppressors by famine. They destroyed 
 the crops in the fields, and fled into the mountains. 
 But there, without food themselves, they soon perished, 
 and that so rapidly and miserably, that in a few months 
 one-third of the inhabitants of the whole island had 
 disappeared ! Fresh succours arrived from Spain, 
 and soon after, as if to realize to the afflicted natives 
 all the horrors of the infernal regions, Spain, and at 
 the suggestions of Columbus too, emptied all her 
 gaols, and vomited all her malefactors on their devoted 
 
40 COLONIZATION 
 
 shores ! A piece of policy so much admired in Eu- 
 rope, that it has been imitated by all other colonizing 
 nations, and by none so much as by England ! The 
 consequences of this abominable system soon became 
 conspicuous in the distractions, contentions, and dis- 
 orders of the colony; and in order to soothe and 
 appease these, Columbus resorted to fresh injuries 
 on the natives, dividing their lands amongst his mutin- 
 ous followers, and giving away the inhabitants — the 
 real possessors — along with them as slaves ! Thus 
 he was the originator of those Repartimentos, or 
 distribution of the Indians that became the source of 
 such universal calamities to them, and of the extinc- 
 tion of more than fifty millions of their race. 
 
 Though Providence permitted these things, it did 
 not leave them unavenged. If ever there was a his- 
 tory of the divine retribution written in characters of 
 light, it is that of Spain and the Spaniards in America. 
 On Spain itself the wrath of God seemed to fall with 
 a blasting and enduring curse. From being one of 
 the most powerful and distinguished nations of Eu- 
 rope, it began from the moment that the gold of 
 America, gathered amidst the tears and groans, and 
 dyed with the blood of the miserable and perishing 
 natives, flowed in a full stream into it, to shrink and 
 dwindle, till at once poor and proud, indolent and 
 superstitious, it has fallen a prey to distractions that 
 make it the most melancholy spectacle in Europe. 
 On one occasion Columbus witnessed a circumstance 
 so singular^ that it struck not only him but every one 
 to whom the knowledge of it came. After he himself 
 had been disgraced and sent home in chains, being 
 then on another voyage of discovery, — and refused 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 41 
 
 entrance into the port of St. Domingo by tlie gover- 
 nor — he saw the approach of a tempest, and warned 
 the governor of it, as the royal fleet was on the point 
 of setting sail for Spain. His warning was disre- 
 garded ; the fleet set sail, having oil board Bovadillo, 
 the ex-governor, Roldan, and other officers, men who 
 had been not only the fiercest enemies of Columbus, 
 but the most rapacious plunderers and oppressors of 
 the natives. The tempest came ; and these men, with 
 sixteen vessels laden with an immense amount of 
 guilty wealth, were all swallowed up in the ocean — 
 leaving only two ships afloat, one of which contained 
 the property of Columbus ! 
 
 But the fortunes of Columbus were no less disas- 
 trous. Much, and perhaps deservedly as he has been 
 pitied for the treatment which he received from an 
 ungrateful nation, it has always struck me that, from 
 ;he period that he departed from the noble integrity 
 )f his character ; butchered the naked Indians on their 
 )wn soil, instead of resenting and redressing their 
 njuries; from the hour that he set the fatal example 
 )f hunting them with dogs, of exacting painful labours 
 ind taxes, that he had no right to impose, — from the 
 noment that he annihilated their ancient peace and 
 iberty, the hand of God's prosperity went from him. 
 His whole life was one continued scene of disasters, 
 vexations, and mortifications. Swarms of lawless and 
 •ebellious spirits, as if to punish him for letting loose 
 )n this fair continent the pestilent brood of the Spa- 
 lish prisons, ceased not to harasa and oppose him. 
 Maligned by these enemies, and sent to Europe in 
 jhains ; there seeking restoration in vain, he set out 
 m fresh discoveries. But. wherever he went misfor- 
 
42 COLONIZATION 
 
 tune pursued him. Denied entrance into the very 
 countries he had discovered ; defeated by the natives 
 that his men unrighteously attacked ; shipwrecked 
 in Jamaica, before it possessed a single European 
 colony, he was there left for above twelve months, suf- 
 fering incredible hardships, and amongst his mutinous 
 Spaniards that threatened his life on the one hand, 
 and Indians weary of their presence on the other. 
 Having seen his authority usurped in the new world, 
 he returned to the old, — there the death of Isabella, 
 the only soul that retained a human feeling, extin- 
 guished all hope of redress of his wrongs; and after 
 a weary waiting for justice on Ferdinand, he died, 
 worn out with grief and disappointment. He had 
 denied justice to the inhabitants of the world he had 
 found, and justice was denied him; he had condemned 
 them to slavery, and he was sent home in chains ; he 
 had given over the Indians to that thraldom of despair 
 which broke the hearts of millions, and he himself 
 died broken-hearted. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 43 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SPANIARDS IN HISPANIOLA AND CUBA. 
 
 Her princes in ,the midst thereof are like wolves ravening for the 
 prey ; to shed blood, and to destroy souls, and to get dishonest gain. 
 
 Ezekiel xxii. 27. 
 
 But whether Columbus or others were in power, the 
 miseries of the Indians went on. Bovadiilo, the gover- 
 nor who superseded Columbus, and loaded him with 
 irons, only bestowed allotments of Indians with a 
 more liberal hand, to ingratiate himself with the fierce 
 adventurers who filled the island. Raging with the 
 quenchless thirst of gold, these wretches drove the poor 
 Indians in crowds to the mountains, and compelled 
 them to labour so mercilessly in the mines, that they 
 melted away as rapidly as snow in the sun. It is true 
 that the atrocities thus committed reaching the ears 
 of Isabella, instructions were from time to time sent 
 out, declaring the Indians free subjects, and enjoining 
 mercy towards them ; but like all instructions of the 
 sort sent so far from home, they were resisted and set 
 aside. The Indians, ever and anon, stung with des- 
 pair, rose against their oppressors, but it was only to 
 perish by the sword instead of the mine — they were 
 
44 COLONIZATION 
 
 pursued as rebels, their dwellings razed from the 
 earth, and their caziques, when taken, hanged as male- 
 factors. 
 
 In vain the simple race 
 Kneeled to the iron sceptre of their grace. 
 Or with weak arms their fiery vengeance braved ; 
 They came, they saw, they conquered, they enslaved, 
 And they destroyed ! The generous heart they broke ; 
 They crushed the timid neck beneath the yoke ; 
 Where'er to battle marched their fell array. 
 The sword of conquest ploughed resistless way ; 
 Where'er from cruel toil they sought repose, 
 Around the fires of devastation rose. 
 The Indian as he turned his head in flight, 
 Beheld his cottage flaming through the night. 
 And, mid the shrieks of murder on the wind. 
 Heard the mute bloodhound's death-step close behind. 
 The conquest o'er, the valiant in their graves. 
 The wretched remnant dwindled into slaves j 
 Condemned in pestilential cells to pine, 
 Delving for gold amidst the gloomy mine. 
 The sufferer, sick of life-protracting breath. 
 Inhaled with joy the fire-damp blast of death, — 
 Condemned to fell the mountain palm on high. 
 That cast its shadow to the evening sky, 
 Ere the tree trembled to his feeble stroke, 
 The woodman languished, and his heart-strings broke ; 
 Condemned in torrid noon, with palsied hand, 
 To urge the slow plough o'er the obdurate land, 
 The labourer, smitten by the sun's fierce ray, 
 A corpse along the unfinished furrow lay. 
 O'erwhelmed at length with ignominious toil. 
 Mingling their barren ashes with the soil, 
 Down to the dust the Charib people past. 
 Like autumn foliage withering in the blast ; 
 The whole race sunk beneath the oppressor's rod. 
 And left a blank amongst the works of God. 
 
 Montgomery. 
 
 In all the atrocities and indignities practised on 
 these poor islanders, there were none which excite a 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 45 
 
 Stronger indignation than the treatment of the gener- 
 ous female cazique, Anacoana. This is the narrative of 
 Robertson, drawn from Ovieda, Herrera, and Las 
 Casas. " The province anciently named Zaragua, 
 which extends from the fertile plain where Leogane 
 is now situated, to the western extremity of the island, 
 was subject to a female cazique, named Anacoana, 
 highly respected by the natives. She, from the par- 
 tial fondness with which the women of America were 
 attached to the Europeans, had always courted the 
 friendship of the Spaniards, and loaded them with 
 benefits. But some of the adherents of Roldan having 
 settled in her country, were so much exasperated at 
 her endeavouring to restrain their excesses, that they 
 accused her of having formed a plan to throw off the 
 yoke, and to exterminate the Spaniards. Ovando, 
 though he well knew what little credit was due to 
 such profligate men, marched without further inquiry 
 towards Zaragua, with three hundred foot, and seventy 
 horsemen. To prevent the Indians from taking alarm 
 at this hostile appearance, he gave out that his sole 
 intention was to visit Anacoana, to whom his country- 
 men had been so much indebted, in the most respect- 
 ful manner, and to regulate with her the mode of 
 levying the tribute payable to the king of Spain. 
 
 "Anacoana, in order to receive this illustrious guest 
 with due honour, assembled the principal men in 
 her dominions, to the number of three hundred, and 
 advancing at the head of these, accompanied by a 
 great crowd of persons of inferior rank, she welcomed 
 Ovando with songs and dances, according to the 
 mode of the country, and conducted him to the place 
 of her residence. There he was feasted for some days, 
 
46 COLONIZATION. 
 
 with all the kindness of simple hospitality, and amused 
 with the games and spectacles usual among the Ame- 
 ricans upon occasions of mirth and festivity. But 
 amid the security which this inspired, Ovando was 
 meditating the destruction of his unsuspicious enter- 
 tainer and her subjects ; and the mean perfidy with 
 which he executed this scheme, equalled his barbarity 
 in forming it. 
 
 " Under colour of exhibiting to the Indians the pa- 
 rade of an European tournament, he advanced with his 
 troops in battle array towards the house in which 
 Anacoana and the chiefs who attended her were assem- 
 bled. The infantry took possession of all the avenues 
 which led to the village. The horsemen encompassed 
 the house. These movements were the objects of 
 admiration without any mixture of fear, until upon a 
 signal which had been concerted, the Spaniards sud- 
 denly drew their swords and rushed upon the Indians, 
 defenceless, and astonished at an act of treachery 
 which exceeded the conception of undesigning men. 
 In a moment, Anacoana was secured ; all her atten- 
 dants were seized and bound ; fire was set to the 
 house ; and without examination or conviction, all 
 these unhappy persons, the most illustrious in their 
 country, were consumed in the flames. Anacoana 
 was reserved for a more ignominious fate. She was 
 carried in chains to St. Domingo, and after the for- 
 mality of a trial before Spanish judges, was con- 
 demned upon the evidence of those very men who had 
 betrayed her, to he publicly hanged ! *' 
 
 It is impossible for human treachery, ingratitude, 
 and cruelty to go beyond that. All that we could relate 
 of the deeds of the Spaniards in Hispaniola, would be 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 47 
 
 bat the continuance of this system of demon oppres- 
 sion. The people, totally confounded with this instance 
 of unparalleled villany and butchery, sunk into the 
 inanition of despair, and were regularly ground away 
 by the unremitted action of excessive labour and 
 brutal abuse. In fifteen years they sunk from one 
 million to sixty thousand ! — a consumption of upwards 
 of sixty thousand souls a-year in one island ! Calami- 
 ties, instead of decreasing, only accumulated on their 
 heads. Isabella of Spain died ; and the greedy adven- 
 turers feeling that the only person at the head of the 
 government that had any real sympathy with the 
 sufferings of the natives was gone, gave themselves 
 now boundless license. Ferdinand conferred grants 
 of Indians on his courtiers, as the least expensive 
 mode of getting rid of their importunities. Ovando, 
 the governor, gave to his own friends and creatures 
 similar gifts of living men, to be worked or crushed to 
 death at their mercy — to perish of famine, or by the 
 suicidal hand of despair. The avarice and rapacity of 
 the adventurers became perfectly rabid. Nobles at 
 home, farmed out these Indians given by Ferdinand 
 to those who were going out to take part in the 
 nefarious deeds— 
 
 They sate at home, and turned an easy wheel, 
 That set sharp racks at work to pinch and peel. 
 
 The small and almost nominal sum which had been 
 allowed to the natives for their labour was now denied 
 them; they were made absolute and unconditional 
 slaves, and groaned and wasted away in mines and 
 gold-dust streams, rapidly as those streams themselves 
 flowed. The quantity of wealth drawn from their 
 very vitals was enormous. Though Ovando had re- 
 
48 COLONIZATION 
 
 duced the royal portion to one-fifth, yet it now 
 amounted to above a hundred thousand pounds sterl- 
 ing annually — making the whole annual produce of 
 gold in that island, five hundred thousand pounds 
 sterling ; and considering the embezzlement and waste 
 that must take place amongst a tribe of adventurers 
 on fire with the love of gold, and fearing neither God 
 por man in their pursuit of it, probably nearer a 
 million. Enormous fortunes sprung up with mush- 
 room rapidity ; luxury and splendour broke out with 
 proportionate violence at home, and legions of fresh 
 tormentors flocked like harpies to this strange scene 
 of misery and aggrandizement. To add to all this, 
 the sugar-cane — that source of a thousand crimes and 
 calamities — was introduced ! It flourished ; and like 
 another upas-tree, breathed fresh destruction upon 
 this doomed people. Plantations and sugar-works 
 were established, and became general; and the last 
 and faintest glimmer of hope for the islanders was 
 extinguished ! Gold might possibly become exhausted, 
 worked as the mines were with such reckless voracity; 
 but the cane would spring afresh from year to year, 
 and the accursed juice would flow for ever. 
 
 The destruction of human life now went on with 
 such velocity, that some means were necessarily 
 devised to obtain a fresh supply of victims, or the 
 Spaniards must quit the island, and seek to establish 
 their inferno somewhere else. But having perfected 
 themselves in that part of Satan's business which 
 consisted in tormenting, they now very characteristi- 
 cally assumed the other part of the fiend's trade — that 
 of alluring and inveigling the unsuspicious into their 
 snares. Were this not a portion of unquestionable his- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 49 
 
 tory, related by the Spanish historians themselves, it 
 is so completely an assumption of the art of the 
 " father of lies,'' and betrays such a consciousness of 
 the real nature of the business they were engaged in, 
 that it would be looked upon as a happy burlesque of 
 some waggish wit upon them. The fact however 
 stands on the authority of Gomera, Herrera, Oviedo, 
 and others. Ovando, the governor, seeing the rapidly 
 wasting numbers of the nativefs, and hearing the com- 
 plaints of the adventurers, began to cast about for a 
 remedy, and at length this most felicitous scheme, 
 worthy of Satan in the brightest moment of his exist- 
 ence, burst upon him. — There were the inhabitants of 
 the Lucayo Isles, living in heathen idleness, and ig- 
 norant alike of Christian mines and Christian sugar- 
 works. It was fitting that they should not be left in 
 such criminal and damnable neglect any longer. He 
 proposed,, therefore, that these benighted creatures 
 should be brought to the elysium of Hispaniola, and 
 civilized in the gold mines, and instructed in the Chris" 
 tian religion in the sugar-mills ! The idea was too 
 happy, and too full of the milk of Christian kindness to 
 be lost. At once, all the amiable gold-hunters clapped 
 their hands with ecstasy at the prospect of so many 
 new martyrs to the Christian faith ; and Ferdinand, the 
 benevolent and most Catholic Ferdinand, assented to 
 it with the zeal of a royal nursing father of the church ! 
 A fleet was speedily fitted out for the benighted Lu- 
 cayos ; and the poor inhabitants there, wasting their 
 existence in merely cultivating their maize, plucking 
 their oranges, or fishing in their streams, just as their 
 need or their inclination prompted them, were told by 
 the Spaniards that they came from the heaven of their 
 
 D 
 
50 COLONIZATION 
 
 ancestors — isles of elysian beauty and fertility ; where 
 all pain and death were unknown, and where their 
 friends and relations, living in heavenly felicity, 
 needed only their society to render that felicity per- 
 fect! — that these beatified relatives had prayed them to 
 hasten and bring them to their own scene of enjoyment 
 — now waited impatiently for their arrival — and that 
 they were ready to convey them thither, to the 
 fields of heaven, in fact, without the black transit of 
 death ! The simple creatures, hearing a story which 
 chimed in so exactly with their fondest belief, flocked 
 on board with a blind credulity, not even to be ex- 
 ceeded by the Bubble-dupes of modern England, and 
 soon found themselves in the grasp of fiends, and 
 added to the remaining numbers of the Hispaniolan 
 wretches in the mines and plantations. Forty thou- 
 sand of these poor people were decoyed by this hellish 
 artifice ; and Satan himself, on witnessing this Spanish 
 chef d'ouvre, must have felt ashamed of his inferiority 
 of tact in his own profession !* 
 
 • How affecting is Peter Martyr's account of these poor Lucayans, 
 thus fraudulently decoyed from their native countries. *' Many of 
 them, in the anguish of despair, obstinately refuse all manner of suste- 
 nance, and retiring to desert caves and unfrequented woods, silently 
 give up the ghost. Others, repairing to the sea-coast on the northern 
 side of Hispaniola, cast many a longing look towards that part of the 
 ocean where they suppose their own islands to be situated ; and as 
 the sea-breeze rises, they eagerly inhale it — fondly believing that it 
 has lately visited their own happy valleys, and comes fraught with the 
 breath of those they love, their wives and their children. With this 
 idea, they continue for hours on the coast, until nature becomes 
 utterly exhausted, when, stretching out their arms towards the ocean, 
 as if to take a last embrace of their distant country and relatives, they 
 
 sink down and expire without a groan One of them, who 
 
 was more desirous of life, or had greater courage than most of his 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 51 
 
 But the climax yet remained to be put to the inflic- 
 tions on these islanders : — and that was found in the 
 pearl fishery of Cubagua. Columbus had discovered 
 this little wretched island — Columbu^ had suggested 
 and commenced the slavery of the Indians, — and it 
 seemed as though a Columbus was to complete the 
 fabric of their misery. Don Diego, Columbus's son, 
 had compelled an acknowledgment of his claims in 
 the vice-royalty of the New World. He had enrolled 
 himself by his marriage with the daughter of Don Fer- 
 dinand de Toledo, brother of the Duke of Alva, and a 
 relative of the king, amongst the highest nobility of 
 the land. Coming over to assume his hereditary sta- 
 tion, he brought a new swarm of these proud and 
 avaricious hidalgoes with him. He seized upon and 
 distributed amongst them whatever portions of Indians 
 remained unconsumed ; and casting his eyes on this 
 sand-bank of Cubagua, he established a colony of 
 pearl-fishers upon it — where the Indians, and espe- 
 cially the wretched ones decoyed from the Lucayos, 
 were compelled to find in diving the last extremity 
 of their sufferings. 
 
 countrymen, took upon him a bold and difficult piece of work. 
 Having been used to build cottages in his native country, he pro- 
 cured instruments of stone, and cut down a large spongy tree, called 
 jaruma (the bombax, or wild cotton), the body of which he dexter- 
 ously scooped into a canoe. He then provided himself with oars, 
 some Indian corn, and a few gourds of water, and prevailed on 
 another man and woman to embark with him on a voyage to the 
 Lucayos. Their navigation was prosperous for near two hundred 
 miles, and they were almost within sight of their long-lost shores, 
 when unfortunately they were met by a Spanish ship, which brought 
 them back to slavery and sorrow ! The canoe is still preserved in 
 Hispaniola as a curiosity, considering the circumstances under which 
 it was made." — Decad. vii. 
 
52 COLONIZATION 
 
 And was there no voice raised against these dread- 
 ful enormities? Yes— and with the success which 
 always attends the attempt to defend the weak against 
 the powerful and rapacious in distant colonies. The 
 Dominican monks, much to their honour, inveighed, 
 from time to time, against them; but the Franciscans, 
 on the other hand, sanctioned them, on the old 
 plea of policy and necessity. It was necessary that the 
 Spaniards should compel the Indians to labour, or they 
 must abandon their grand source of wealth. That 
 was conclusive. Where are the people that carry 
 their religion or their humanity beyond their interest? 
 The thing was not to be expected. One man, indeed, 
 roused by the oppressions of Diego Columbus, and 
 his notorious successor, Albuquerque, a needy man, 
 actually appointed by Ferdinand to the office of Dis- 
 tributor of the Indians ! — one man, Bartholomew de 
 Las Casas, dared to stand forward as their champion, 
 and through years of unremitting toil to endeavour to 
 arrest from the government some mitigation of their 
 condition. Once or twice he appeared on the eve of 
 success. At one time Ferdinand declared the Indians 
 free subjects, and to be treated as such; but the furi- 
 ous opposition which arose in the colony on this deci- 
 sion, soon drew from the king another declaration, 
 to wit, that the Pope's bull gave a clear and satisfac- 
 tory right to the Indians — that no man must trouble 
 his conscience on account of their treatment, for the 
 king and council would take all that on their own 
 responsibility, and that the monks must cease to trou- 
 ble the colony with their scruples. Yet the perse- 
 vering Las Casas, by personal importunity at the 
 court of Spain, painting the miseries and destruction 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 53 
 
 of the Indians, now reduced from a million — not to 
 sixty thousand as before,* but to fourteen thousand — 
 again succeeded in obtaining a deputation of three 
 monks of St. Jerome, as superintendents of all the 
 colonies, empowered to relieve the Indians from their 
 heavy yoke ; and returned thither himself, in his official 
 character of Protector of the Indians. But all his 
 efforts ended in smoke. His coadjutors, on reaching 
 Hispaniola, were speedily convinced by the violence 
 and other persuasives of the colonies, that it was 
 necessary that the Indians should be slaves ; and the 
 only resource of the benevolent Las Casas was to en- 
 deavour to found a new colony where he might employ 
 the Indians as free men, and civilize and Christianize 
 them. But this was as vain a project as the other. 
 His countrymen were now prowling along every shore 
 of the New World that they were acquainted with, 
 kidnapping and carrying off the inhabitants as slaves, 
 to supply the loss of those they had worked to death. 
 The dreadful atrocities committed in these kidnapping 
 cruizes, had made the name of the Spaniards terrible 
 wherever they had been ; and as the inhabitants could 
 no longer anywhere be decoyed^ he found the Spanish 
 admiral on the point of laying waste with fire and 
 sword, so as to seize on all its people in their flight, 
 the very territory granted him in which to try his new 
 experiment of humanity. The villany was accom- 
 plished; and amid the desolation of Cumana — the 
 
 • In less than fifty years from the arrival of the Spaniards, not 
 more than two hundred Indians could be found in Hispaniola ; and 
 Sir Francis Drake states that when he touched there in 1585, not 
 one was remaining; yet so little were the Spaniards benefited by their 
 cruelty, that they were actually obliged to convert pieces of leather into 
 monei/ !—See Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. iii. 
 
54 COLONIZATION 
 
 bulk of whose people were carried off as slaves to 
 Hispaniola, and the rest having fled from their burning 
 houses to the hills — the sanguine Las Casas still 
 attempted to found his colony. It need not be said 
 that it failed ; the Protector of the Indians retired to 
 a monastery, and the work of Indian misery went on 
 unrestrained. To their oppression, a new and more 
 lasting one had been added; from their destruction, 
 indeed, had now sprung that sorest curse of both 
 blacks and whites — that foulest stain on the Christian 
 name — the Slave Trade. Charles V. of Spain, with 
 that perfect freedom to do as they pleased with all 
 heathen nations which the Papal church had given 
 to Spain and Portugal, had granted a patent to one of 
 his Flemish favourites, for the importation of negroes 
 into America. This patent he had sold to the Genoese, 
 and these worthy merchants were now busily employed 
 in that traffic in men which is so congenial to Christian 
 maxims, that it has from that time been the favourite 
 pursuit of the Christian nations; has been defended by 
 all the arguments of the most civilized assemblies in 
 the world, and by the authority of Holy Writ, and is 
 going on at this hour with undiminished horrors. 
 
 It has been charged on Las Casas, that with singu- 
 lar inconsistency he himself suggested this diabolical 
 trade ; but of that, and of this trade, we shall say more 
 anon. We will now conclude this chapter with the 
 brief announcement, that Diego Columbus had now 
 conquered Cuba, by the agency of Diego Velasquez, 
 one of his father's captains, and thus added another 
 grand field for the consumption of natives, and the 
 importation of slaves. We are informed that the 
 Cubaans were so unwarlike that no difficulty was 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 55 
 
 found in overrunning this fine island, except from a 
 chief called Hatuey, who had fled from Hispaniola, 
 and knew enough of the Spaniards not to desire their 
 further acquaintance. His obstinacy furnishes this 
 characteristic anecdote on the authority of Las Casas. 
 " He stood upon the defensive at their first landing, 
 and endeavoured to drive them back to their ships. 
 His feeble troops, however, were soon broken and 
 dispersed ; and he himself being taken prison, Velas-. 
 quez, according to the barbarous maxim of the Spani- 
 ards, considered him as a slave who had taken arms 
 against his master, and condemned him to the flames." 
 
 When Hatuey was fastened to the stake, a Francis- 
 can friar, labouring to convert him, promised him im- 
 mediate admission into the joys of heaven, if he could 
 embrace the Christian faith. " Are there any Spa- 
 niards," says he, after some pause, '* in that region of 
 bliss which you describe ?" "Yes," replied the monk, 
 " but such only as are worthy and good." "The best 
 of them," returned the indignant Cazique, " have 
 neither worth nor goodness! I will not go to a place 
 where I may meet with that accursed race ! "* 
 
 The torch was clapped to the pile — Hatuey perish- 
 ed — and the Spaniards added Cuba to the crown with- 
 out the loss of a man on their own part. 
 
 * Las Casas, in his zeal for the Indians, has been charged with ex- 
 aggerating the numbers destroyed, but no one has attempted to deny 
 the following fact asserted by him : " I once beheld four or five prin- 
 cipal Indians roasted alive at a slow fire ; and as the miserable victims 
 poured forth dreadful screams, which disturbed the commanding 
 oflBcer in his afternoon slumbers — he sent word that they should be 
 strangled; but the oflScer on guard (I know his name — I know his 
 RELATIVES IN Seville) would not sufFcr it J but causing their mouths 
 to be gagged, that their cries might not be heard, he stirred up the 
 fire with his own hands, and roasted them deliberately till they all 
 expired. I saw ix myself ! ! ! " 
 
56 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SPANIARDS IN JAMAICA AND OTHER WEST INDIAN 
 ISLANDS. 
 
 The story of one West India Island, is the story of 
 all. Whether Spaniards, French, or English took 
 possession, the slaughter and oppression of the natives 
 followed. I shall, therefore, quit these fair islands 
 for the present, with a mere passing glance at a few 
 characteristic facts. 
 
 Herrera says that Jamaica was settled prosperously, 
 because Juan de Esquival having brought the natives 
 to submission without any effusion of blood, they 
 laboured in planting cotton, and raising other com- 
 modities, which yielded great profit. But Esquival in 
 a very few years died in his office, and was buried in 
 Sevilla Nueva, a town which lie had built and destined 
 for the seat of government. There is a dark tradition 
 connected with the destruction of this town, which would 
 make us infer that the mildness of Esquival's govern- 
 ment was not imitated by his successors. The Spanish 
 planters assert that the place was destroyed by a vast 
 army of ants, but the popular tradition still triumphs 
 over this tradition of the planters. It maintains, 
 that the injured and oppressed natives rose in their 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 57 
 
 despair and cut off every one of their tyrants, and laid 
 the place in such utter and awful ruin that it never 
 was rebuilt, biit avoided as a spot of horror. The 
 city must have been planned with great magnificence, 
 and laid out in great extent, for Sloane, who visited 
 it in 1688, could discover the traces or remains of a 
 fort, a splendid cathedral and monastery, the one in- 
 habited by Peter Martyr, who was abbot and chief 
 missionary of the island. He found a pavement at 
 two miles distance from the church, an indication of 
 the extent of the place, and also many materials for 
 grand arches and noble buildings that had never been 
 erected. The ruins of this city were now overgrown 
 with wood, and turned black with age. Sloane saw 
 timber trees growing within the walls of the cathedral 
 upwards of sixty feet in height ; and General Vena- 
 bles in his dispatches to Cromwell, preserved in Thur- 
 low*s State Papers, vol. iii , speaks of Seville as a town 
 that had existed in times past. 
 
 Both ancient tradition, and recent discoveries, says 
 Bryan Edwards, in his History of the West Indies, 
 give too much room to believe that the work of de- 
 struction proceeded not less rapidly in this island, 
 after Esquival's death, than in Hispaniola ; for to this 
 day caves are frequently discovered in the mountains, 
 wherein the ground is covered almost entirely with 
 human bones; the miserable remains, without all 
 doubt, of some of the unfortunate aborigines, who, 
 immured in those recesses, were probably reduced to 
 the sad alternative of perishing with hunger or bleed- 
 ing under the swords of their merciless invaders. 
 That these are the skeletons of Indians is sufficiently 
 attested by the skulls, which are preternaturally com-p 
 
 d2 
 
58 COLONIZATION 
 
 pressed. "When, therefore," says Edwards, " we are 
 told of the fate of the Spanish inhabitants of Seville, it is 
 impossible to feel any other emotion than an indignant 
 wish that the story were better authenticated, and 
 that heaven, in mercy, had permitted the poor Indians 
 in the same moment to have extirpated their oppres- 
 sors altogether ! But unhappily this faint glimmering 
 of returning light to the wretched natives, was soon 
 lost in everlasting darkness, since it pleased the Al- 
 mighty, for reasons inscrutable to finite wisdom, to 
 permit the total destruction of this devoted people ; 
 who, to the number of 60,000, on the most moderate 
 estimate, were at length wholly cut off and extermi- 
 nated by the Spaniards — not a single descendant of 
 either sex being alive when the English took the 
 island in 1 655, nor I believe for a century before." 
 
 The French historian, Du Tertre, informs us that 
 his countrymen made a lawful purchase of the island 
 of Grenada from the natives for some glass beads, 
 knives and hatchets, and a couple of bottles of brandy for 
 the chief himself. The nature of the bargain may be 
 pretty well understood by the introduction of the 
 brandy for the chief, and by the general massacre 
 which followed, when Du Tertre himself informs us 
 that Du Parquet, the very general who made this 
 bargain, gave orders for extirpating the natives 
 altogether, which was done with circumstances of the 
 most savage barbarity, even to the women and chil- 
 dren. The same historian assures us that St. Christo- 
 pher's, the principal of the Caribbee Isles, was won 
 by the joint exertions of Thomas Warner, an Eng- 
 lishman, and D'Esnambuc, the captain of a French 
 privateer, who both seem to have entered with hearty 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 59 
 
 good-will into the business of massacre and extermina- 
 tion ; by which means, and by excessive labour, the 
 total aboriginal population of the West Indian islands 
 were speedily reduced from six millions, at which Las 
 Casas estimated them, to nothing. 
 
 Let any one read the following account from Her- 
 rera and Peter Martyr, of the manner in which the 
 Spaniards were received in these islands : — " When 
 iany of the Spaniards came near to a village, the most 
 ancient and venerable of the Indians, or the cazique 
 himself, if present, came out to meet them, and gently 
 conducting them into their habitations, seated them 
 on stools of ebony curiously ornamented. These 
 benches seemed to be seats of honour reserved for 
 their guests, for the Indians threw themselves on the 
 ground, and kissing the hands and feet of the Spa- 
 niards, offered them fruits and the choicest of their 
 viands, entreating them to prolong their stay with such 
 solicitude and reverence as demonstrated that they 
 considered them as beings of a superior nature, whose 
 presence consecrated their dwellings, and brought a 
 blessing with it. One old man, a native of Cuba, 
 approaching Columbus with great reverence, and pre- 
 senting a basket of fruit, thus addressed him : — ' Whe- 
 ther you are divinities or mortal men we know not. 
 You come into these countries with a force, against 
 which, were we inclined to resist it, resistance would 
 be a folly. We are all therefore at your mercy : but 
 if you are men subject to mortality like ourselves, you 
 cannot be unapprised that after this life there is 
 another, wherein a very different portion is allotted to 
 good and bad men. If, therefore, you expect to die, 
 and believe with us that every one is to be rewarded 
 
60 COLONIZATION 
 
 in a future state according to his conduct in the 
 present, you will do no hurt to those who do none to 
 you/ " 
 
 Let the reader also, after listening to these exalted 
 sentiments addressed by a savage^ as we are pleased to 
 term him, to a Christian^ a term likewise used with as 
 little propriety, read this account of the reception of 
 Bartholomew Columbus by Behechio, a powerful 
 cazique of Hispaniola. " As they approached the king's 
 dwelling, they were met by his wives to the number 
 of thirty, carrying branches of the palm-tree in their 
 hands, who first saluted the Spaniards with a solemn 
 dance, accompanied with a song. These matrons 
 were succeeded by a train of virgins, distinguished as 
 such by their appearance; the former wearing" aprons 
 of cotton cloth, while the latter were arrayed only in 
 the innocence of pure nature. Their hair was tied 
 simply with a fillet over their foreheads, or sufi^ered to 
 flow gracefully on their shoulders and bosoms. Their 
 limbs were finely proportioned, and their complexions 
 though brown, were smooth, shining and lovely. The 
 Spaniards were struck with admiration, believing that 
 they beheld the dryads of the woods, and the nymphs 
 of the fountains realizing ancient fable. The branches 
 which they bore in their hands, they now delivered 
 with lowly obeisance to the lieutenant, who, entering 
 the palace, found a plentiful, and according to the 
 Indian mode of living, a splendid repast already pro- 
 vided. As night approached, the Spaniards were 
 conducted to separate cottages, wherein each was 
 accommodated with a cotton hammock, and the next 
 morning they were again entertained with dancing 
 and singing. This was followed by matches of wrest- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 61 
 
 ling and running for prizes; after which two great 
 bodies of armed Indians suddenly appeared, and a 
 mock engagement ensued, exhibiting their modes of 
 warfare with the Charaibes. For three days were the 
 Spaniards thus royally entertained, and on the fourth 
 the affectionate Indians regretted their departure." 
 
 What beautiful pictures of a primitive age ! what a 
 more than realization of the age of gold ! and what a 
 dismal fall to that actual age of gold which was coming 
 upon them ! To turn from these delightful scenes to | 
 the mjissacres and oppressions of millions of these 
 gentle and kind people, and then to the groans of 
 millions of wretched Africans, which through three 
 long centuries have succeeded them, is one of the 
 most melancholy and amazing things in the criminal 
 history of the earth ; nor can we wonder at the feelings 
 with which Bryan Edwards reviews this awful sub- 
 ject: — "All the murders and desolations of the most 
 pitiless tyrants that ever diverted themselves with the 
 pangs and convulsions of their fellow-creatures, fall 
 infinitely short of the bloody enormities committed by 
 the Spanish nation in the conquest of the New World 
 — a conquest, on a low estimate, effected by the 
 murder of ten millions of the species ! After reading 
 these accounts, who can help forming an indignant 
 wish that the hand of Heaven, by some miraculous 
 interposition, had swept these European tyrants from 
 the face of the earth, who like so many beasts of prey, 
 roamed round the world only to desolate and destroy ; 
 and more remorseless than the fiercest savage, thirsted 
 for human blood without having the impulse of na- 
 tural appetite to plead in their defence !" 
 
62 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE SPANIARDS IN MEXICO. 
 
 And he knew their desolate palaces, and be laid waste their cities. 
 
 Ezekiel xix. 7. 
 
 How Cortez conquered, — Montezuma fell. — Montgomery. 
 
 Much of a Southern Sea they spake. 
 
 And of that glorious city won. 
 
 Near the setting of the sun, 
 
 Throned in a silver lake : 
 
 Of seven kings in chains of gold, 
 
 And deeds of death by tongue untold, — 
 
 Deeds such as breathed in secret there, 
 
 Had shaken the confession- chair ! — Rogers. 
 
 Six and twenty years had now elapsed since Columbus 
 arrived in the New World. During this period the 
 Spaniards had not merely committed the crimes we 
 have been detailing, but they had considerably ex- 
 tended their discoveries. Columbus, who first disco- 
 vered the West Indian islands, was the first also to 
 discover the mainland of America. He reached the 
 mouth of the Orinoca; traversed the coasts of Paria 
 and Cumana ; Yanez Pinzon, steering southward, 
 had crossed the line to the river Amazon; the Portu- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 63 
 
 guese under Alvarez Cabral had by mere accident 
 made the coast of Brazil; Bastidas and De la Cosa 
 had discovered the coast of Tierra Firme; in his 
 fourth voyage, Columbus had reached Porto Bello in 
 Panama; Pinzon and De Solis discovered Yucatan, 
 and in a second voyage extended their route south- 
 ward beyond the Rio de la Plata; Ponce de Leon 
 had discovered Florida; and Balboa in Darien had 
 discovered the South Sea. These were grand steps 
 in discovery towards those mighty kingdoms that were 
 soon to burst upon them. Cordova discovered the 
 mouth of the river Potonchan, beyond Campeachy; 
 and finally, Grijalva ranged along the whole coast of 
 Mexico from Tabasco to the river Panuco. Of their 
 transactions on these coasts during their progress in 
 discovery, nothing further need be said than that they 
 were characterized by their usual indifference to the 
 rights and feelings of the natives, and that, finding 
 them for the most part of a more warlike disposition, 
 several of these commanders had suffered severely 
 from them, and some of them lost their lives. 
 
 But a strange and astounding epoch was now at 
 hand. The names of Cortez and Pizarro, Mexico 
 and Peru, are become sounds familiar to all ears — 
 linked together as in a spell of wild wonder, and 
 stand as the very embodiment of all that is marvellous, 
 dazzling, and romantic in history. Here were vast 
 empires, suddenly starting from the veil of ages into 
 the presence of the European world, with the glitter 
 of a golden opulence beyond the very extravagance 
 of Arabian fable ; populous as they were affluent ; 
 with a new and peculiar civilization ; with arts and a 
 literature unborrowed of other realms, and unlike 
 
64 COLONIZATION 
 
 those of any other. Here were those fairy and most 
 interesting kingdoms as suddenly assaulted and sub- 
 dued by two daring adventurers with a mere handful 
 of followers ; and as suddenly destroyed ! Their 
 young' civilization, their fair and growing fabric of 
 policy, ruthlessly dashed down and utterly annihilated ; 
 their princes murdered in cold blood ; their wealth 
 dissipated like a morning dream ; and their swarming 
 people crushed into slaves, or swept from their cities 
 and their fair fields, as a harvest is swept away by the 
 sickle ! 
 
 It is difficult, amid the intoxication of the imagina- 
 tion on contemplating such a spectacle, — for there is 
 nothing like it in the history of the whole world — it 
 is difficult, dazzled by military triumph, and seduced 
 by the old sophisms of glory and adventure, to bring 
 the mind steadily to contemplate the real nature and 
 consequences of these events. The names of Cortez 
 and Pizarro, indeed, through all the splendour of that 
 renown with which the acclamations of their interested 
 cotemporaries, and the false morality of their his- 
 torians have surrounded them, still retain the gloom 
 and terror of their cruelties. But this is derived 
 rather from particular acts of outrageous atrocity, 
 than from a just estimate of the total villany and 
 unrighteous nature of their entire undertakings. 
 Their entrance, assault, and subduction of the king- 
 doms of Mexico and Peru, were from first to last, 
 in limine et in termino^ the acts of daring robbers, on 
 flame with the thirst of gold, and of a spurious and 
 fanatical renown, — setting at defiance every senti- 
 ment of justice, mercy and right, and bound by no 
 scruples of honour or conscience, in the pursuit of 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 65 
 
 their object. It is not to be denied that in the pro- 
 secution of their schemes, they displayed the most 
 chivalrous courage, and Cortez the most consummate 
 address,— but these are the attributes of the arch-fiend 
 himself— boundless ambition, gigantic talent, the most 
 matchless and successful address without one feeling 
 of pity, or one sentiment of goodness ! These surely 
 are not the qualities for which Christians ought to 
 applaud such men as Cortez and Pizarro ! They are 
 these false and absurd notions, derived from the spirit 
 of gentile antiquity, that have so long mocked the 
 progress of Christianity, and held civilization in abey- 
 ance. It is to these old sophisms that we owe all 
 the political evils under which we groan, and under 
 which we have made all nations that have felt our 
 power groan too. To every truly enlightened and 
 Christian philosopher can there be a more melancholy 
 subject of contemplation, than these romantic empires 
 thus barbarously destroyed by an irruption of worse 
 than Goths and Vandals ? But that melancholy must 
 be tenfold augmented, when we reflect what would 
 have been the fate of these realms if Europe had been 
 not nominally, but really Christianized at the moment 
 of their discovery. If it had learned that the " peace on 
 earth and good- will towards men," with which the chil- 
 dren of heaven heralded the gospel into the world, was 
 not a mere flourish of rhetoric, — not a mere phrase of 
 eastern poetry, "beautiful exceedingly;" but actually 
 the promulgation of the grandest and most pregnant 
 axiom in social philosophy, that had ever been, or 
 should be made known to mankind, or that it was 
 possible for heaven itself from the infinitude of its 
 blessedness to send down to it. That in it lay con- 
 
OQ COLONIZATION 
 
 centrated the perfection of civil policy, the beauty of 
 social life, the harmony of nations, and the prosperity 
 of every mercantile adventure. That it was the 
 triumphant basis, on which arts and sciences, litera- 
 ture and poetry, should raise their proudest fabrics, 
 and society from its general adoption, date its genuine 
 civilization and a new era of glory and enjoyment. 
 Suppose that to have been the mind and feeling of 
 Europe at that time— and it is merely to suppose it to 
 be what it pretended to be — in possession of Chris- 
 tianity — what would have been the simple conse- 
 quence? To the wonder that thrilled through Eu- 
 rope at the tidings of such discovered states, an admi- 
 ration as lively would have succeeded. Vast king- 
 doms in the heart of the new world, with cities and 
 cultivated fields ; with temples and palaces ; monarchs 
 of great state and splendour; vessels of silver and 
 gold in gorgeous abundance ; municipal police ; na- 
 tional couriers ; and hieroglyphic writing, and records 
 of their own invention ! Why, what interesting 
 intelligence to every lover of philosophy, of literature, 
 and of the study of human nature ! Genuine intelli- 
 gence, and enlightened curiosity would have flocked 
 thither to look and admire ; genuine philanthropy, to 
 give fresh strength and guidance to this germinating 
 civilization, — and Christian spirits would have glowed 
 with delight at the thought of shewing, in the elevated 
 virtues, the justice, generosity and magnanimity de- 
 rived by them from their faith, the benefits which it 
 could confer on these growing states. 
 
 But to have expected anything of this kind from 
 the Spaniards, would have been the height of folly. 
 They had no more notion of what Christianity is, than 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 67 
 
 the Great Mogul had. They knew no more than 
 what Rome chose to tell them. They were not dis- 
 tinguished by one Christian virtue, — for they had 
 been instructed in none. They were not more bar- 
 barous to the Americans, than they were faithless, 
 jealous, malignant, and quarrelsome amongst each 
 other. Disorderly and insubordinate as soldiers, 
 nothing but the terrors of their destructive arms, and 
 the fatal paralysis of mind which singular prophesies 
 had cast on the Americans, could have prevented 
 them from being speedily swept away in the midst of 
 their riot and contention. The idea which the Spa- 
 niards had of Christianity, is best seen in the form of 
 proclamation which Ojeda made to the inhabitants of 
 Tierra Firme, and which became the Spanish model 
 in all future usurpations of the kind. After stating 
 that the popes, as the successors of St. Peter, were 
 the possessors of the world, it thus went on : 
 
 " One of these pontiffs, as lord of the world, hath 
 made a grant of these islands, and of Tierra Firm^ of 
 the ocean sea, to the Catholic kings of Castile, Don 
 Ferdinand and Donna Isabella of glorious memory, 
 and their successors, our sovereigns, with all they con- 
 tain, as is more fully expressed in certain deeds passed 
 upon that occasion, which you may see if you desire 
 it, (Indians, who neither knew Latin, Spanish, nor the 
 art of reading!). Thus his majesty is king and lord 
 of these islands, and of the continent, in virtue of 
 this donation ; and as king and lord aforesaid, most of 
 the islands to which his title hath been notified, have 
 recognised his majesty, and now yield obedience and 
 subjection to him as their lord, voluntarily and without 
 resistance! and instantly, as soon as they received 
 
68 COLONIZATION 
 
 information (from the sword and musket f) they 
 obeyed the religious men sent by the king to preach 
 
 to them, and to instncct them in our hofy faith ! 
 
 You are bound and obliged (true enough !) to act in the 
 
 same manner If you do this, you act well, 
 
 and perform that to which you are bound and obliged ; 
 his majesty, and I in his name, will receive you with 
 love and kindness^ and will leave you and your children 
 free and exempt from servitude^ and in the enjoyment of 
 all you possess, in the same manner as the inhabitants of 
 the islands ! (ay, love and kindness, such as they had 
 shewn to the islanders. Satan's genuine glozing — ■ 
 " lies like truth, and yet most truly lies.") Besides 
 this, his majesty will bestow upon you many privileges, 
 exemptions, and rewards f (Ay, such as they had be- 
 stowed on the islanders — but here begins the simple 
 truth.) But if you will not comply, or maliciously 
 delay to obey my injunctions, then, with the help of 
 God, I will enter your country by force ; I will carry 
 on war against you with the utmost violence ; I will 
 subject you to the yoke of the church and the king; 
 I will take your wives and children, and will make 
 slaves of them, and sell or dispose of them according 
 to his majesty's pleasure ; I will seize your goods, and 
 do all the mischief in my power to you as rebellious 
 subjects, who will not acknowledge or submit to their 
 lawful sovereign. And I protest that all the blood- 
 shed and calamities which shall follow are to be im- 
 puted to you, and not to his majesty, or to me, or to 
 the gentlemen who serve under me, etc." — Herrera. 
 
 Here then we have the romance stripped away from 
 such ruffians as Cortez and Pizarro. We have here 
 the very warrant under which they acted — a tissue of 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. (59 
 
 such most impudent fictions, and vindictive truths, as 
 could only issue from that great office of delusion and 
 oppression which corrupted all Europe with its abomi- 
 nable doctrine. The last sentence, however, betrays 
 the inward feeling and consciousness of those who 
 used it, that blood-guiltiness was not perfectly removed 
 to their satisfaction, and is a miserable attempt at 
 further self-delusion. These apostles of the sword, 
 before whose proclamation our sarcasms against Maho- 
 met and his sword-creed, fall to the ground, knew only 
 too well that all their talk of love and kindness to the 
 islanders was the grossest falsehood. The Pope's bull 
 could not blind them to that; and though the misery 
 they inflicted is past, Europe still needs the warning 
 of their deeds, to open its eyes to the nature of much 
 of its own morality. 
 
 Cortez commenced his career against Mexico with 
 breach of faith to his employer. It was villain using 
 villain, and with the ordinary results. Velasquez, the 
 governor of Cuba, who had sent out Grijalva, roused 
 by the description of the new and beautiful country 
 which he had coasted, now sought for a man, so hum- 
 ble in his pretensions and so destitute of alliance, that 
 he might trust him with a fleet and force for the acqui- 
 sition of it. Such a man he believed he had found in 
 Hernando Cortez, — a man, like many other men in 
 Spain, of noble blood, but very ignoble fortune — 
 poor, proud, so hot and overbearing in his disposition 
 and so dissipated in his habits, that his father was glad 
 to send him out as an adventurer. Ovando, governor 
 of Hispaniola, the notorious betrayer of Anacoana, and 
 murderer of her chiefs, was his relation, and received 
 him with open arms as a fit instrument in such work 
 
70 COLONIZATION 
 
 as he had to do. Cortez attended Velasquez in that 
 expedition to Cuba in which the cazique Hatuey was 
 burnt at the stake for his resistance to their invasion, 
 and died bearing that memorable testimony to Spanish 
 Christianity. Velasquez, who had acted the traitor 
 towards Diego Columbus, whose deputy in the 
 government of Cuba he was, had however scarcely 
 sent out Cortez, when he conceived a suspicion that 
 he would show no better faith than he himself had 
 done. Scarcely had Cortez sailed for Trinidad, when 
 Velasquez sent instructions after him, to deprive him 
 of his commission. Cortez eluded this by hastening 
 to the Havanna, where an express also to arrest him 
 was forwarded. Cortez, fully justified the suspicions 
 of Velasquez ; for, from the moment that he found 
 himself at the head of a fleet, he abandoned every 
 idea of acknowledging the authority which had jiut it 
 into his command. He boldly avowed his intentions 
 to his fellow adventurers, and as their views, like his 
 own, were plunder and dominion, he received their 
 applause and their vows of adherence. Thus sup- 
 ported in his schemes of ambition, he set sail for the 
 Mexican coast, with eleven vessels of various burdens 
 and characters. His own, or admiral's ship, was of a 
 hundred tons, three of seventy or eighty tons, and the 
 others were open boats. He carried with him six 
 hundred and seventeen men ; amongst whom were to 
 be found only thirteen muskets, thirty-two cross-bows, 
 sixteen horses, ten small field-pieces, and four falco- 
 nets. Behold Cortez and his comrades thus on their 
 way to conquer the great kingdom of Mexico, bearing 
 on their great banner the figure of a large cross, and 
 this inscription, — Let us follow the Cross, for 
 
 UNDER THIS SIGN WE SHALL CONQUER ! 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 71 
 
 " So powerfully," says Robertson, — to whose 
 curious remarks I shall occasionally draw the atten- 
 tion of my readers, — " were Cortez and his followers 
 animated with both these passions (religion and ava- 
 rice) that no less eager to plunder the opulent country 
 whither they were bound, than zealous to propagate the 
 Christian faith (I ) among its inhabitants, they set out, 
 not with the solicitude natural to men going upon 
 dangerous services, but with that confidence which 
 arises from security of success, and certainty of the 
 divine protection." No doubt they believed the cross 
 which they followed was the cross of Christ, but every 
 one now will be quite as well satisfied that it was the 
 cross of one of the two thieves, a most fitting ensign 
 for such an expedition. Cortez, indeed, was a fiery 
 zealot, and frequently endangered the success of his 
 enterprise by his assault on the gods and temples of 
 the natives, just as Mahomet or Omar would have 
 done ; for there was not a pin to choose between the 
 faith in which he had been educated, and that of the 
 prophet of Mecca. One followed the cross, the other 
 the crescent, but their faith alike was — the sword.* 
 
 After touching at difi*erent spots, to remind the 
 natives of the Christian faith by " routing them with 
 great slaughter," and carrying off provisions, cotton 
 garments, gold, and twenty female slaves, one of 
 whom was the celebrated woman, called by the Spa- 
 
 * Clavigero gives a curious account of the mode in which Cortez 
 took possession of the province of Tabasco, on the plains of Coutla, 
 where he killed eight hundred of fhe natives, and founded a small 
 city in memory thereof, calling it Madonna della Victoria ! Here he 
 put on his shield, unsheathed his sword, and gave three stabs with it 
 to a large tree which was in the principal village, declaring that if 
 any person durst oppose his possession, he would defend it with that 
 sword. 
 
72 COLONIZATION 
 
 niards Donna Marina, who rendered them such ser- 
 vices as interpreter, they entered, on the 2nd of 
 April 1519, the harbour of St. Juan de Ulua. Here 
 we are told by the Spanish historians, that the natives 
 came on board in the most friendly and unsuspicious 
 manner. Two of them were officers from the local 
 government, sent to inquire what was the object of 
 Cortez in coming thither, and offering any assistance 
 that might be necessary to enable him to proceed in 
 his voyage. Cortez assured them that he came with 
 the most friendly intentions, to seek an interview with 
 the king, of great importance to the welfare of their 
 country ; and next morning, in proof of the sincerity 
 and friendliness of his views, landed his troops and 
 ammunition, and began a fortification. This brought 
 Teutile and Pilpatoe, as Robertson calls them, or 
 Teuhtlile and Cuitlalpita, according to Clavigero, him- 
 self a Mexican, the local governors, into the camp with 
 a numerous attendance. Montezuma, the emperor, 
 had been alarmed, as well he might, by the former 
 appearance of the Spaniards on his coast, and these 
 officers urged Cortez to take his departure. He per- 
 sisted, however, that he must see Montezuma, being 
 come as an ambassador from the king of Spain to him, 
 and charged with communications that could be opened 
 to no one else — falsehoods worthy of a robber, for he 
 not only had no commission from the king of Spain, 
 but was in open rebellion to the Spanish government 
 at the moment. To induce him to depart, these 
 simple people resorted to the same unlucky policy as 
 our ancestors the Saxons did with the Danes, and pre- 
 sented him with a present of ten loads of fine cotton 
 cloth, plumes of various colours, and articles in gold 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 73 
 
 and silver of rich and curious workmanship, besides a 
 quantity of provisions. These not only inflamed his 
 cupidity to the utmost, but another circumstance 
 served to convince him that he had stumbled upon a 
 different country to what any of his countrymen had 
 yet found in America ; and stimulated equally his am- 
 bition to conquer it. He observed painters at work 
 in the train of Teuhtlile and Pitalpatoe,* sketching on 
 cotton cloth, himself, his men, his horses, ships and 
 artillery. To give more effect to these drawings, 
 he sounded his trumpets, threw his army into battle 
 array, put it through a variety of striking military 
 movements, and tore up the neighbouring woods with 
 the discharge of his cannon. The Mexicans, struck 
 with terror and admiration at these exhibitions, dis- 
 patched speedy information of all these particulars by 
 the couriers, and in seven days received the answer of 
 the emperor, though his capital was one hundred and 
 eighty miles off, that Cortez must instantly depart the 
 country. But had he had the slightest intention of 
 the kind, the unlucky courtesy of the emperor would 
 have changed his resolve. To render his command 
 the more palatable, he sent an ambassador of rank, 
 with a hundred men of burden carrying presents, and 
 they again poured out before Cortez such a flood of 
 treasures, as astonished him and his greedy followers. 
 
 * Thus called by Herrera. Bernal Diaz also calls Teuhtlile, Teu- 
 dili. It is singular that scarcely two writers, ancient or modern, call 
 the same South American person by the same name. Our modern 
 travellers not only differ from the Spanish historians, but from one 
 another. Even the familiar name of Montezuma, is Moctezuma and 
 Motezuma; that of Guatimozin, Guatimotzin and Quauhtemotzin. 
 The same confusion prevails amongst our authors, in nearly all the 
 proper names of America, Asia, or Africa. 
 
 £ 
 
74 _ COLONIZATION 
 
 There were boxes full of pearls and precious stones ; 
 gold in its native state, and gold wrought into the 
 richest trinkets; two wheels, the one of gold, the 
 other of silver. That of gold, representing the Mex- 
 ican century, had the image of the sun engraved in 
 the middle, round which were different figures in bass- 
 relief. Bernal Diaz says the circumference was thirty 
 palms of Toledo, and the value of it ten thousand 
 sequins. The one of silver, in which the Mexican 
 year was represented, was still larger, with a moon 
 in the middle, surrounded also with figures in bass- 
 relief.* Thirty loads or bales of cotton cloths of the 
 most exquisite fineness, and pictures in feather-work 
 of surprising brilliancy and art. These were all 
 opened out on mats in the most tempting manner ; 
 and besides these, was a vizor, which Cortez had de- 
 sired at the last interview might be filled with gold 
 dust, telling the officer most truly — that " the Spa- 
 niards had a disease of the heart which could only be 
 cured by gold." 
 
 Cortez took the presents, and coolly assured the 
 ambassador that he should not quit the country till he 
 had seen the emperor. A third message, accompanied 
 by a third and more peremptory order for his depar- 
 ture, producing no greater effect, the officers left the 
 camp in displeasure, and Cortez prepared to march 
 into the country. 
 
 But before he commenced his expedition there 
 were a few measures to be taken. He was a traitor 
 to the governor of Cuba who had sent him out; and 
 the governor had still adherents in the army, who 
 objected to what appeared to them this rash enter- 
 
 * Engravings of these may be seen in Clavigero. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 75 
 
 prise against so powerful and populous an empire. 
 It was necessary to silence these people, and his mode 
 of doing this reminds one of the solemn artifices of 
 Oliver Cromwell. He held out to the soldiers such 
 prospects of booty as secured them to his interests, 
 and on the discontented remonstrating with him, he 
 appeared to fall in with their views, and gave instant 
 orders for the return •home, at the same time sending 
 his emissaries amongst the soldiers to exasperate them 
 against the return. When the order for re-embarka- 
 tion the next day was therefore issued, the whole army 
 seemed in a fury against it, and Cortez feigning to 
 have believed the order for the return was their own 
 desire, now declared that he was ready to lead them 
 forwards. But this was not sufficient. Knowing that 
 he was a traitor to the trust reposed in him, he 
 resorted to one of those grave farces by which usurpers 
 often attempt to give an appearance of title to their 
 power, though they know well enough the emptiness 
 of it. He laid out the plan of a town, — named it 
 Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, or the Rich Town of 
 the True Cross, established magistrates and a muni- 
 cipal council, and then appeared before them and 
 resigned his command into their hands, having taken 
 good care that the magistrates were so much his 
 creatures as instantly to re-invest him with it. As- 
 suming now this command, not as flowing from the 
 governor of Cuba, but from the constituted authorities 
 under the crown, and therefore from the crown itself, 
 he immediately seized on the officers who had mur- 
 mured at his breach of faith, clapped them in chains, 
 and sent them aboard the fleet ! So far so good ; but 
 the reflection still came, how would all these deeds 
 
7S COLONIZATION 
 
 sound at home ? and Cortez therefore took the only- 
 means that could secure him in that quarter. He 
 collected all the gold that could be procured by any 
 means, and sent it by the hand of two of the mock 
 magistrates of Vera Cruz to the King of Spain, giving 
 a plausible colouring to their assumption of power in- 
 dependent of Cuba, and soliciting a confirmation of it. 
 
 These were the measures of an adventurer not more 
 daring than artful ; yet a single circumstance shewed 
 him still his insecurity. At the moment that his 
 magistrates were about to sail for Spain, he discovered 
 that a conspiracy was in existence to seize one of the 
 vessels in the harbour, and to sail to Cuba, and give 
 the alarm to Velasquez. This startling fact deter- 
 mined him to put the coup de grace to his measures, — 
 to destroy his fleet, and let his followers see that there 
 was no longer any resource but to follow him boldly 
 in his attack upon Mexico, or perish. He had the 
 address to bring his men to commit this act themselves : 
 they dragged the vessels ashore — stripped them of 
 sails, rigging, iron-work — whatever might be useful, 
 and then broke them up. A more daring and politic - 
 action is not upon record. Cortez, in fact, had nothing 
 to hope from his fleet, and had cast his life and for- 
 tune on the conquest of this great and wealthy realm. 
 
 When we contemplate him at this juncture, we are 
 however not more struck with his daring and deter- 
 mined policy, than as Christians we are indignant at 
 the real nature of the act that he meditated. This 
 •was no other than to ravage this young and growing 
 empire, to plunder it of its gold, and consume its 
 millions of inhabitants in mines and plantations, by 
 the sword and by the lash, as his countrymen had con- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 77 
 
 sumed the wealth and the people of the islands, — and 
 all this on pretence of planting the Cross ! It was 
 the cool speculation of a daring robber, hardened by 
 a false faith, and by witnessing deeds of blood and 
 outrage, to a total insensibility to every feeling but 
 the diseased overgrowth of selfish ambition. 
 
 The attempt to subdue a kingdom stretching from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in a breadth of above 
 five hundred leagues from east to west, and of up- 
 wards of two hundred from north to south — a kingdom 
 populous, fertile, and of a warlike reputation; and 
 that with a force of not seven hundred men, appears 
 at first view an act of madness : but Cortez was too 
 well acquainted with American warfare to know that 
 it was not impracticable. In the first place, he knew 
 that the weapons of the natives had very little efi'ect 
 upon the quilted cotton dress which the Spaniards 
 adopted on these expeditions, and that by the terror 
 of their fire-arms and their union of movement, they 
 could in almost all cases and situations keep them at 
 that distance which took away even that little effect, 
 while it left them open to the full play of the Euro- 
 pean missives. He knew the terror that the natives 
 had of the Spanish horses, dogs, and artillery; and 
 moreover he had speedily discovered, through the 
 means of one of the women slaves brought from Darien 
 who proved to be a Mexican by birth, that Mexico 
 was a kingdom newly cemented by the arms of Mon- 
 tezuma and his immediate predecessors, and therefore 
 full of provinces still smarting under the sense of 
 their subjugation, and ready to seize on an occasion of 
 revenge. In fact, he had speedily practical evidence 
 of this, for the cazique of Chempoalla, a neighbouring 
 
78 COLONIZATION 
 
 town, sent an embassy to him soliciting his friendship, 
 and ofFenng to join him in his designs against Monte- 
 zuma, whom he represented as a haughty and exact- 
 ing tyrant to the provinces. Cortez of course caught 
 gladly at this alliance, and removing his settlement, 
 planted it at Quiabislan, near Ghempoalla. The hint 
 was given him of the real condition of the empire, 
 and he was too crafty to neglect it. He immediately 
 gave himself out as the champion of the aggrieved 
 and oppressed, come to redress all their wrongs, and 
 restore them to their liberties I 
 
 But there was another and most singular cause which 
 gave Cortez a fair prospect of success. Throughout 
 the American kingdoms ancient prophecies prevail- 
 ed, — that a new race was to come in, and seize 
 upon the reins of power, and before it the American 
 tribes were to quail and give place. In the islands, 
 in Mexico, in Peru, — far and wide, — this mysterious 
 tradition prevailed. Everywhere these terrible people 
 were expected to come from towards the rising of the 
 sun : they were to be completely clad, and to lay 
 waste every country before them ; — circumstances so 
 entirely verified in the Spaniards, that the spirit of 
 the American natives died within them at the rumour 
 of their approach, as the natives of Canaan did at that 
 of the Israelites coming with the irresistible power 
 and the awful miracles of God. For ages these pro- 
 phecies had weighed on the public mind, and had 
 been sung with loud lamentations at their solemn 
 festivals. Cazziva, a great cazique, declared that in 
 a supernatural interview with one of the Zemi, this 
 terrible event had been revealed to him. " The 
 demons which they worshipped," says Acosta, "in 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 79 
 
 this instance, told them true." Montezuma therefore, 
 though naturally haughty, warlike, and commanding, 
 on so appalling an event as the fulfilment of these 
 ancient prophecies, lost his courage, his decision, his 
 very power of mind, and exhibited nothing but the 
 most utter vacillation and weakness, while Cortez was 
 advancing towards his capital in defiance of his orders. 
 Having strengthened himself by the alliance of the 
 Chempoallans, and others of the Totonacas, and chas- 
 tised the Tlascalans, a fierce people who gave no credit 
 to his pretences, he advanced to Cholula, a place of 
 great importance, consisting, according to Cortez's 
 account, of forty thousand houses and many populous 
 suburban villages. Montezuma had now consented to 
 his reception, and he was received in this city by his 
 orders. It was a sacred city, — " the Rome of Ana- 
 huac or Mexico," says Clavigero, full of temples, and 
 visited by hosts of pilgrims. Here, suspecting trea- 
 chery, he determined to strike terror into both the 
 emperor and the people. " For this purpose," says 
 Robertson, " the Spaniards and Zempoallans were 
 drawn up in a large court which had been allotted 
 for their quarters near the centre of the town. The 
 Tlascalans had orders to advance; the magistrates, 
 and several of the chief citizens, were sent for, under 
 various pretences, and seized. On a signal given, the 
 troops rushed out, and fell upon the multitude desti- 
 tute of leaders, and so much astonished, that the 
 weaponsjfc dropping front their hands, they stood 
 motionleS and incapable of defence. While the 
 Spaniards pressed them in front, the Tlascalans at- 
 tacked them in the rear. The streets were filled with 
 bloodshed and death; the temples, which afforded a 
 
BO COLONIZATION 
 
 retreat to the priests and some of the leading men, 
 were set on fire, and they perished in the flames. 
 This scene of horror continued two days, during 
 which the wretched inhabitants suffered all that the 
 destructive rage of the Spaniards, or the implacable 
 revenge of their Indian allies, could inflict. At 
 length the carnage ceased, after the slaughter of six 
 thousand Cholulans, without the loss of a single 
 Spaniard ! Cortez then released the magistrates, and 
 reproaching them bitterly for their intended treachery, 
 declared that as justice was now appeased he forgave 
 the offence, but required them to recall the citizens 
 who had fled, and reestablish order in the town. Such 
 was the ascendant which the Spaniards had acquired 
 over this superstitious race of men, and so deeply were 
 they impressed with an opinion of their superior dis- 
 cernment, as well as power, that in obedience to this 
 command, the city was in a few days again filled with 
 people, who amidst the ruins of their sacred buildings, 
 yielded respectful service to men whose hands were 
 stained with the blood of their relatives and fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 " From Cholula,'*adds Robertson, "Cortez marched 
 directly towards Mexico, which was only twenty 
 leagues distant :" — and that is all the remark that he 
 makes on this brutal butchery of an innocent people, 
 by a man on his march to plant the cross ! A Chris- 
 tian historian sees only in this most savage and infernal 
 action, a piece of necessary policy — so obtuse become 
 the perceptions of men through the ordinary princi- 
 ples of historic judgment. But the Christian mind 
 asks what business Cortez had there at all? The 
 people were meditating his destruction? True ; — and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 81 
 
 it was natural and national that they should get rid 
 of so audacious and lawless an enemy, who entered 
 their country with the intentions of a robber, set at 
 defiance the commands of their king, and stirred up 
 rebellion at every step he took. The Mexicans would 
 have been less than men if they had not resolved to 
 cut him off. What right had he there ? What right 
 to disturb the tranquillity of their country, and shed the 
 blood of its people ? These are questions that cannot 
 be answered on any Christian principles, or on any 
 principles but those of the bandit and the murderer. 
 Six thoitsand people butchered in cold blood — two days 
 employed in hewing down trembling wretches, too fearful 
 to even raise a single weapon against the murderers ! 
 Heavens ! are these the deeds that we admire as heroic 
 and as breathing of romance ? Yet, says Clavigero, 
 " He ordered the great temple to be cleaned from the 
 gore of his murdered victims; and raised there the 
 standard of the cross ; after giving the Cholulans, as he 
 did all the other people among whom he stopped, some 
 
 IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION ! ! ! What idea 
 
 had the Abbe Don Francesco Saverio Clavigero of 
 Christianity himself? 
 
 But Cortez *had plunged headlong into the enter- 
 prise — he had set his life and that of his followers at 
 stake on the coriquest of Mexico, and there was no 
 action, however desperate, that he was not prepared 
 to commit. And sure enough his hands became well 
 filled with treachery and blood. It is not my business 
 to dwell particularly upon these atrocities, but merely 
 to recall the memory of them ; yet it may be as well 
 to give, in the words of Robertson, the manner in 
 which the Spaniards were received into the capital, 
 e2 
 
82 COLONIZATION 
 
 because it contrasts strongly with the manner in which 
 the Christians behaved in this same city, and to this 
 same monarch. 
 
 " In descending from the mountains of Chalco,* 
 across which the road lay, the vast plain of Mexico 
 opened gradually to their view. When they first 
 beheld this prospect, one of the most striking and 
 beautiful on the face of the earth — when they observed 
 fertile and cultivated fields stretching further than the 
 eye could reach — when they saw a lake resembling the 
 sea in extent, encompassed with large towns ; and dis- 
 covered the capital city, rising upon an island in the 
 middle, adorned with its temples and turrets — the 
 scene so far exceeded their imagination, that some 
 believed the fanciful dreams of romance were realized, 
 and that its enchanted palaces and gilded domes were 
 presented to their sight. Others could hardly per- 
 suade themselves that this wonderful spectacle was 
 anything more than a dream. As they advanced, their 
 doubts were removed; but their amazement increased. 
 They were now fully satisfied that the country was 
 rich beyond any conception which they had formed 
 of it, and flattered themselves that at length they 
 should obtain an ample recompense for all their ser- 
 vices and sufferings. 
 
 " When they drew near the city, ^bout a thousand 
 persons, who appeared to be of distinction, came forth 
 to meet them, adorned with plumes, and clad in man- 
 tles of fine cotton. Each of these, in his order, passed 
 by Cortez, and saluted him according to the mode 
 deemed most respectful and submissive in their coun- 
 try. They announced the approach of Montezuma 
 
 * The Ithualco of other authors. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 83 
 
 himself, and soon after his harbingers came in sight. 
 There appeared first, two hundred persons in an uni- 
 form dress, with large plumes of feathers alike in 
 fashion, marching two and two in deep silence, bare- 
 footed, with their eyes fixed on the ground. These 
 were followed by a company of higher rank, in their 
 most showy apparel; in the midst of whom W2is Monte- 
 zuma, in a chair or litter, richly ornamented with gold 
 and feathers of various colours. Four of his principal 
 favourites carried him on their shoulders ; others sup- 
 ported a canopy of curious workmanship over his head. 
 Before him marched three officers with rods of gold in 
 their hands, which they lifted up on high at certain 
 intervals, and at that signal all the people bowed their 
 heads, and hid their faces, as unworthy to look on so 
 great a monarch. When he drew near, Cortez dis- 
 mounted, advancing towards him with officious haste, 
 and in a respectful posture. At the same time Monte- 
 zuma alighted from his phair, and leaning on the arms 
 of two of his near relatives, approached with a slow 
 and stately pace, his attendants covering the street 
 with cotton cloths that he might not touch the ground. 
 Cortez accosted him with profound reverence after the 
 European fashion. He returned the salutation accord- 
 ing to the mode of his country, by touching the earth 
 with his hand, and then kissing it. This ceremony, 
 the customary expression of veneration from inferiors 
 towards those who were above them in rank, appeared 
 such amazing condescension in a proud monarch, who 
 scarcely deigned to consider the rest of mankind as of 
 the same species with himself, that all his subjects 
 firmly believed those persons before whom he humbled 
 himself in this manner, to be something more than 
 
84 COLONIZATION 
 
 human. Accordingly, as they marched through the 
 crowd, the Spaniards frequently, and with much satis- 
 faction, heard themselves denominated Teules, or divi- 
 nities. Montezuma conducted Cortez to the quarter 
 which he had prepared for his reception, and imme- 
 diately took leave of him, with a politeness not unwor- 
 thy of a court more refined. ' You are now,' says he, 
 ' with your brothers in your own house ; refresh your- 
 selves after your fatigue ; and be happy till I return." 
 
 The Spanish historians give some picturesque par- 
 ticulars of this interview, which Robertson has not 
 copied. The dress of Montezuma is thus described : 
 As he rode in his litter, a parasol of green feathers 
 embroidered with fancy-work of gold was held over 
 him. He wore hanging from his shoulders a mantle 
 adorned with the richest jewels of gold and precious 
 stones ; on his head a thin crown of the same metal ; 
 and upon his feet shoes of gold, tied with strings 
 of leather worked with gold and gems. The persons 
 on whom he leaned, were the king of Tezcuco and the 
 lord of Iztapalapan. Cortez put on Montezuma's neck 
 a thin cord of gold strung with glass beads, and would 
 have embraced him, but was prevented by the two 
 lords on whom the king leaned. In return for this 
 paltry necklace, Montezuma gave Cortez two of 
 beautiful mother-of-pearl, from which hung some large 
 cray-fish of gold in imitation of nature. 
 
 Here, then, to their own wonder and admiration, 
 were this handful of Spanish adventurers in the ** glo- 
 rious city," 
 
 Near the setting of the sun, 
 Throned in a silver lake. 
 
 Generous minds would have rejoiced in the glory 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 85 
 
 of such a discovery, and have exulted in the mutual 
 benefits to be derived from an honourable intercourse 
 between their own country and this new and beauti- 
 ful one, — but Cortez and his men were merely gazing 
 on the novel splendour of this interesting city with 
 the greedy eyes of robbers, and thinking how they 
 might best seize upon its power, and clutch its wealth. 
 Who is not familiar with their rapid career of auda- 
 cious villany, in this fairy capital? Scarcely were 
 they received as guests,* when they seized on the 
 monarch, and that at the very moment that he gave 
 to Cortez his own daughter, and heaped on him other 
 favours — and compelled him, under menaces of in- 
 stantly stabbing him to the heart, to quit his palace, 
 and take up his residence in their own quarters. The 
 astonished and distressed king, now a puppet in their 
 hands, was made to command every thing which they 
 desired to be done; and they were by no means 
 scrupulous in their exercise of this power, knowing 
 that the people looked on the person of the monarch 
 as sacred, and would not for a moment refuse to obey 
 his least word, though in the hands of his enemies. 
 The very first thing which they required him to do, 
 was to order to be delivered up to them Qualpopoca, 
 one of his generals, who had been employed in quell- 
 ing one of the insurrections that the Spaniards had 
 raised near Villa Rica, and who being attacked by 
 the Spanish officer Escalante, left in command there, 
 had killed him, with seven of his men, and taken one 
 other alive. The order was obeyed, and the brave 
 general, his son, and five of his principal officers, were 
 burnt alive by these Christian heroes ! To add to 
 
 * Clavigero says only six days. 
 
86 COLONIZATION 
 
 the cruelty and indignity of the deed, Montezuma 
 himself was put into irons during the transaction, 
 accompanied by threats of a darker kind. 
 
 The simplicity of Robertson^s remarks on this affair 
 are singular : " In these transactions, as represented 
 by the Spanish historians, we search in vain for the 
 qualities which distinguish other parts of Cortez's 
 conduct.*' What qualities? "To usurp a jurisdic- 
 tion which could not belong to a stranger, who as- 
 sumed no higher character than that of an ambassador 
 from a foreign prince, and under colour of it, to 
 inflict a capital punishment on men whose conduct 
 entitled them to esteem, appears an act of barbarous 
 cruelty." 
 
 Why, the whole of Cortez's conduct, from the 
 moment that he entered with arms the kingdom of 
 Mexico, was a usurpation that " could not belong to 
 a stranger assuming merely the title of an ambas- 
 sador." What ambassador comes with armed troops ; 
 or when the monarch orders him to quit his realm, 
 marches further into it; or foments rebellion as he 
 goes along ; or massacres the inhabitants by whole- 
 sale ? Was the butchery of six thousand people at 
 Cholula, no act of barbarous cruelty ? 
 
 Well, by what Robertson complacently terms "the 
 fortunate temerity in seizing Montezuma," the Spa- 
 niards had suddenly usurped the sovereign power, 
 and they did not pause here. They sent out some of 
 their number to survey the whole kingdom ; to spy 
 out its wealth, and pitch on fitting stations for colonies. 
 They put down such native officers as were too honest 
 or able for them; they compelled Montezuma, though 
 with tears and groans, to acknowledge himself the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 87 
 
 vassal of the Spanish crown. They divided the 
 Mexican treasures amongst them ; and finally drove 
 the Mexicans to desperation. 
 
 The arrival of the armament from Cuba under 
 Narvaez, sent by Velasquez to punish Cortez for his 
 treason, and his victory over Narvaez, and the union 
 of those troops with his own, belong to the general 
 historian — my task is to exhibit his treatment to the 
 natives ; and his next exploit, is that of exposing 
 Montezuma to the view of his exasperated subjects 
 from the battlements of his house, in the hope that his 
 royal puppet might have authority enough to appease 
 them; a scheme which proved the death of the 
 emperor — for his own subjects, indignant at his tame 
 submission to the Spaniards, let fly their arrows at him. 
 The fury of the Mexicans on this catastrophe, the 
 terrible nocturnal retreat of Cortez from the city, still 
 called amongst the inhabitants of Mexico, La Noche 
 Triste, the sorrowful night, — the strange battle .of 
 Otumba, where Cortez, felling the standard-bearer of 
 the army, dispersed in a moment tens of thousands 
 like a mist, — the flight to Tlascala, and the return 
 again to the siege, — the eight thousand Tamenes^ or 
 servile Indians, bearing through the hostile country 
 to the lake the brigandines in parts, ready to put 
 together on their arrival, — Father Olmedo blessing 
 the brigandines as they were launched on the lake 
 in the presence of wondering multitudes, — and the 
 desperate siege and assault themselves, all are full of 
 the most stirring interest, and display a sort of satanic 
 grandeur in the man, amidst the horrors into which 
 liis ambitious guilt had plunged him, that are only to 
 be compared to that of Napoleon in Russia, beset, in 
 
88 COLONIZATION 
 
 his extremity, by the vengeful warriors of the north. 
 But the crowning disgrace of Cortez, is that of putting 
 to the torture the new emperor, Guatimotzin, the 
 nephew and son-in-law of Montezuma, whom the 
 Mexicans, in admiration of his virtues and talents, had 
 placed on the throne. The bravery with which Gua- 
 timotzin had defended his city, the frankness with 
 which he yielded himself when taken, would have 
 made his person sacred in the eyes of a generous con- 
 queror ; but Guatimotzin had committed the crime, 
 unpardonable in the eyes of a Spaniard, of casting the 
 treasures for which the Spaniards harassed his coun- 
 try into the lake, — and Cortez had him put to the 
 severest torture to force from him the avowal of where 
 they lay. Even he is said at length to have been 
 ashamed of so base and horrid a business ; yet he 
 afterwards put him to death, and the manner in which 
 this, and other barbarities are related by Robertson, 
 is worthy of observation. 
 
 " It was not, however, without diflficulty that the 
 Mexican empire could be entirely reduced to the 
 form of a Spanish province. Enraged and rendered 
 desperate by oppression, the natives forgot the supe- 
 riority of their enemies, and ran to arms in defence 
 of their liberties. In every contest, however, the 
 European valour and discipline prevailed. But fatally 
 for the honour of their country, the Spaniards sullied 
 the glory redounding from these repeated victories, 
 by their mode of treating the vanquished people. 
 After taking Guatimotzin, and becoming masters of 
 his capital, they supposed that the king of Castile 
 entered on possession of all the rights of the captive 
 monarch, and aflfected to consider every effort of the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 89 
 
 Mexicans to assert their own independence, as the 
 rebellion of vassals against their sovereign, or the 
 mutiny of slaves against their master. Under the 
 sanction of these ill-founded maxims, they violated 
 every right that should be held sacred between hostile 
 nations. After each insurrection, they reduced the 
 common people, in the provinces which they subdued, 
 to the most humiliating of all conditions, that of per- 
 sonal servitude. Their chiefs, supposed to be more 
 criminal, were punished with greater severity, and 
 put to death in the most ignominious or the most 
 excruciating mode that the insolence or the cruelty of 
 their conquerors could devise. In almost every dis- 
 trict of the Mexican empire, the progress of the 
 Spanish arms is marked with blood, and with deeds 
 so atrocious, as disgrace the enterprising valour that 
 conducted them to success. In the country of Pa- 
 nuco, sixty caziques, or leaders, and four hundred 
 nobles were burnt at one time. Nor was this shock- 
 ing barbarity perpetrated in any sudden sally of rage, 
 or by a commander of inferior note. It was the act 
 of Sandoval, an officer whose name is entitled to the ' 
 second rank in the annals of New Spain; and executed 
 after a solemn consultation with Cortez ; and to com- 
 plete the horror of the scene, the children and rela- 
 tives of the wretched victims were assembled, and 
 compelled to be spectators of their dying agonies. 
 
 " It seems hardly possible to exceed in horror this 
 dreadful example of severity ; but it was followed by 
 another, which affected the Mexicans still more sen- 
 sibly, as it gave them a more feeling proof of their 
 own degradation, and of the small regard which their 
 haughty masters retained for the ancient dignity and 
 
# 
 
 90 COLONIZATION 
 
 splendour of their state. Qn a slight suspicion, con- 
 firmed by a very imperfect evidence, that Guatimotzin 
 had formed a scheme to shake off the yoke, and to 
 excite his former subjects to take arms, Cortez, with- 
 out the formality of a trial, ordered the unhappy 
 monarch, together with the caziques of Tezeuco and 
 Tacuba, the two persons of the greatest eminence in 
 the empire, to be hanged; and the Mexicans, with 
 astonishment and horror, beheld this disgraceful pun- 
 ishment inflicted upon persons to whom they were 
 accustomed to look up with reverence hardly inferior 
 to that which they paid to the gods themselves. The 
 example of Cortez and his principal officers, encou- 
 raged and justified persons of subordinate rank to 
 venture upon committing greater excesses." 
 
 It is not easy to see how Cortez and his men " sul- 
 lied the glory of their repeated victories," by these 
 actions — for these very victories were gained over a 
 people who had no chance against European arms, — 
 and were infamous in themselves, being violations of 
 every sacred right of humanity. What, indeed, could 
 * sully the reputation of the man after the butchery of 
 six thousand Cholulas in cold blood? The notions 
 of glory with which Robertson, in common with many 
 other historians, was infected, are mere remnants of 
 that corrupted morality which Popery disseminated, 
 and which created the Cortezes and Pizarros of those 
 days, and the Napoleons of our own. No truth can 
 be plainer to the sound sense of a real Christian, than 
 that true glory can only be the result of great deeds 
 done in a just cause. But Cortez's whole career was 
 one perpetual union of perfidy and blood. His 
 words were not to be relied on for a moment. His 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 91 
 
 promises of kindness and of restoration to both Monte- 
 zuma and Guatimotzin, were followed only by fetters, 
 tortures, and hanging. 
 
 V Such were the horrors of the siege of Mexico, that 
 Bernal Diaz says, they can be compared to nothing 
 but those of the destruction of Jerusalem. According 
 to Bernal Diaz, the slain exceeded one hundred thou- 
 sand ; and those who died of famine, bad food and 
 water, and infection, Cortez himself asserts, were 
 more than fifty thousand. Cortez, on gaining pos- 
 session of the city, ordered all the Mexicans out of it; 
 and Bernal Diaz, an eye-witness, says, that " for 
 three days and three nights, all the three roads lead- 
 ing from the city, were seen full of men, women, and 
 children ; feeble, emaciated, and forlorn, seeking 
 refuge where they could find it. The fetid smell 
 which so many thousands of putrid bodies emitted was 
 intolerable, and occasioned some illness to the general 
 of the conquerors. The houses, streets, and canals, ,w(mL 
 were full of disfigured carcases; the ground of the 
 city was in some places dug up by the citizens in 
 search of roots to feed on ; and many trees stripped 
 of bark for the same purpose. The general caused 
 the dead bodies to be buried, and large quantities of 
 wood to be burnt through all the city, as much in 
 order to purify the infected air, as to celebrate his 
 victory.'' 
 
 But Providence failed not to visit the deeds of Cortez 
 on himself, as he had done on Columbus. Bernal Diaz 
 says, that " after the death of Guatimotzin, he became 
 gloomy and restless ; rising continually from his bed, 
 and wandering about in the dark.'' That " nothing 
 prospered with him, and that it was ascribed to the 
 
92 COLONIZATION 
 
 curses he was loaded with.*' His government was 
 acknowledged late by the crown, and soon divided 
 with other authorities. He returned, like Columbus, 
 to Europe to seek redress of wrongs heaped on him ; 
 like him, not obtaining this redress, he sought to 
 amuse his mind by fresh discoveries, and added Cali- 
 fornia to the known regions ; but the attempt to soothe 
 his uneasy spirit was vain. Neglected, and even insulted 
 by the crown, to which he had thus guiltily added vast 
 dominions, he ended his days in the same fruitless 
 and heart-wearing solicitation of the court which Co- 
 lumbus had done before. 
 
 CHAPTER VHI. 
 
 'f^Pf, 
 
 THE SPANIARDS IN PERU. 
 
 Their quiver is an open sepulchre; they are all mighty men. 
 
 Jeremiah v. 16. 
 They are cruel and have no mercy, their voice roareth like the sea; 
 and they ride upon horses set in array as men of war. 
 
 Jeremiah vi. 23. 
 
 The scene widened, and with it the rapacity and rage 
 for gold in the Spaniards. The possession and the 
 plunder of Mexico only served to whet their appetite 
 for carnage, and for one demon of avarice and cruelty 
 to raise up ten. They had seen enough to convince 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 98 
 
 them that the continent which they had reached was 
 immense, and Mexico filled their imagination with 
 abundance of wealthy empires to seize upon and 
 devour. Into these very odd Christians, not the 
 slightest atom of Christian feeling or Christian prin- 
 ciple ever entered. They were troubled with no 
 remorse for the horrible excesses of crime and ravage 
 which they had committed. The cry of innocent 
 nations that they had plundered, enslaved, and depo- 
 pulated, and which rose to heaven fearfully against 
 them, never seemed to pierce the proud brutishness 
 of their souls. They had but one idea: that all these 
 swarming nations were revealed to them by Provi- 
 dence for a prey. The Pope had given them up to 
 them ; and they had but one feeling, — a fiery, quench- 
 less, rabid lust of gold. That they might enlighten 
 and benefit these nations — that they might establish 
 wise and beneficent relations with them; that they 
 might enrich themselves most innocently and legiti- 
 mately in the very course of dispensing equivalent ad- 
 vantages, never came across their brains. It was the 
 spirit of the age, coolly says Robertson — but he does 
 not tell us how such came to be its spirit, after a thou- 
 sand years of the profession of Christianity. We 
 have seen how that came to pass ; and we must go on 
 from that time to the present, tracing the dreadful 
 efi'ects of the substitution of Popery for Christian 
 truth and mercy. 
 
 Rumours of lands lying to the south came ever and 
 anon upon the eager ears of the Spaniards, — lands 
 still more abundant in gold, and vast in extent. On 
 all hands the locust-armies of Moloch and Mammon 
 were swarming, " seeking whom they might devour :" 
 
94 COLONIZATION 
 
 and amongst these beautiful specimens of the teaching 
 of the infallible and holy Mother Church, were three 
 individuals settled in Panama, who were busily em- 
 ployed in concoctinga scheme of discovery and of crime, 
 of blood and rapine, southward ; and who were destined 
 to succeed to a marvellous degree; These worthy per- 
 sonages, who were occupied with so commendable and 
 truly Catholic a speculation as that of finding out 
 some peaceful or feeble people whom they might, as a 
 matter of business, fall upon, plunder, and if necessary, 
 assassinate, for their own aggrandizement — were no 
 other than Francis Pizarro, the bastard of a Spanish 
 gentleman, by a very low woman, who had been em- 
 ployed by his father in keeping his hogs till he run 
 away and enlisted for a soldier; Diego de Almagro, 
 a foundling; and Hernando de Luque, schoolmaster, 
 and priest ! a man who, by means which are not re- 
 lated, but may be imagined, had scraped together 
 suflScient money to inspire him with the desire of 
 getting more. 
 
 Pizarro was totally uneducated, except in hog-keep- 
 ing, and the trade of a mercenary. He could not 
 even read ; and was just one of the most hardened, 
 unprincipled, crafty, and base wretches which history 
 in its multitudinous pages of crime and villany, has 
 put on record. Almagro was equally daring, but had 
 more honesty of character ; and as for Luque, he ap- 
 pears to have been a careful, cunning attender to the 
 main chance. Having clubbed together their little 
 stock of money, and their large one of impudent hardi- 
 hood, they procured a small vessel and a hundred and 
 twelve men, and Pizarro taking the command, set out 
 in quest of whatever good land fortune and the Pope's 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 95 
 
 bull might put in their way. For some time their 
 fortune was no better than their object deserved; they 
 were tossed about by tempestuous weather, exposed 
 to great hardships, and discouraged by the prudential 
 policy of the governor of Panama ; but at length, in 
 1526, about seven years after Cortez had entered 
 Mexico, they came in sight of the coast of Peru, and 
 landing at a place called Tumbez, where there was a 
 palace of the Incas, were delighted to find that they 
 were in a beautiful and cultivated country, where 
 the object of their desires — gold, was in wonderful 
 abundance. 
 
 Having found the thing they were in quest of — a 
 country to be harried, and having the Pope's autho- 
 rity to seize on it, they were now in haste to get that 
 of the emperor. The three speculators agreed amongst 
 themselves on the manner in which they would share 
 the country they had in view. Pizarro was to be 
 governor ; Almagro, lieutenant-governor ; and Luque, 
 having the apostle's warrant, that he who desires a 
 bishopric, desires a good thing, desired that — he was 
 to be bishop of this new country. These preliminaries 
 being agreed upon, Pizarro was sent off to Spain. 
 Here he soon shewed his associates what degree of 
 faith they were to put in him. He procured the 
 governorship for himself, and not being ambitious of 
 a bishopric, he got that for Luque ; but poor Almagro 
 was dignified with the office of commandant of the 
 fortress of Tumbez — when such fortress should be 
 raised. Almagro was, as might be expected, no little 
 enraged at this piece of cool villany, especially when 
 he compared it with the titles and the powers which 
 Pizarro had secured to himself, viz. — a country of 
 
96 COLONIZATION 
 
 two hundred leagues in extent, in which he was to 
 exercise the supreme authority, both civil and mili- 
 tary, with the title of Governor, Adelantado and Cap- 
 tain-general. To appease this natural resentment, 
 the greedy adventurer agreed to surrender the office 
 of Adelantado to Almagro ; and having thus parcelled 
 out the poor Peruvians and their country in imagina- 
 tion, they proceeded to do it in reality. But before 
 we follow them to the scene of their operations, let us 
 for a moment pause, and note exactly what was the 
 actual affair which they were thus comfortably propos- 
 ing to themselves as a means of making their fortunes, 
 and for which they had thus the ready sanction of 
 Pope and Emperor. 
 
 Peru, — a splendid country, stretching along the 
 coast of the Pacific from Chili to Quito, a space of 
 fifteen hundred miles. Inland, the mighty Andes 
 lifted their snowy ridges, and at once cooled and 
 diversified this fine country with every variety of 
 scene and temperature. Like Mexico, it had once 
 consisted of a number of petty and savage states, but 
 had been reduced into one compact and well-ordered 
 empire by the Incas, a race of mysterious origin, who 
 had ruled it about four hundred years. The first ap- 
 pearance of this race in Peru is one of the most curious 
 and inexplicable mysteries of American history. Manco 
 Capac and Mama Ocollo, a man and woman of com- 
 manding aspects, and clad in garments suitable to the 
 climate, appeared on the banks of the lake Titiaca, 
 declaring that they were the children of the Sun,- sent 
 by him, who was the parent of the human race, to 
 comfort and instruct them. They were received by 
 the Peruvians with all the reverence which their 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 97 
 
 claims demanded. They taught the men agriculture, 
 and the women spinning and weaving, and other 
 domestic arts. Who these people might be, it is in 
 vain to imagine ; but if we are to judge from the nature 
 of their institutions, they must have been of Asiatic 
 origin, and might by some circumstances of which we 
 now can know nothing, be driven across the Pacific to 
 these shores. The worship of the sun, which they 
 introduced; the perfect despotism of the government; 
 the inviolable sanctity of the reigning family, all 
 point to Asia for their origin. They soon, however, 
 raised the Peruvians above all the barbarous nations 
 by whom they were surrounded ; and one by one they 
 added these nations to their own kingdom, till Peru 
 had grown into the wide and populous realm that the 
 Spaniards found it. That they had made great pro- 
 gress in the arts of smelting, refining, and working in 
 the precious metals, the immense quantity of gold and 
 silver vessels found by the Spaniards testify. Their 
 agriculture was admirable : they had introduced canals 
 and reservoirs for irrigating the dry and sandy parts 
 of the country; and employed manures with the 
 greatest judgment and effect. They had separated 
 the royal family from the public, it is true, by the 
 very singular constitution of marrying only in the 
 family, but they had given to all the people a common 
 proportion of labour in the lands, and a comfnon be- 
 nefit in their produce. They had established public 
 couriers, like the Mexicans, and constructed bridges 
 of ropes, formed of the cord-like running plants of the 
 country, and thrown them across the wildest torrents. 
 They had at the time the Spaniards entered the 
 country, two roads running the whole length of the 
 
98 COLONIZATION ' 
 
 kingdom ; one along the mountains, which must have 
 cost incalculable labour, in hewing through rocks and 
 filling up the deepest chasms, the other along the 
 lower country. These roads had at that time no 
 equals in Europe, and are said by the Inca, Garcillasso 
 de la Vega, to have been constructed in the reign of 
 Huana Capac, the father of Atahualpa, the Inca whom 
 they found on the throne. In some of the finest 
 situations, he says that the Indians had cut steps up 
 to the summits of the Andes, and constructed plat- 
 forms, so that when the Inca was travelling, the 
 bearers of his litter could carry him up with ease, and 
 allow him to enjoy a survey of the splendid views 
 around and below. These were evidences of great 
 advances in civilization, but there were particulars in 
 which they were far more civilized than their invaders, 
 and far more Christian too. Their Incas conquered 
 only to civilize and improve the adjoining states. 
 They were advocates for peace, and the enjoyment of 
 its blessings. They even forbad the fishing for pearls, 
 because, says Garcillasso, they preferred the preserva- 
 tion of their people, rather than the accumulation of 
 wealth, and would not consent to the suflferings which 
 the divers must necessarily undergo. When did the 
 Christians ever shew so much true philanthropy and 
 human feeling ? 
 
 And t^ese are the people whom Robertson, falling 
 miserably in with the views, or rather, the pretensions 
 of the Spaniards, says, appeared so feeble in intellect 
 as to be incapable of receiving Christianity. The 
 idea is a gross absurdity. What ! a people who, like 
 the Mexicans and Peruvians, had cities, temples, 
 palaces, a regular form of government ; who cultivated 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 99 
 
 the ground, and refined metals, and wrought them 
 into trinkets and vessels, not capable of receiving the 
 simple truths of Christianity which " the wayfaring 
 man though a fool cannot err in?" The Mexicans 
 had introduced their hieroglyphic writing, the Peru- 
 vians their quipos, or knotted and coloured cords, by 
 which they made calculations, and transmitted intelli- 
 gence, and handed down history of facts, yet they 
 could not understand so plain a thing as Christianity ! 
 It is the base policy of those who violate the rights of 
 men, always to add to their other injuries that of 
 c^umniating their victims as mere brutes in capa- 
 city and in the scale of being. By turns, Negroes, 
 Ho^entots, and the whoie race of the Americans, have 
 been declared incapable of freedom, and of embracing 
 that sifnple religion which was sent for the good of 
 theivhole human family. If such an absurdity needed 
 any refutation, it has^iad it amply in the reception of 
 this religion by great numbers of all these races : but 
 the fact is, that it would have been a disgrace to the 
 understanding of the American Indians to have em- 
 brace'dAhe wretched stun which was presented to them 
 by the Spaniards as Christianity. A wooden cross 
 was presented tGt» the wandering natives, and they 
 were expected instantly to bow down to it, and to 
 acknowledge the pope, a person they had never heard 
 of till that moment, or they were to be instantly cut 
 to pieces, or burnt alive. No pains were taken to 
 explain the beautiful truths of the Christian revelation 
 — those truths, in fact, were lost in the rubbish of 
 papal mummeries, and violent dogmas; and what 
 could the astonished people see in all this but a species 
 of Moloch worship in perfect keeping with the despe- 
 
100 COLONIZATION 
 
 rate and rapacious character of the invaders? Garcil- 
 lasso de la Vega, the Inca, tells ns that Huana Capac, a 
 prince whose life had more of the elements of true 
 Christianity in it than those of the Spaniards alto- 
 gether, being full of love and humanity, was accus- 
 tomed to say, that he was convinced that the sun was 
 not God, because he always went on one track through 
 the heavens, — that he had no liberty to stop, or to 
 turn out of his ordinary way, into the wide fields of 
 space around him ; and that it was clear that he was 
 therefore only a servant, obeying a higher power. 
 The Peruvians had, like the Athenians, an unknown 
 god, to whom they had a temple, and whom they 
 called Pachacamac, but as he was invisible and 
 was everywhere, they could not conceive any shape 
 for him, and therefore worshipped him in the secret of 
 their hearts. How ridiculous to say that people who 
 had arrived at such a pitch of reasoning, and at such 
 practice of the beneficent principles of love and hu- 
 manity which Christianity inculcates, were incapable 
 of embracing doctrines so consonant to their own 
 views and habits. 
 
 How lamentable, that a British historian should 
 suffer himself to follow the wretched calumnies of 
 Buflfon and De Paw against the Americans, with the 
 examples of Mexico and Peru, and the efi^ects of the 
 Jesuit missions staring him in the face. The Spa- 
 niards and Portuguese, as we shall presently see, and as 
 Robertson must have known, soon found that the 
 Indians were delighted to embrace Christianity, even 
 in the imperfect form in which it was presented to 
 them, and by thousands upon thousands exhibited the 
 beauty of Christian habits as strikingly as these Eu- 
 ropeans did the most opposite qualities. 
 
AND CfHRISTIANITY^ 101 
 
 But the strangest remark of Robertson is, " that 
 the fatal defect of the Peruvians was their unwarlike 
 character." Fatal, indeed, their inability to contend 
 with the Europeans proved to them ; but what a bur- 
 lesque on the religion of the Europeans — that the 
 peaceful character of an innocent people should prove 
 fatal to them only from — the followers of the Prince of 
 Peace ! 
 
 But the fact is, that the Peruvians as well as the 
 Mexicans were not unwarlike. On the contrary, by 
 their army they had extended and consolidated their 
 empire to a surprising extent. They had vanquished 
 all the nations around them; and it was only the 
 bursting upon them of a new people, with arts so novel 
 and destructive as to confound and paralyse their 
 minds, that they were so readily overcome. A variety 
 of circumstances combined to prostrate the Ame- 
 ricans before the Europeans. Those prophecies to 
 which we have alluded, the fire-arms, the horses, the 
 military movements, and the very art of writing, all 
 united their influence to render them totally power- 
 less. The Inca, Garcillasso, says that at the period 
 of Pizarro's appearance in Peru, many prodigies and 
 omens troubled the public mind, and prepared them 
 to expect some terrible calamity. There was a comet — 
 the tides rose and fell with unusual violence — the 
 moon appeared surrounded by three bands of diifer- 
 ent colours, which the priests interpreted to portend 
 civil war, and total change of dynasty. He says that 
 the fire-arms, which vomited thunder and lightning, 
 and mysteriously killed at a distance — the neighing 
 and prancing of the war-horses, to people who had 
 never seen creatures larger than a llama, and the art 
 
102 COLONIZATION 
 
 of conveying their thoughts in a bit of paper above 
 all, gave them notions of the spiritual intercourse of 
 these invaders, that it was totally hopeless to contend 
 against. The very cocks, birds which were unknown 
 there before their introduction by the Spaniards, were 
 imagined to pronounce the nameof Atahualpa, as they 
 crew in triumph over him, and became called Atahu- 
 alpas, or Qualpas, after him. He assures us that even 
 after the Spaniards had become entire masters of the 
 country, the Indians on meeting a horseman on the 
 highway, betrayed the utmost perturbation, running 
 backward and forward several times, and often fall- 
 ing on their faces till he was gone past. And 
 he relates an anecdote, which amusing as it is, shews 
 at once what was the effect of the art of writing, 
 and that the humblest natives did not want natural 
 ingenuity even in their deepest simplicity. The 
 steward of Antonio Solar, a gentleman living at a 
 distance from his estate, sent one day by two Indians 
 ten melons to him. With the melons he gave them 
 a letter, and said at the same time — " now mind 
 you don't eat any of these, for if you do this letter 
 will tell." The Indians went on their way ; but as it 
 was very hot, and the distance four leagues, they sate 
 down to rest, and becoming very thirsty, longed to 
 eat one of the melons. " How unhappy are we that 
 we cannot eat a melon that grows in our master's 
 ground." — " Let us do it," says one — " Ah," said the 
 other, '«but then the letter."— « Oh," replied the 
 first speaker, " we can manage that — we will put 
 the letter under a stone, and what it does *iot see 
 it cannot tell." The thing was done; the melon 
 eaten, and afterwards another, that they might take in 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 103 
 
 an equal number. Antonio Solar read the letter, 
 looked at the melons, and instantly exclaimed — " But 
 where are the other two ?" The confounded Indians 
 declared, that those were all they had received. 
 " Liars," replied Antonio Solar, " I tell you, the letter 
 says you had ten, and you have eaten two !" It was 
 no use persisting in the falsehood — -the frightened 
 Indians ran out of the house, and concluded that the 
 Spaniards were more than mortal, while even their 
 letter watched the Indians, and told all that they did. 
 
 Such were the Peruvians ; children in simplicity, but 
 possessing abundant ingenuity, and principles of hu- 
 man action far superior to their invaders, and capable 
 of being ripened into something peculiarly excellent 
 and beautiful. Twelve monarchs had reigned over 
 them, and all of them of the same beneficent character. 
 Let us now see how the planters of the Cross con- 
 ducted themselves amongst them. 
 
104 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE SPANIARDS IN PERU — CONTINUED. 
 
 For gold the Spaniard cast his soul away : 
 
 His gold and he were every nation's prey. — Montgomery, 
 
 The three speculators of Panama had made up their 
 band of mercenaries, or what the Scotch very expres- 
 sively term " rank rievers," to plunder the Peruvians. 
 These consisted of one hundred and eighty men, 
 thirty of whom were horsemen. These were all they 
 could raise ; and these were sufficient, as experience 
 had now testified, to enable them to overrun a vast 
 empire of Americans. Almagro, however, remained 
 behind, to gather more spoilers together as soon as 
 circumstances would permit, and Pizarro took the 
 command, of his troop, and landed in the Bay of 
 St. Matthew, in the north of the kingdom. He re- 
 solved to conduct his march southward so near to the 
 coast as to keep up the communication with his vessels ; 
 and falling upon the peaceable inhabitants, he went 
 on fighting, fording rivers, wading through hot sands, 
 and inflicting so many miseries upon his own follow- 
 ers and the natives, as made him look more like an 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 105 
 
 avenging demon than a man. It is not necessary 
 that we should trace very minutely his route. In 
 the province of Coaque they plundered the people of 
 an immense quantity of gold and silver. From the 
 inhabitants of the island of Puna, he met with a 
 desperate resistance, which cost him six months to 
 subdue, and obliged him to halt at Tumbez, to restore 
 the health of his men. Here he received a reinforce- 
 ment of troops from Nicaragua, commanded by Sebas- 
 tian Benalcazor, and Hernando Soto. Having also his 
 brothers, Ferdinand, Juan, and Gonzalo, and his uncle 
 Francisco de Alcantara, with him in this expedition, 
 he pushed forvVards towards Caxamalca, destroying and 
 laying waste before him. Fortunately for him, that 
 peace and unity which had continued for four hundred 
 years in Peru, was now broken by two contending 
 monarchs, and as unfortunately for the assertion of 
 Robertson, that the Peruvians were un warlike, they 
 were at this moment in the very midst of all the fury 
 of a civil war. The late Inca, Huana Capac, had 
 added Quito to the realm, and at his death, had left 
 that province to Atahualpa, his son by the daughter 
 of the conquered king of Quito. His eldest son, who 
 ascended the throne of Peru, demanded homage of 
 Atahualpa or surrender of the throne of Quito; but 
 Atahualpa was too bold and ambitious a prince for 
 that, and the consequence was a civil contest. So 
 engrossed were the combatants in this warfare, that 
 they had no time to watch, much less to oppose, the 
 progress of the Spaniards. Pizarro had, therefore, 
 advanced into the very heart of the kingdom when Ata- 
 hualpa had vanquished his brother, put him in prison, 
 and taken possession of Peru. Having been solicited 
 F 2 
 
106 COLONIZATION 
 
 during the latter part of his march by both parties to 
 espouse their cause, and holding himself in readiness 
 to act as best might suit his interests, he no sooner 
 found Atahualpa in the ascendant, than he immediately 
 avowed himself as his partizan, and declared that he 
 was hastening to his aid. Atahualpa was in no con- 
 dition to repulse him. He was in the midst of the con- 
 fusions necessarily existing on the immediate termi- 
 nation of a civil war. His brother, though his cap- 
 tive, was still held by the Peruvians to be their right- 
 ful monarch, and it might be of the utmost conse- 
 quence to his security to gain such extraordinary and 
 fearful allies. The poor Inca had speedy cause to 
 rue the alliance. Pizarro determined, on the very first 
 visit of Atahualpa to him in Caxamalca, to seize him 
 as Cortez had seized on Montezuma. He did not 
 wait to imitate the more artful policy of Cortez, but 
 trusted to the now too well known ascendency of the 
 Spanish arms, to take him without ceremony. He and 
 his followers now saw the amazing wealth of the 
 country, and were impatient to seize it. The capture 
 of the unsuspecting Inca is one of the most singular 
 incidents in the history of the world ; a mixture of such 
 naked villany, and impudent mockery of reh'gion, as 
 has scarcely a parallel even in the annals of these 
 Spanish missionaries of the sword — these red-cross 
 knights of plunder. He invited Atahualpa to an in- 
 terview in Caxamalca, and having drawn up his forces 
 round the square in which lie resided, awaited the 
 approach of his victim. The following is Robertson's 
 relation of the event : — 
 
 " Early in the morning the Peruvian camp was all 
 in motion. But as Atahualpa was solicitous to appear 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 107 
 
 with the greatest splendour and magnificence in his 
 first interview with the strangers, the preparations for 
 this were so tedious, that the day was far advanced 
 before he began his march. Even then, lest the 
 order of the procession should be deranged, he moved 
 so slowly, that the Spaniards became impatient, 
 and apprehensive that some suspicion of their inten- 
 tion might be the cause of this delay. In order to 
 remove this, Pizarro dispatched one of his officers 
 with fresh assurances of his friendly disposition. At 
 length the Inca approached. First of all appeared 
 four hundred men, in an uniform dress, as harbingers 
 to clear the way before him. He himself, sitting on a 
 throne or couch, adorned with plumes of various 
 colours, and almost covered with plates of gold and 
 silver, enriched with precious stones, was carried on 
 the shoulders of his principal attendants. Behind him 
 came some chief officers of his court, carried in the 
 same manner. Several bands of singers and dancers 
 accompanied this cavalcade ; and the whole plain was 
 covered with troops, amounting to more than thirty 
 thousand men. 
 
 " As the Inca drew near to the Spanish quarters. 
 Father Vincent Valverde, chaplain to the expedition, 
 advanced with a crucifix in one hand and a breviary 
 in the other, and in a Jong discourse explained to him 
 the doctrine of the creation ; the fall of Adam ; the in- 
 carnation, the suflferings, and resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ ; the appointment of St. Peter as God's vice- 
 gerent on earth; the transmission of his apostolic 
 power by succession to the Popes ; the donation made 
 to the king of Castile by Pope Alexander, of all the 
 regions in the New World. In consequence of all 
 
108 COLONIZATION 
 
 this, he required Atahualpa to embrace the Christian 
 faith; to acknowledge the supreme jurisdiction of the 
 Pope, and to submit to the king of Castile as his law- 
 ful sovereign; promising, if he complied instantly 
 with his requisition, that the Castilian monarch would 
 protect his dominions, and permit him to continue in 
 the exercise of his royal authority ; but if he should 
 impiously refuse to obey this summons, he denounced 
 war against him in his master's name, and threatened 
 him with' the most dreadful effect of his vengeance. 
 
 " This strange harangue, unfolding deep mysteries, 
 and alluding to unknown facts, of which no powers of 
 eloquence could have conveyed at once a distinct idea 
 to an American, was so lamely translated by an un- 
 skilful interpreter, little acquainted with the idiom of 
 the Spanish tongue, and incapable of expressing him- 
 self with propriety in the language of the Inca, that 
 its general tenor was altogether incomprehensible to 
 Atahualpa. Some parts of it, of more obvious mean- 
 ing, filled him with astonishment and indignation. 
 His reply, however, was temperate. He began with 
 observing, that he was lord of the dominions over 
 which he reigned by hereditary succession ; and 
 added, that he could not conceive how a foreign 
 priest should pretend to dispose of territories which 
 did not belong to him; that if such a preposterous 
 grant had been made, he, who was the rightful pos- 
 sessor, refused to confirm it. That he had no inclina- 
 tion to renounce the religious institutions established 
 by his ancestors ; nor would he forsake the service of 
 the Sun, the immortal divinity whom he and his 
 people revered, in order to worship the God of the 
 Spaniards who was subject to death. That, with re- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 109 
 
 spect to Other matters contained in this discourse, as he 
 had never heard of them before, and did not understand 
 their meaning, he desired to know where the priest 
 had learned things so extraordinary. " In this book," 
 answered Valverde, reaching out to him his Breviary. 
 The Inca opened it eagerly, and turning over the 
 leaves, lifted it to his ear. "This," said he, "is 
 silent ; it tells me nothing ;'' and threw it with disdain 
 to the ground. The enraged monk, running towards 
 his countrymen, cried out, ' To arms ! Christians, to 
 arms ! The word of God is insulted ; avenge this 
 profanation on these impious dogs !' 
 
 " Pizarro, who, during this long conference, had 
 with difficulty restrained his soldiers, eager to seize 
 the rich spoils of which they had now so near a view, 
 immediately gave the signal of assault. At once the 
 martial music struck up, the cannon and muskets began 
 to fire, the horses sallied out fiercely to the charge ; 
 the infantry rushed on, sword in hand. The Peru- 
 vians, astonished at the suddenness of an attack which 
 they did not expect, and dismayed with the destructive 
 effects of the fire-arms, and the irresistible impression of 
 the cavalry, fled with universal consternation on every - 
 side, without attempting either to annoy the enemy 
 or to defend themselves. Pizarro, at the head of his 
 chosen band, advanced directly towards the Inca ; and 
 though his nobles crowded round him with officious 
 zeal, and fell in numbers at his feet, while they vied 
 with one another in sacrificino: their own lives that 
 they might cover the sacred person of their sovereign, 
 the Spaniards soon penetrated to the royal seat, and 
 Pizarro seizing the Inca by the arm, dragged him to 
 the ground, and carried him as a prisoner to his quar- 
 
110 COLONIZATION 
 
 ters. The fate of the monarch increased the preci- 
 pitate flight of his followers. The Spaniards pursued 
 them towards every quarter, and, with deliberate and 
 unrelenting barbarity, continued to slaughter the 
 wretched fugitives, who never once offered to resist. 
 The carnage did not cease till the close of the day. 
 Above four thousand Peruvians were killed. Not a 
 single Spaniard foll^ nor was one wounded, but Pizarro 
 himself, whose hand was slightly hurt by one of his 
 own soldiers, while struggling eagerly to lay hold on 
 the Inca. 
 
 " The plunder of the field was rich beyond any idea 
 which the Spaniards had yet formed concerning the 
 wealth of Peru, and they were so transported with the 
 value of their acquisition, as well as the greatness of 
 their success, that they passed the night in the ex- 
 travagant exultation natural to indigent adventurers 
 on such an extraordinary change of fortune." 
 
 Daring, perfidious, and every way extraordinary as 
 this capture of the Inca was, his ransom was still more 
 extraordinary. Observing the insatiable passion of 
 the Spaniards for gold, he off*ered to fill the room in 
 which he was kept with vessels of gold as high as he 
 could reach. This room was twenty-two feet in 
 length, and sixteen in breadth ; and the proposal being 
 immediately agreed to, though never for a moment 
 meant on the part of the Spaniards to be fulfilled, a 
 line was drawn along the walls all round the room to 
 mark the height to which the gold was to rise. In- 
 stantly the Inca, in the simple joy of his heart at the 
 hope of a liberty which he was never to enjoy, issued 
 orders to his subjects to bring in the gold; and from 
 day to day the faithful Indians came in laden from all 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. Ill 
 
 quarters with the vessels of gold. The sight must 
 have been more like a fairy dream, than any earthly 
 reality. The splendid and amazing mass, such as no 
 mortal eyes on any other occasion probably ever wit- 
 nessed, soon rose to near the stipulated height, and 
 the avarice of the soldiers, and the joy of Atahualpa 
 rose rapidly with it. But the exultation of the Inca 
 received a speedy and cruel blow. He learned that 
 fresh troops of Spaniards had arrived, and that those in 
 whose hands he was, had been tampering with Huas- 
 car, his brother, in his prison. Alarmed lest, after all, 
 they should, on proffer of a higher price, liberate his 
 brother, and detain himself, the wretched Inca was 
 driven in desperation to the crime of dooming his 
 brother to death. He issued his order, and it was done. 
 Scarcely was this effected, when the Spaniards, unable 
 to wait for the gold quite reaching the mark, deter- 
 mined to part it ; and orders were given to melt the 
 greater portion of it down. They chose the festival 
 of St. James, the patron saint of Spain, as the most 
 suitable to distinguish by this act of national plunder, 
 and proceeded to appropriate the following astonishing 
 sums. — Certain of the richest vessels were set aside 
 first for the crown. Then the fifth claimed by the 
 crown was set apart. Then a hundred thousand pesos, 
 equal to as many pounds sterling, were given to the 
 newly arrived army of Almagro. Then Pizarro and 
 his followers divided amongst them, one million five 
 hundred and twenty-eight thousands five hundred 
 pesos : every horseman obtained above eight thousand, 
 and every footman four ! 
 
 Imagine the privates of an army of foot soldiers 
 pocketing for prize-money, each four thousand pounds ! 
 
112 COLONIZATION 
 
 the troopers each eight thousand ! But enormous as 
 this seems, there is no doubt that it would have been 
 vastly more had the natives been as confident in the 
 faith of the Spaniards as they had reason to be of the 
 reverse. The Inca, Garcillasso, and some of the Spa- 
 nish historians, tell us that on the Spaniards displaying 
 their greedy spirit of plunder, vast quantities of trea- 
 sure vanished from public view, and never could be 
 discovered again. Amongst these were the celebrated 
 emerald of Manta, which was worshipped as a divi- 
 nity ; was as large as an ostrich egg, and had smaller 
 emeralds offered to it as its children; and the chain of 
 gold made by order of Huana Capac, to surround the 
 square at Cuzco on days of solemn dancing, and was 
 in length seven hundred feet, and of the thickness of a 
 man's wrist. 
 
 The Inca having fulfilled, as far as the impatience of 
 the Spaniards would permit him, his promises, now 
 demanded his freedom. Poor man ! his tyrants never 
 intended to give him any other freedom than the free- 
 dom of death. They held him merely as a lure, by 
 which to draw all the gold and the power of his kingdom 
 into their hands. But as, after this transaction, they 
 could not hope to play upon him much further, they 
 resolved to dispatch him. The new adventurers who 
 had arrived with Almagro were clamorous for his de- 
 struction, because they looked upon him as a puppet 
 in the hands of Pizarro, by which he would draw away 
 gold that might otherwise fall into their hands. The 
 poor Inca too, by an unwitting act, drew this destruc- 
 tion more suddenly on his own head. Struck with 
 admiration at the art of writing, he got a soldier to 
 write the word Dios (God) on his thumb-nail, and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 113 
 
 shewing it to everybody that came in, saw with sur- 
 prise that every man knew in a moment the meaning 
 of it. When Pizarro, however, came, he could not 
 read it, and blushed and shewed confusion. Atahu- 
 alpa saw, with a surprise and contempt which he could 
 not conceal, that Pizarro was more ignorant than his 
 own soldiers; and the base tyrant, stung to the quick 
 with the aflfront which he might suppose designed, re- 
 solved to rid himself of the Inca without delay. For 
 this purpose, he resorted to the mockery of a trial ; 
 appointed himself, and his companion in arms, Alma- 
 gro, the very man who had demanded his death, judges, 
 and employed as interpreter, an Indian named Philip- 
 pillo, who was notoriously desirous of the Inca's death, 
 that he might obtain one of his wives. This precious 
 tribunal charged the unfortunate Inca with being ille- 
 gitimate ; with having dethroned and put to death his 
 brother; with being an idolater — the faith of the coun- 
 try; with having a number of concubines — the custom 
 of the country too ; with having embezzled the royal 
 treasures, which he had done to satisfy these guests, 
 and for which he ought now to have been free, had 
 these wretches had but the slightest principle of right 
 left in them. On these and similar charges they con- 
 demned him to be burnt alive ! and sent him instantly 
 to execution, only commuting his sentence into strang- 
 ling instead of burning, on his agreeing, in his terror 
 and astonishment, to acknowledge the Christian faith ! 
 What an idea he must have had of the Christian 
 faith ! 
 
 The whole career of Pizarro and his comrades, 
 and especially this last unparalleled action, exhibit 
 them as such thoroughly desperado characters — so har- 
 
114 COLONIZATION 
 
 dened into every thing fiendly, so utterly destitute of 
 every thing human, that nothing but the most fearful 
 scene of misery and crime could follow whenever they 
 were on the scene ; and Peru, indeed, soon was one 
 wide field of horror, confusion, and oppression. The 
 Spaniards had neither faith amongst themselves, nor 
 mercy towards the natives, and therefore an army of 
 wolves fiercely devouring one another, or Pandemo- 
 nium in its fury can only present an image of Peru 
 under the herds of its first invaders. It is not my 
 province to follow the quarrels of the conquerors 
 further than is necessary to shew their effect on the 
 natives ; and therefore I shall now pass rapidly over 
 matters that would fill a volume. 
 
 Pizarro set up a son of Atahualpa as Inca, and held 
 him as a puppet in his hands ; but the Peruvians set 
 up Manco Capac, brother of Huana; and as if the 
 example of the perfidy of the Spaniards had already 
 communicated itself to the heretofore orderly Peru- 
 vians, the general whom Atahualpa had left in Quito, 
 rose and slew the remaining family of his master, and 
 assumed that province to himself. The Spaniards 
 rejoiced in this confusion, in which they were sure to 
 be the gainers. The adventurers who had shared 
 amongst them the riches of the royal room, had now 
 reached Spain with Ferdinand Pizarro at their head, 
 bearing to the court the dazzling share which fell to 
 its lot. Honours were showered on Pizarro and his 
 fellow-marauders, — fresh hosts of harpies set out for 
 this unfortunate land, and Pizarro marching to Cuzco, 
 made tremendous slaughter amongst the Indians, and 
 took possession of that capital and a fresh heap of 
 wealth more enormous than the plunder of Atahu- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 115 
 
 alpa*s room. To keep his fellow officers, thus flushed 
 with intoxicating deluges of affluence, in some degree 
 quiet, he encouraged them to undertake different ex- 
 peditions against the natives. Benalcazar fell on 
 Quito, — Almagro on Chili; but the Peruvians were 
 now driven to desperation, and taking the oppor^ 
 tunity of the absence of those forces, they rose, and 
 attacked their oppressors in various quarters. The 
 consequence was what may readily be supposed — 
 after keeping the Spaniards in terror for some time, 
 they were routed and slaughtered by thousands. 
 But no sooner was this over than the Spaniards turned 
 their arms against each other. " Civil discord," says 
 Robertson, " never raged with a more fell spirit than 
 amongst the Spaniards in Peru. To all the passions 
 which usually envenom contests amongst countrymen, 
 avarice was added, and rendered their enmity more 
 ravenous. Eagerness to seize the valuable forfeitures 
 expected upon the death of every opponent, shut the 
 door against mercy. To be wealthy, was of itself 
 sufficient to expose a man to accusation, or to subject 
 him to punishment. On the slightest suspicions, 
 Pizarro condemned many of the most opulent inhabi- 
 tants in Peru to death. Carvajal, without seeking 
 for any pretext to justify his cruelty, cut off many 
 more. The number of those who suffered by the 
 hand of the executioner, was not much inferior to 
 what fell in the field ; and the greater part was con- 
 demned without the formality of any legal trial.'* 
 
 Providence exhibited a great moral lesson in the 
 fate of these discoverers of the new world. As they 
 shewed no regard to the feelings or the rights of their 
 fellow men, as they outraged and disgraced every 
 
116 COLONIZATION 
 
 principle of the sacred religion which they professed, 
 scarcely one of them but was visited with retributive 
 vengeance even in this life ; and many of them fell 
 miserably in the presence of the wretched people they 
 had so ruthlessly abused, and not a few by each other's 
 hands. We have already shewn the fortunes of 
 Columbus and Cortez j that of Pizarro and his lawless 
 accomplices is still more striking and awful. Almagro, 
 one of the three original speculators of Panama, was 
 the first to pay the debt of his crimes. A daring and 
 rapacious soldier, but far less artful than Pizarro, he 
 had, from the hour that Pizarro deceived him at the 
 Spanish court, and secured honours and commands to 
 himself at his expense, always looked with suspicious 
 eyes upon his proceedings, and sought advancement 
 rather from his own sword than from his old but per- 
 fidious comrade. Chili being allotted to him, he 
 claimed the city of Cuzco as his capital; — a bloody 
 war with the Pizarros was the consequence ; Almagro 
 was defeated, taken prisoner, and put to death, being 
 strangled in prison and afterwards publicly beheaded. 
 But Pizarro's own fate was hastened by this of his old 
 comrade. The friends of Almagro rallied round 
 young Almagro his son. They suddenly attacked 
 Pizarro in his house at noon, and on a Sunday ; slew 
 his maternal uncle Alcantara, and several of his other 
 friends, and stabbed him mortally in the throat. The 
 younger Almagro was taken in arms against the new 
 governor, Vaca de Castro, and publicly beheaded in 
 Cuzco; five hundred of these adventurers falling in 
 the battle itself, and forty others perishing with him 
 on the scaffold. Gonzalo Pizarro, after maintaining 
 a war against the viceroy Nugnez Vela, defeating and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 117 
 
 killing him, was himself defeated by Gasca, and put 
 to death, with Carvajal and some other of the most 
 notorious offenders. 
 
 Such were the crimes and the fate of the Spaniards 
 in Peru. Robertson, who relates the deeds of the 
 Spanish adventurers in general with a coolness that is 
 marvellous, thus describes the character of these men. 
 
 '' The ties of honour, which ought to be held sacred 
 amongst, soldiers, and the principle of integrity, inter- 
 woven as thoroughly in the Spanish character as in 
 that of any nation, seem to have been equally for- 
 gotten. Even the regard for decency, and the sense 
 of shame were totally lost. During their dissensions, 
 there was hardly a Spaniard in Peru who did not 
 abandon the party which he had originally espoused, 
 betray the associates with whom he had united, and 
 violate the engagements under which he had come. 
 The viceroy Nugnez Vela was ruined by the treachery 
 of Cepeda and the other judges of the royal audience, 
 who were bound by the duties of their function to 
 have supported his authority. The chief advisers and 
 companions of Gonzalo Pizarro's revolt were the first 
 to forsake him, and submit to his enemies. His fleet 
 was given up to Gasca by the man whom he had 
 singled out among his officers to entrust with that 
 important command. On the day that was to decide 
 his fate, an army of veterans, in sight of the enemy, 
 threw down their arms without striking a blow, and 
 deserted a leader who had often led them to victory. . . 
 It is only where men are far removed from the seat 
 of government, where the restraints of law and order 
 are little felt; where the prospect of gain is unbounded, 
 and where immense wealth may cover the crimes by 
 
118 COLONIZATION 
 
 which it is acquired, that we can find any parallel to 
 the cruelty, the rapaciousness, the perfidy and corrup- 
 tion prevalent amongst the Spaniards in Peru." 
 
 While such was their conduct to each other, we 
 may very well imagine what it was to the unhappy 
 natives. These fine countries, indeed, were given up 
 to universal plunder and violence i The people were 
 everywhere pursued for their wealth, their dwellings 
 ransacked without mercy, and themselves seized on 
 as slaves. As in the West Indian Islands and in 
 Mexico, they were driven to the mines, and tasked 
 without regard to their strength, — and like them, they 
 perished with a rapidity that alarmed even the Court 
 of Spain, and induced them to send out officers to 
 inquire, and to stop this waste of human life. Las 
 Casas again filled Spain with his loud remonstrances, 
 but with, no better success. When their viceroys, 
 visitors, and superintendents arrived, and published 
 their ordinances, requiring the Indians to be treated 
 as free subjects, violent outcries and furious remon- 
 strances, similar to what England has in modern times 
 received from the West Indies when she has wished 
 to lighten the chains of the negro, were the immediate 
 result. The oppressors cried out that they should all 
 be ruined, — that they were " robbed of their just 
 rights," and there was no prospect but of general 
 insurrection, unless they might continue to devour 
 the blood and sinews of the unfortunate Indians. 
 One man, the President Gasca, a simple ecclesiastic, 
 exhibited a union of talents and integrity most re- 
 markable and illustrious amid such general corruption ; 
 he went out poor and he returned so, from a country 
 where the temptations to wink at evil were boundless; 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 1 19 
 
 nd he effected a great amount of good in the reduc- 
 ion of civil disorder ; but the protection of the Indians 
 /as beyond even his power and sagacity, and he left 
 hem to their fate. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SPANIARDS IN PARAGUAY. 
 
 One more march in the bloody track of the Spaniards, 
 and then, thank God ! we have done with them — at 
 least, in this hemisphere. In this chapter we shall, 
 however, have a new feature presented. Hitherto we 
 have seen these human ogres ranging through country 
 after country, slaying, plundering, and laying waste, 
 without almost a single arm of power raised to check 
 their violence, or a voice of pity to plead successfully 
 for their victims. The solitary cry of Las Casas, in- 
 deed, was heard in Hispaniola; but it was heard in 
 vain. The name of Christianity was made familiar to 
 the natives, but it was to them a terrible name, for it 
 came accompanied by deeds of blood, and lust and in- 
 famy. It must have seemed indeed, to them, the 
 revelation of some monstrous Moloch, more horrible, 
 because more widely and indiscriminately destructive 
 than any war-god of their own. How dreadful must 
 liave appeared the very rites of this religion of the 
 
120 COLONIZATION 
 
 white-men ! They baptized thousands upon thousands, 
 and then sent them to the life-in-death of slavery — to 
 the consuming pestilence of the plantation and the 
 mine. We are assured by their own authors, that the 
 moment after they had baptized numbers of these un- 
 happy creatures, they cut their throats that they might 
 prevent all possibility of a relapse, and send them 
 straight to heaven ! Against these profanations of the 
 most humane of religions, what adequate power had 
 arisen ? What was there to prove that Christianity 
 was really the very opposite in nature to what those 
 wretches, by their deeds, had represented it? Nothing, 
 or next to nothing. The remonstrances and the enact- 
 ments of the Spanish crown were non-existent to the 
 Indians, for they fell dead before they reached those 
 distant regions where such a tremendous power of 
 avarice and despotism had raised itself in virtual op- 
 position to authority, human or divine. Some of the 
 ecclesiastics, indeed, denounced the violence and in- 
 justice of their countrymen ; but they were few, and 
 disconnected in their efforts, and abodes ; and their 
 assurances that the religion of Christ was in reality 
 merciful and kind, were belied by the daily and hourly 
 deeds of their kindred ; and were doubly belied by the 
 lives of the far greater portion of their own order, 
 who yielded to none in unholy license, avarice, and 
 cruelty. How could the Indians be persuaded of its 
 divine power? — for it exhibited no power over nine- 
 tenths of all that they saw professing it. But now 
 there came a new era. There came an order of men 
 who not only displayed the effects of Christian princi- 
 ple in themselves, but who had the sagacity to com- 
 bine their efforts, till they became sufficiently powerful 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 121 
 
 to make Christianity practicable, and capable of con- 
 ferring some of its genuine benefits on its neophytes. 
 These were the Jesuits — an order recent in its origin, 
 but famous above all others for the talent, the ambition 
 and the profound policy of its members. We need 
 not here enter further into its general history, or in- 
 quire how far it merited that degree of odium which 
 has attached to it in every quarter of the globe — for in 
 every quarter of the globe it has signalised its spirit of 
 proselytism, and has been expelled with aversion. I 
 shall content myself with stating, that I have formerly 
 ranked its operations in Paraguay and Brazil amongst 
 those of its worst ambition ; but more extended inquiry 
 has convinced me that, in this instance, I, in common 
 with others, did them grievous wrong. A patient 
 perusal of Charlevoix's History of Paraguay, and of 
 the vast mass of evidence brought together by Mr. 
 Southey from the best Spanish authorities in his His- 
 tory of Brazil, must be more than suflficient to exhibit 
 their conduct in these countries as one of the most 
 illustrious examples of Christian devotion — Christian 
 patience — Christian benevolence and disinterested vir- 
 tue upon record. It gives me the sincerest pleasure, 
 having elsewhere expressed my opinion of the general 
 character of the order, amid the bloody and revolting- 
 scenes of Spanish violence in the New World, to 
 point to the Jesuits as the first to stand collectively in 
 the very face of public outrage and the dishonour of 
 the Christian religion, as the friends of that religion 
 and of humanity. 
 
 I do not mean to say that they exhibited Christianity 
 in all the splendour of its unadulterated truth ; — no, 
 they had enough of the empty forms and legends, and 
 
 G 
 
122 COLONIZATION 
 
 false pretences, and false miracles of Rome, about 
 them; but they exhibited one great feature of its 
 spirit — love to the poor and the oppressed, and it was 
 at once acknowledged by them to be divine. I do not 
 mean to say that they adopted the soundest system of 
 policy in their treatment of the Indians; for their 
 besetting sin, the love of power and the pride of in- 
 tellectual dominance, were but too apparent in it; and 
 this prevented their labours from acquiring that per- 
 manence which they otherwise would: but they did 
 this, which was a glorious thing in that age, and in 
 those countries — they showed what Christianity, even 
 in an imperfect form, can accomplish in the civilization 
 of the wildest people. They showed to the outraged 
 Indians, that Christianity was really a blessing where 
 really embraced; and to the Spaniards, that their 
 favourite dogmas of the incapacity of the Indians for 
 the reception of divine truth, and for the patient en- 
 durance of labour and civil restraint, were as baseless 
 as their own profession of the Christian faith. They 
 stood up against universal power and rapacity, in 
 defence of the weak, the innocent, and the calumni- 
 ated ; and they had the usual fate of such men — they 
 were the martyrs of their virtue, and deserve the 
 thanks and honourable remembrance of all ages. 
 
 In strictly chronological order we should have 
 noticed the Portuguese in Brazil, before following 
 the Spaniards to Paraguay; as Paraguay was not 
 taken possession of by the Spaniards till about twenty 
 years after the Portuguese had seized upon Brazil: 
 but it is of more consequence to us to take a consecu- 
 tive view of the conduct of the Spaniards in South* 
 America, than to take the settlement of different coun- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 123 
 
 tries in exact order of time. Having with this chapter 
 dismissed the Spaniards, we shall next turn our atten- 
 tion to the Portuguese in the neighbouring regions of 
 Brazil, and then pursue our inquiries into their treat- 
 ment of the natives in their colonies in the opposite 
 regions of the world. 
 
 The Spaniards entered this beautiful country with 
 the same spirit that they had done every other that 
 they had hitherto discovered ; — but they found here a 
 different race. They had neither creatures gentle as 
 those of the Lucayo Islands, nor of Peru, nor men so 
 far civilized as these last, nor as the Mexicans to con- 
 tend with. They did not find the natives of these 
 regions appalled with their wonder, or paralysed with 
 prophecies and superstitious fears ; but like the Charaib 
 natives, they were fierce and ferocious — tattooed and 
 disfigured with strange gashes and pouches for stones 
 in their faces; quick in resentment, and desperate 
 cannibals. When Juan Diaz de Solis discovered the 
 Plata in 1515, he landed with a party of his men in 
 order to seize some of the natives; but they killed, 
 roasted, and devoured, both him and his companions. 
 Cabot, who was sent out to form a settlement there 
 ten years afterwards, treated the natives with as little 
 ceremony, and found them as quick to return the 
 insult. Diego Garcia, who soon followed Cabot, came 
 with the intention of carrying off eight hundred slaves 
 to Portugal, which he actually accomplished, putting 
 them and his vessel into the charge of a Portuguese 
 of St. Vincente. Garcia made war on the great tribe 
 of the Guaranies for this purpose, and thus made them 
 hostile to the settlement of the Spaniards. In 1534, 
 the powerful armament of Don Pedro de Mendoza, 
 
124 COLONIZATION 
 
 consisting of eleven ships and eight hundred men, 
 entered the Plata, and laid the foundation of Buenos 
 Ayres. One of his first acts was to murder his deputy- 
 commandant, Juan Osorio; and one of the next to 
 make war on the powerful and vindictive tribe of the 
 Quirandies, who possessed the country round his new 
 settlement: the consequences of which were, that they 
 reduced him to the most horrid state of famine, burnt 
 his town about his ears, and eventually obliged him to 
 set sail homeward, on which voyage he died. 
 
 These were proceedings as impolitic as they were 
 wicked, in the attempt to colonize a new, a vast, and 
 a warlike country ; but it was the mode which the 
 Spaniards had generally practised. They seemed to 
 despise the natives alike as enemies and as men ; and 
 they went on fighting, and destroying, and enslaving, 
 as matters of course. As they were now in a great 
 country, abounding with martial tribes, we must 
 necessarily take a very rapid glance at their proceed- 
 ings. They advanced up the Paraguay, under the 
 command of Ayolas, whom Mendoza had left in com- 
 mand, and seized on the town of Assumpcion, a place 
 which, from its situation, became afterwards of the 
 highest consequence. This noble country, stretching 
 through no less than twenty degrees of south latitude, 
 and surrounded by the vast mountains of Brazil to the 
 east, of Chili to the west, and of Moxos and Matto 
 Grosso to the north, is singularly watered with some 
 of the noblest rivers in the world, descending from the 
 mountains on all sides, and as they traverse it in all 
 its quarters, fall southward, one after another, into the 
 great central stream, till they finally debouche in the 
 great estuary of the Plata* Assumpcion, situated at 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 125 
 
 the junction of the Paraguay and the Pilcomayo, 
 besides the advantages of a direct navigation, was so 
 centrally placed as naturally to be pointed out as a 
 station of great importance in the discovery and settle- 
 ment of the country. 
 
 Ayolas, whom Mendoza had left in command, having 
 subdued several tribes of the natives to the Spanish 
 yoke, set out up the river Paraguay in quest of the 
 great lure of the Spaniards, gold, where he and all his 
 men were cut off by the Indians of the Payagoa 
 tribe. His deputy, Yrala, after sharing his fate, 
 caught two of the Payagoas, tortured and burnt them 
 alive ; and then, spite of the fate of their comrades, 
 and only fired by the same news of gold, resolved to 
 follow in the same track; fresh forces in the mean 
 time arriving from Spain, and committing fresh aggres- 
 sions on the natives along the course of the river. 
 Cabeza de Vaca being appointed Adelantado in the 
 place of Mendoza, arrived at Assumpcion in 1542, 
 and after subduing the two great tribes of the Guara- 
 nies and Guaycurus, set off also in the great quest of 
 gold. He sent out expeditions, moreover, in various 
 directions; but Vaca, though he had no scruples in 
 conquering the Indians, was too good for the people 
 about him. He would not suffer them to use the men 
 as slaves, and to carry off the women. So they mu- 
 tinied against him, and shipped him off for Spain. 
 Yrala was thus again left in power, and to keep his 
 soldiers in exercise, actually marched across the 
 country three hundred and seventy-two leagues, and 
 reached the confines of Peru. Returning from this 
 stupendous march, he next attacked the Indians on 
 the borders of Brazil, and defined the limits of the 
 
126 COLONIZATION 
 
 provinces of Portugal and Spain. He then divided 
 the land into Repartimientos^ as the Spaniards had 
 done every where else; thus giving the country to the 
 adventurers, and the people upon it as a part of the 
 property. "The settlers," says Southey, "in the 
 mean time, went on in those habits of lasciviousness 
 and cruelty which characterize the Creoles of every 
 stock whatever. He made little or no attempt to 
 check them, perhaps because he knew that any at- 
 tempt would be ineffectual, . . . perhaps because he 
 thought all was as it should be, . . . that the Creator 
 had destined the people of colour to serve those of a 
 whiter complexion, and be at the mercy of their lust 
 and avarice." 
 
 By such men, Yrala, Veyaor who founded Ciudad 
 Real on the Parana, Chaves who founded the town of 
 Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Moxos, and the infamous 
 Zarate, were the name, power, and crimes of the Spa- 
 niards spread in Paraguay, when the Jesuits were 
 invited thither from Brazil and Peru in 1586. 
 
 This is one of the greatest events in the history of 
 the Spaniards in the New World. With these men 
 they introduced a power, which had it been permitted 
 to proceed, would have speedily put a stop to their 
 cruelties on the natives, and would eventually have 
 civilized all that mighty continent. But the Spaniards 
 were not long in perceiving this, and such a storm of 
 vengeance and abuse was raised, as ultimately broke 
 up one of the most singular institutions that ever ex- 
 isted, and dispersed those holy fathers and their works 
 as a dream. 
 
 They were, indeed, received at first with unbounded 
 joy. Those from Peru, says Southey, came from 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 127 
 
 Potosi; and were received at Salta with incredible 
 joy as though they had been angels from heaven. For 
 although the Spaniards were corrupted by plenty of 
 slaves and women whom they had at command, they, 
 nevertheless, regretted the want of that outward re- 
 ligion, the observance of which was so easily made 
 compatible with every kind of vi6e. At Santiago de 
 Estero, which was then the capital and episcopal city, 
 triumphal arches were erected; the way was strewn 
 with flowers ; the governor, with the soldiers and chief 
 inhabitants went out to meet them, and solemn thanks- 
 giving was celebrated, at which the bishop chanted 
 the TeDeum. At Corduba, they met with five brethren 
 of their order who had arrived from Brazil : Leonardo 
 Armenio, the superior, an Italian ; Juan Salernio ; 
 Thomas Filds, a Scotchman ; Estevam de Grao, and 
 Manoel de Ortiga, both Portuguese. The Jesuits 
 found, wherever the Spaniards had penetrated, the In- 
 dians groaning under their oppressions and licentious- 
 ness, ready to burst out, and take summary vengeance 
 at the first opportunity ; and they were on all sides sur- 
 rounded by tribes of others in a state of hostile irrita- 
 tion, regarding the Spaniards as the most perfidious 
 as well as powerful enemies, from whom nothing was 
 to be hoped, and against whom every advantage was 
 to be seized. Yet amongst these fierce tribes, the 
 Jesuits boldly advanced, trusting to that principle 
 which ought always to have been acted upon by those 
 calling themselves Christians, that where no evil is in- 
 tended evil will seldom be received. It is wonderful 
 how successful this system was in their hands. With 
 his breviary in his hand, and a cross of six feet high, 
 which served him for a staff, the Jesuit missionary set 
 
128 COLONIZATION 
 
 out to penetrate into some new region. He was ac- 
 companied by a few converted Indians who might act 
 as guides and interpreters. They took with them a 
 stock of maize as provision in the wilderness, where 
 the bows of the Indians did not supply them with 
 game ; for they carefully avoided carrying fire-arms, 
 lest they should excite alarm or suspicion. They 
 thus encountered all the difficulties of a wild country ; 
 climbing mountains, and cutting their way through 
 pathless woods with axes ; and at night, if they reached 
 no human habitation, they made fires to keep off the 
 wild beasts, and reposed beneath the forest trees. 
 When they arrived amongst the tribes they sought, 
 they explained through their interpreters, that they 
 came thus and threw themselves into their power, to 
 prove to them that they were their friends; to teach 
 them the arts, and to endow them with the advantages' 
 of the Europeans. In some cases they had to suffer for 
 'iihe villanies of their countrymen — the natives being 
 too much exasperated by their wrongs to be able to 
 conceive that some fresh experiment of evil towards 
 them was not concealed under this peaceful shew. 
 But, in the far greater number of cases, their success 
 was marvellous. They speedily inspired the Indians 
 with confidence in their good intentions towards them ; 
 for the natives of every country yet discovered, have 
 been found as quick in recognizing their friends as they 
 have been in resenting the injuries of their enemies. 
 The following anecdote given by Charlevoix, is pe- 
 culiarly indicative of their manner of proceeding. — 
 Father Monroy, with a lay-brother Jesuit, called Juan 
 de Toledo, had at length reached the Omaguacas, 
 whose cacique Piltipicon had once been baptized, but, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. . 129 
 
 owing to the treatment of the Spaniards, had re- 
 nounced their religion, and pursued them with every 
 possible evil; massacred their priests; burnt their 
 churches; and ravaged their settlements. Father 
 Monroy was told that certain and instant death would 
 be the consequence of his appearing before Piltipicon ; 
 But armed with all that confidence which Jesus Christ 
 has so much recommended to the preachers of his 
 gospel, he entered the house of the terrible cacique, 
 and thus addressed him : " The good which I desire 
 you, has made me despise the terrors of almost certain 
 death ; but you cannot expect much honour in taking 
 away the life of a naked man. If, contrary to my ex- 
 pectation, you will consent to listen to me, all the 
 advantage of our conversation will be yours ; whereas, 
 if I die by your hands, an immortal crown in heaven 
 will be my rev/ard." Piltipicon was so amazed, or 
 rather softened by the missionary's boldness, that he 
 immediately offered him some of the beer brewed from 
 maize, which the Omaguacas use ; and not only granted 
 his request to proceed further up his country, but fur- 
 nished him with provisions for the journey. The end 
 of it was, that Piltipicon made peace with the Spa- 
 niards, and ultimately embraced Christianity, with all 
 his people. 
 
 The Jesuits, once admitted by the Indians, soon 
 convinced them that they could have no end in view 
 but their good ; and the resistance which they made 
 to the attempts of the Spaniards to enslave them, gave 
 them such a fame amongst all the surrounding nations 
 as was most favourable to the progress of their plans. 
 When they had acquired an influence over a tribe, 
 they soon prevailed upon them to come into their set- 
 g2 
 
130 COLONIZATION 
 
 tlements, which they called Reduci'IONS, and where 
 they gradually accustomed them to the order and 
 comforts of civilized life. These Reductions were 
 principally situated in Guayra, on the Parana, and 
 in the tract of country between the Parana and the 
 Uruguay, the great river which, descending from the 
 mountains of Rio Grande, runs southward parallel 
 with the Parana, and debouches in the Plata. In 
 process of time they had established thirty of these 
 Reductions in La Plata and Paraguay, thirteen of 
 them being in the diocese of the Assumpcion, besides 
 those amongst the Chiquitos and other nations. In the 
 centre of every mission was the Reduction, and in 
 the centre of the Reduction was a square, which the 
 church faced, and likewise the arsenal, in which all 
 the arms and ammunition were laid up. In this 
 square the Indians were exercised every week, for 
 there were in every town two companies of militia, 
 the officers of which had handsome uniforms laced 
 with gold and silver, which, however, they only wore 
 on those occasions, or when they took the field. At 
 each corner of the square was a cross, and in the 
 centre an image of the Virgin. They had a large 
 house on the right-hand of the church for the Jesuits, 
 and near it the public workshops. On the left-hand 
 of the church was the public burial-ground and the 
 widows* house. Every necessary trade was taught, 
 and the boys were taken to the public workshops and 
 instructed in such trades as they chose. To every 
 family was given a house, and a piece of ground suffi- 
 cient to supply it with all necessaries. Oxen were 
 supplied from the common stock for cultivating it, 
 and while this family was capable of doing the neces- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 131 
 
 sary work, this land never was taken away. Besides 
 this private property, there were two larger portions, 
 called Tupamba, or God's Possession, to which all 
 the community contributed the necessary labour, and 
 raised provisions for the aged, sick, widows, and 
 orphans, and income for the public service, and the 
 payment of the national tribute. The boys were 
 employed in weeding, keeping the roads in order, 
 and various other offices. They went to work with 
 the music of flutes and in procession. The girls were 
 employed in gathering cotton, and driving birds from 
 the fields. Every one had his or her proper avocation, 
 and officers were appointed to superintend every 
 different department, and to see that all was going on 
 well in shops and in fields. They had, however, their 
 days and hours of relaxation. They were taught 
 singing, music, and dancing, under certain regulations. 
 On holidays, the men played at various games, shot 
 at marks, played with balls of elastic gum, or went 
 out hunting and fishing. Every kind of art that was 
 innocent or ornamental was practised. They cast 
 bells, and carved and gilded with great elegance. 
 The women, beside their other domestic duties, made 
 pottery, and spun and wove cotton for garments. The 
 Jesuits exported large quantities of the Caa, or Para- 
 guay tea, and introduced valuable improvements in 
 the mode of its preparation. 
 
 Such were some of the regulations which the Jesuits 
 had established in these settlements; and notwith- 
 standing the regular system of employment kept up, 
 the natives flocked into them in such numbers, that it 
 required all the ingenuity of the fathers to accommo- 
 date them all. The largest of their Reductions con- 
 
132 COLONIZATION 
 
 tained as many as eight thousand inhabitants; the 
 smallest fifteen hundred ; the average was about three 
 thousand. To preserve that purity of morals which 
 was inculcated, it was found necessary to obtain a 
 royal mandate, that no Spaniard should enter these 
 Reductions except when going to the bishop or supe- 
 rior. " And one thing," says Charlevoix, " greatly to 
 their honour, was universally allowed by all the Euro- 
 peans settled in South America : the converted Indians 
 inhabiting them, no longer exhibited traces of their 
 former proneness to vengeance, cruelty, and the 
 grosser vices. They were no longer, in any respect, 
 the same men they formerly were. The most cordial 
 love and affection for each other, and charity for all 
 men, delighted all who visited them, the infidels espe- 
 cially, whom their behaviour served to inspire with 
 the most favourable opinion of the Christian religion." 
 " It is," he adds, " no ways surprising that God 
 should work such wonders in such pure souls; nor 
 that those very Indians, to whom some learned doctors 
 would not allow reason enough to be received into 
 the bosom of the church, should be at this day one of 
 its greatest ornaments, and perhaps the most precious 
 portion of the flock of Christ.*' 
 
 There is nothing more wonderful in all the inscru- 
 table dispensations of Providence, than that this beau- 
 tiful scene of innocence and happiness should have 
 been suffered to be broken in ufTon by the wolves of 
 avarice and violence, and all dispersed as a morning 
 dream. But the Jesuits, by their advocacy and civil- 
 ization of these poor people, had raised up against 
 them three hostile powers, — the Spaniards — the man- 
 hunters of Santo Paulo— -and political demagogues. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 133 
 
 The Spaniards soon hated them for standing between 
 them and their victims. They hated them for pre- 
 suming to tell them that they had no right to enslave, 
 to debauch, to exterminate them. They hated them 
 because they would not suiFer them to be given up to 
 them as property — mere live stock — beasts of labour, 
 in their Encomiendas. They regarded them as rob- 
 bing them of just so much property, and as setting a 
 bad example to the other Indians who were already 
 enslaved, or were yet to be so. They hated them 
 because their refusing them entrance into their Re- 
 ductions was a standing and perpetual reproof of the 
 licentiousness of their lives. They foresaw that if 
 this system became universal, the very pillars of their 
 indolent and debased existence would be thrown down : 
 "for," says Charlevoix, " the Spaniards here think it 
 beneath them to exercise any manual employment. 
 Those even who are but just landed from Spain, put 
 every stitch they have brought with them upon their 
 backs, and set up for gentlemen, above serving in any 
 menial capacity." 
 
 Whoever, therefore, sought to seize upon any un- 
 authorized power in the colony, began to flatter these 
 lazy people, by representing the Jesuits as their 
 greatest enemies, who were seeking to undermine 
 their fortunes, and deprive them of the services of 
 the Indians. Such men were, Cardenas the bishop of 
 Assumpcion, and Antequera ; — Cardenas, entering 
 irregularly into his office in 1640, and Antequera who 
 was sent as judge to Assumpcion in 1721, more than 
 eighty years afterwards, and who seized on the govern- 
 ment itself. Both attacked the Jesuits as the surest 
 means of winning the popular favour. They knew 
 
134 COLONIZATION 
 
 the jealousy with which their civilization of the Indians 
 was regarded, and they had only to thunder accusa- 
 tions in the public ears calculated to foment that jea- 
 lousy, in order to secure the favour of the people. 
 Accordingly, these ambitious, intriguing, and turbu- 
 lent persons, made not only South America, but 
 Europe itself ring with alarms of the Jesuits. They 
 contended that they were ruining the growing for- 
 tunes of the Spanish states, — that they were aiming at 
 an independent power, and were training the Indians 
 for the purpose of effecting it. They talked loudly 
 of wealthy mines, which the Jesuits worked while 
 they kept their location strictly secret. These mines 
 could never be found. They represented that they 
 dwelt in wealthy cities, adorned with the most mag- 
 nificent churches and palaces, and lived in a condition 
 the most sensual with the Indians. These calumnies, 
 only too well relished by the lazy and rapacious Spa- 
 niards, did not fail of their effect — the Jesuits were 
 attacked in their Reductions, harassed in a variety of 
 modes, and eventually driven out of the country; 
 where circumstances connected with the less worthy 
 members of their order in Europe, added their fatal 
 influence to the odium already existing here. But of 
 that anon. 
 
 During their existence ► in this country, the 
 greatest curse and scourge of their Reductions 
 were the Paulistas, or Man-hunters, of Santo Paulo 
 in Brazil. These people were a colony of Mamelu- 
 coes, or descendants of Portuguese and Indians ; and 
 a more dreadful set of men are not upon record. 
 Their great business was to hunt for mines, and for 
 Indians. For this purpose they ranged through the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 133 
 
 interior, sometimes in large troops, armed and capable 
 of reducing a strong town, at others, they were scat- 
 tered into smaller parties prowling through the woods, 
 and pouncing on all that fell into their clutches. They 
 were fierce, savage, and merciless. They seemed to 
 take a wild delight in the destruction of human settle- 
 ments, and in the blaze of human abodes. They 
 maintained themselves in the wilds by hunting, fish- 
 ing, the plunder of the natives ; and when that failed, 
 they could subsist on the pine-nuts, and the flour pre- 
 pared from the carob, or locust-tree, termed by them 
 war-meal. 
 
 Their abominable practices had been vehemently 
 denounced by the Jesuits of Santo Paulo, and in con- 
 sequence they became bitter enemies of the order. 
 One of their favourite stratagems, was to appear in 
 small parties, led by commanders in the habits of 
 Jesuits, in those places which they knew the Jesuits 
 frequented in the hopes of making proselytes. The 
 first thing they did there, was to erect crosses. They 
 next made little presents to the Indians they met ; 
 distributed remedies amongst the sick ; and as they 
 were masters of the Guarani language, exhorted them 
 to embrace the Christian religion, of which they ex- 
 plained to them in a few words, the principal articles. 
 When they had, by tfiese arts, assembled a great 
 number of them, they proposed to them to remove to 
 some more convenient spot, where they assured them 
 they should want for nothing. Most of these poor 
 creatures permitted themselves to be thus led by these 
 wolves in sheeps' clothing, till the traitors, dropping 
 the mask, began to tie them, cutting the throats of 
 those who endeavoured to escape, and caYried the rest 
 
136 COLONIZATION 
 
 into slavery. Some, however, escaped from time to 
 time, and alarmed the whole counTfty. This scheme 
 served two purposes; it for a time procured them 
 great numbers of Indians, and it cast an odium on the 
 Jesuits, to whom it was attributed, which long operated 
 against them. But it was not long that these base 
 miscreants were contented with this mischief. It 
 struck them, that the Reductions of the Jesuits in 
 Guayra, a province adjoining their own, might be 
 made an easy prey ; and would furnish them with a 
 rich booty of human flesh at a little cost of labour. 
 They accordingly soon fell upon them, and the rela- 
 tion of the miseries and desolation inflicted on these 
 peaceful and flourishing settlements, as given by 
 Charlevoix, is heart-rending. Nine hundred Mame- 
 lucoes, accompanied by two thousand Indians, under 
 one of their most famous commanders Anthony Ras- 
 poso, broke into Guayra, and beset the reduction of 
 St. Anthony, which was under the care of Father 
 Mola. They put to the sword all the Indians that 
 attempted to resist ; butchered, even at the foot of the 
 altar, such as fled there for refuge ; loaded the princi- 
 pal men with chains, and plundered the church. Some 
 of them having entered the missionary's house, in 
 hopes of a rich booty, finding nothing but a thread- 
 bare soutane and a few tattered shirts, told the Indians 
 they must be very foolish to take for masters, stran- 
 gers who came into their country because they had 
 not wherewith to liv^ in their own ; that they would 
 be much happier in Brazil, where they would want fw 
 nothing, and would not be obliged to maintain their 
 pastors. 
 
 These were, no doubt, fine speeches to be made to 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 137 
 
 people loaded with chains, and whose relatives and 
 countrymen had been but that instant butchered be- 
 fore their eyes. Father Mola in vain threw himself 
 at the commander's feet; represented to him the 
 innocence and simplicity of these poor Indians ; con- 
 jured him by all that was most sacred, to set bounds 
 to the fury of the soldiers ; and at last, threatened 
 them with the indignation of heaven : but these 
 savages answered him, that it was enough to be bap- 
 tized again to be admitted into heaven, and that they 
 would make their way into it though God himself 
 should oppose their entrance.* They carried away 
 into slavery two thousand five hundred Indians. 
 
 Some of the prisoners escaped, and returned to join 
 Father Mola and such of their brethren as had* fled 
 to the woods. The father, they found amid the ruins 
 of his Reduction sunk in the deepest sorrow. How- 
 ever, he rouged himself and persuaded them to retire 
 with him to the Reduction of the Incarnation. The 
 Reductions of St. Michael and of Jesus-Maria, were 
 speedily treated in the same manner; and they set 
 out for Santo Paulo, driving their victims before 
 them as so many cattle. Nine months the march 
 continued. The . merciless wretches urged them for- 
 
 * Charlevoix gives another instance of that sort of Catholic piety 
 which such ruffians as these find quite compatible with the commis- 
 sion of the blackest crimes. During these expeditions these man- 
 hunters surprised the Reduction of St. Theresa, and carried off all the 
 inhabitants. This happened a few days before Christmas; yet on 
 Christmas day these banditti came to church, every man with a taper 
 in his hand, in order to hear mass. The minute the Jesuit had 
 finished, he mounted the pulpit, and reproached them in the bitterest 
 terms for their injustice and cruelty ; to all which they listened with 
 as much calmness as if it did not at all concern them. 
 
138 COLONIZATION 
 
 ward till numbers fell by the way, worn out witii 
 fatigue and famine. The first who gave way were 
 sick women and aged persons; who begged in vain 
 that their husbands, wives, or children, might remain 
 with them in their dying hours. All that could be 
 forced on by goading and blows, were, and when 
 they fell, they were left to perish by the wild beasts. 
 Two Jesuit fathers, Mansilla and Maceta, however, 
 followed their unhappy people, imploring more gen- 
 tleness towards the failing, and comforting the dying. 
 When Father Maceta first beheld his people chained 
 like galley slaves, he could not contain himself. He 
 ran up to embrace them, in spite of the cocked 
 muskets, with which he was threatened, and volleys 
 of blows poured upon him at every step. Seeing in 
 the throng the cazique Guiravara and his wife chained 
 together, he ran up to the cazique, who before his 
 conversion had used Father Maceta very cruelly, and 
 kissing his chain, told him that he was overjoyed to 
 be able to shew him that he entertained no resentment 
 of his ill usage, and would risk his life to procure his 
 liberty. He procured both their freedom, and tha.t 
 of several other Indians, on promise of a ransom. 
 Thus these noble men followed their captive people 
 through the whole dreadful journey, administering 
 every comfort and hope of final liberation in their 
 power; and their services and sympathy, we may well 
 imagine, were sufficiently needed, for out of the whole 
 number of captives collected in Guayra, fifteen hun- 
 dred only arrived in life at Santo Paulo. 
 
 But the journey of the fathers did not end here. 
 They could get no redress ; and therefore hastened to 
 Rio Janeiro ; and succeeding no better there, went 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 139 
 
 on to the Bay of All- Saints, to Don Diego Lewis 
 Oliveyra, governor and captain -general of the king- 
 dom. The governor ordered an officer to repair with 
 them to Santo Paulo ; but it was too late, the prisoners 
 were distributed far and wide, and the commissary 
 could not or dared not attempt to recall them. News 
 also of fresh enterprises meditated against the Para- 
 guay Reductions, by these hideou^ man-hunters, made 
 the fathers hasten away to put their brethren upon 
 their guard. 
 
 The story of the successive devastation of the Re- 
 ductions is long. The Jesuits were compelled to re- 
 treat southward from one place to another with their 
 wretched neophytes. The magistrates and governors 
 gave them no aid, for they entertained no good-will 
 towards them ; and they were, even in the central 
 ground between the Parana and Uruguay, compelled 
 to train their people to arms, and defend themselves. 
 It is not only a long but sorrowful recital, both of the 
 injuries received from the Paulistas and from their 
 own countrymen — we must therefore pass it over, and 
 merely notice the manner of their final expulsion. 
 
 The court of Spain ordered the banishment of the 
 Jesuits, and the authorities, only too happy to execute 
 the order, surrounded their colleges in the night with 
 soldiers, seized the persons of the missionaries, — their 
 libraries and manuscripts, which in time became de- 
 stroyed, an irreparable loss to historical literature. 
 Old men in their beds even were not suffered to remain 
 and die in peace, but were compelled to accompany 
 the rest, till they died on their mules in the immense 
 journey from some of the settlements, and across the 
 wildest mountains to the sea. The words of Mr. 
 
140 COLONIZATION 
 
 Sou they may well close this strange and melancholy 
 history. 
 
 " Bucarelli shipped off the Jesuits of La Plata, Tu- 
 cuman, and Paraguay, one hundred and fifty-five in 
 number, before he attacked the Reductions. This 
 part of the business he chose to perform in person ; 
 and the precautions which he took for arresting seventy- 
 eight defenceless missionaries, will be regarded with 
 contempt, or with indignation, as they may be sup- 
 posed to have proceeded from ignorance of the real 
 state of things, or from fear, basely affected for the 
 purpose of courting favour by countenancing success- 
 ful calumnies. He had previously sent for all the 
 Caciques and Corregidores to Buenos Ayres, and per- 
 suaded them that the king was about to make a great 
 change for their advantage. Two hundred soldiers 
 from Paraguay were ordered to guard the pass of the 
 Tebiquary ; two hundred Corrientines to take post in 
 the vicinity of St. Miguel ; and he defended the Uru- 
 guay with threescore dragoons, and three companies 
 of grenadiers. They landed at the Falls ; one detach- 
 ment proceeded to join the Paraguay party, and seize 
 the Parana Jesuits ; another incorporated itself with 
 the Corrientines, and marched against those on the 
 eastern side of the Uruguay ; and the Viceroy himself 
 advanced upon Yapeyen, and those which lay between 
 the two rivers. The Reductions were peaceably de- 
 livered up. The Jesuits, without a murmur, followed 
 their brethren into banishment; and Bucarelli was vile 
 enough to take credit in his dispatches for the address 
 with which he had so happily performed a dangerous 
 service ; and to seek favour by loading the persecuted 
 Company with charges of the grossest and foulest 
 calumnies. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 141 
 
 The American Jesuits were sent from Cadiz to Italy, 
 where Faenza and Ravenna were assigned for their 
 places of abode. Most of the Paraguay brethren set- 
 tled at Faenza. There they employed the melancholy 
 hours of age and exile in preserving, as far as they 
 could from memory alone (for they had been deprived 
 of all their papers), the knowledge which they had so 
 painfully acquired of strange countries, strange man-, 
 ners, savage languages, and savage man. The Com- 
 pany originated in extravagance and madness ; in its 
 progress it was supported and aggrandized by fraud 
 and falsehood ; and its history is stained by actions of 
 the darkest dye. But it fell with honour. No men 
 ever behaved with greater equanimity, under un- 
 deserved disgrace, than the last of the Jesuits ; and 
 the extinction of the order was a heavy loss to litera- 
 ture, a great evil to the Catholic world, and an irre- 
 parable injury to the tribes of South America. 
 
 " Bucarelli replaced the exiled missionaries by 
 priests from the different Mendicant orders ; but the 
 temporal authority was not vested in their hands — this 
 
 was vested in lay-administrators Here 
 
 ended the prosperity of these celebrated communities 
 — here ended the tranquillity and welfare of the 
 Guaranies. The administrators, hungry ruffians from 
 the Plata, or fresh from Spain, neither knew the lan- 
 guage nor had patience to acquire it. It sufficed for 
 them that they could make their commands intel- 
 ligible by the whip. The priests had no authority to 
 check the enormities of these wretches ; nor were 
 they always irreproachable themselves. A year had 
 scarce elapsed before the Viceroy discovered that the 
 Guaranies, for the sake of escaping from this intoler- 
 
142 COLONIZATION 
 
 able state of oppression, were beginning to emigrate 
 into the Portuguese territories, and actually soliciting 
 protection from their old enemies. Upon the first 
 alarm of so unexpected an occurrence, Bucarelli dis- 
 placed all the administrators ; but the new adminis- 
 trators were as brutal and rapacious as their predeces- 
 sors ; the governor was presently involved in a violent 
 struggle with the priests, touching their respective 
 powers, and the confusion which ensued, evinced how 
 wisely the Jesuits had acted in combining the spiritual 
 
 and temporal authorities The Viceroy then 
 
 instituted a new form of administration. The Indians 
 were declared exempt from all personal service, not 
 subject to the Encomienda system, and entitled to 
 possess property — a right of which, Bucarelli said, 
 they had been deprived by the Jesuits ; for this 
 governor affected to emancipate the Guaranies, and 
 talked of placing them under the safeguard of the law, 
 and purifying the Reductions from tyranny ! They 
 were to labour for the community under the direction 
 of the administrators ; and as an encouragement to 
 industry, the Reductions were opened to traders during 
 the months of February, March, and April. The end 
 of all this was, that compulsory and cruel labour left 
 the Indians neither time nor inclination— neither heart 
 nor strength — to labour for themselves. The arts 
 which the Jesuits had introduced, were neglected and 
 forgotten ; their gardens lay waste ; their looms fell to 
 pieces ; and in these communities, where the inhabi- 
 tants for many generations had enjoyed a greater 
 exemption from physical and moral evil than any other 
 inhabitants of the globe, the people were now made 
 vicious and miserable. Their only alternative was to 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 143 
 
 remain, and to be treated like slaves, or fly to the 
 woods, and take their chance as savages." 
 
 Here we must close our review of the Spaniards in 
 the New World. Our narrative has been necessarily 
 brief and rapid, for the history of their crimes extends 
 over a vast continent, and through three centuries; 
 and would, related at length, fill a hundred volumes. 
 We have found them, however, everywhere the same 
 — cruel, treacherous, and regardless of the feelings of 
 humanity and the sense of justice. They have 
 wreaked alike their vengeance on the natives of every 
 country they have entered, and on those of their own 
 race who dared to espouse the cause of the sufferers. 
 This spirit continued to the last. In all their colonies, 
 the natives, whether of Indian blood, or the Creoles 
 descended of their own, were carefully excluded from 
 the direction of their own aiffairs, and the emoluments 
 of office. Spaniards from the mother country were 
 sent over in rapacious swarms, to fatten on the vitals 
 of these vast states, and return when they had sucked 
 their fill. The retribution has followed ; and Spain 
 has not now left a single foot of all these countries 
 which she has drenched in the blood, and filled with 
 the groans of their native children. 
 
 Mr. Ward, in his '« Mexico in 1827," says that 
 in 1803, the number of Indians remaining in Mexico 
 was two millions and a half; but that their his- 
 tory is everywhere a blank. Some have become 
 habituated to civil life, and are excellent artizans, 
 but the greater portion are totally neglected. That, 
 during the Revolution, the sense of the injuries 
 which the race had received from the Spaniards, 
 and which seemed to have slumbered in their 
 
144 COLONIZATION 
 
 bosoms for three centuries, blazed up and shewed 
 itself in the eager and burning enthusiasm with which 
 they flocked to the revolutionary standard to throw 
 off the yoke of their ancient oppressors. He adds, 
 ''Whatever may be the advantages which they may de- 
 rive from the recent changes, and the nature of these 
 time alone can determine, the fruits of the introduc- 
 tion of boasted civilization into the New World have 
 been hitherto bitter indeed. Throughout America the 
 Indian race has been sacrificed; nor can I discover 
 that in New Spain any one step has been taken for 
 their improvement. In the neighbourhood of the 
 capital nothing can be more wretched than their ap- 
 pearance ; and although under a republican form of 
 government, they must enjoy, in theory at least, an 
 equality of rights with every other class of citizens, 
 they seemed practically, at the period of my first visit, 
 to be under the orders of every one, whether oflficer, 
 soldier, churchman, or civilian, who chose to honour 
 them with a command." — vol. ii. p. 215. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 145 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL. 
 
 Though we now make our first inquiry into the con- 
 duct of the . Portuguese towards the natives of their 
 colonies, and enter upon so immense a scene of action 
 as that of the vast empire of Brazil, our notice may 
 happily be condensed into a comparatively small 
 space, because the features of the settlement of Para- 
 guay by the Spaniards, and that of Brazil by the 
 Portuguese are wonderfully similar. The natives 
 were of a like character, bold and warlike, and were 
 treated in like fashion. They were destroyed, en- 
 slaved, given away in Encomiendos, just as it suited 
 the purpose of the invaders; the Jesuits arrived, and 
 undertook their defence and civilization, and were 
 finally expelled, like their brethren of Paraguay, as 
 pestilential fellows, that would not let the colonists 
 " do as they pleased with their own," 
 
 Yanez Pinzon, the Spaniard, was the first who dis- 
 covered the coast of Brazil, in A.D. 1500, and coast- 
 ing northward from Cape Agostinho, he gave the 
 natives such a taste of the faith and intentions of the 
 whites as must have prepared them to resist them to 
 
 H 
 
.146 COLONIZATION 
 
 the utmost on their reappearance. Betwixt Cape 
 Agostinho and the river Maranham, seeing a party of 
 the natives on a hill near the shore, they landed, and 
 endeavoured to open some degree of intercourse ; but 
 the natives not liking their appearance, attempted to 
 drive them away, killed eight of them, wounded more, 
 and pursued them with fury to their boat. The Spa- 
 niards, of course, did not spare the natives, and soon 
 afterwards shewed that the natives were very much 
 in the right in repelling them, for on entering the 
 Maranham, where the natives did receive them cor- 
 dially, they seized about thirty of these innocent 
 people and carried them off for slaves. 
 
 Scarcely had Pinzon departed, when Cabral, with 
 the Portuguese squadron, made his accidental visit to 
 the same coast. In the following year Amerigo Ves- 
 pucci was sent thither to make further discoveries, 
 and having advanced as far southward as 52°, returned 
 home. In 1503, he was sent out again, and effected 
 a settlement in 18° S. in what was afterwards called 
 the Captaincy of Porto Seguro. One of the very 
 first acts of Portugal was to ship thither as colonists 
 the refuse of her prisons, as Spain had done to her 
 colonies, and as Portugal also had done to Africa and 
 India ; a horrible mode of inflicting the worst curses 
 of European society on new countries, and of present- 
 ing to the natives under the name of Christians, men 
 rank and fuming with every species of brutal vice and 
 pestiferous corruption. 
 
 Ten years after the discovery of Brazil, a young 
 noble, Diego Alvarez, who was going out on a voyage 
 of adventure, was wrecked on the coast of Bahia, and 
 was received with cordiality by the natives, and named 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 14^ 
 
 Caramuru, or the Man of Fire, from the possession 
 of fire-arms. Here he married the daughter of the 
 chief, and finally became the great chief himself, with 
 a numerous progeny around him. Another man, 
 Joam Ramalho, who also had been shipwrecked, mar- 
 ried a daughter of the chief of Piratininga, and these 
 circumstances gave the Portuguese a favourable re- 
 ception in different places of this immense coast. In 
 about thirty years after its discovery the country was 
 divided into captaincies, the sugar-cane was intro- 
 duced, and the work of colonization went rapidly on. 
 The natives were attacked on all sides ; they defended 
 themselves with great spirit, but were compelled to 
 yield before the power of fire-arms. But while the 
 natives suffered from the colonists, the colonists suf- 
 fered too from the despotism of the governors of the 
 captaincies; a Governor^general was therefore ap- 
 pointed just half a century after the discovery, in the 
 person of Thome de Sousa, and some Jesuits were 
 sent out with him to civilize the natives. 
 
 Amongst these was Father Manoel de Nobrega, chief 
 of the mission, who distinguished himself so nobly in 
 behalf of the Indians. The city of Salvador, in the 
 bay of All- Saints, was founded as the seat of govern- 
 ment, and the Jesuits immediately began the work of 
 civilization. There was great need of it both amongst 
 the Indians and their own countrymen. " Indeed, 
 the fathers," says Southey, " had greater difficulties 
 to encounter in the conduct of their own countrymen 
 than in the customs and disposition of the natives. 
 During half a century, the colonization of Brazil had 
 been left to chance ; the colonists were almost without 
 law and religion. Many settlers had never either 
 
148 COLONIZATION 
 
 confessed or communicated since they entered the 
 country ; the ordinances of the church were neglected 
 for want of a clergy to celebrate them, and the moral 
 precepts had been forgotten with the ceremonies. 
 Crimes which might easily at first have been pre- 
 vented, had become habitual, and the habit was now 
 too strong to be overcome. There were indeed indi- 
 viduals in whom the moral sense could be discovered, 
 but in the majority it had been utterly destroyed. 
 They were of that description of men over whom the 
 fear of the gallows may have some effect ; the fear of 
 God has none. A system of concubinage was prac- 
 tised among them, worse than the loose polygamy of 
 the savages. The savage had as many women as 
 consented to become his wives — the colonist as many 
 as he could enslave. There is an ineffaceable stigma 
 upon the Europeans in their intercourse with those 
 whom they treat as inferior races — there is a perpe- 
 tual contradiction between their lust and their avarice. 
 The planter will one day take a slave for his harlot, 
 and sell her the next as a being of some lower species 
 — a beast of labour. If she be indeed an inferior 
 animal, what shall be said of the one action ? If she 
 be equally with himself an human being and an im- 
 mortal soul, what shall be said of the other ? Either 
 way there is a crime committed against human nature. 
 Nobrega and his companions refused to administer 
 the sacraments of the church to those persons who 
 retained native women as concubines, or men as slaves. 
 Many were reclaimed by this resolute and Christian 
 conduct; some, because their consciences had not 
 been dead, but sleeping; others, for worldly fear, 
 because they believed the Jesuits were armed with 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 149 
 
 secular as well as spiritual authority. The good 
 effect which was produced on such persons was there- 
 fore only for a season. Mighty as the Catholic reli- 
 gion is, avarice is mightier ; and in spite of all the 
 best and ablest men that ever the Jesuit order, so 
 fertile of great men, has had to glory in, the practice 
 of enslaving the natives continued." 
 
 Yet, according to the same authority, the country 
 had not been entirely without priests ; but they had 
 become so brutal that Nobrega said, " No devil had 
 persecuted him and his brethren so greatly as they 
 did. These wretches encouraged the colonists in 
 their abominations, and openly maintained that it was 
 lawful to enslave the natives, because they were 
 beasts; and then lawful to use the women as con- 
 cubines, because they were slaves. This was their 
 public doctrine ! Well might Nobrega say they did 
 the work of the devil. They opposed the Jesuits 
 with the utmost virulence. Their interest was at 
 stake. They could not bear the presence of men who 
 said mass and performed all the ceremonies of religion 
 gratuitously." Much less, it may be believed, who 
 maintained the freedom of the natives. 
 
 Such were the people amongst which the Jesuits had 
 to act, yet they set to work with their usual alacrity. 
 Fresh brethren came out to their aid; and Nobrega 
 was appointed Vice-provincial of Brazil. They soon 
 ingratiated themselves with the natives by their usual 
 affability and kindness. They zealously acquainted them- 
 selves with the language; gave presents to the children ; 
 visited the sick; but above all, stood firmly between 
 them and the atrocities of their countrymen. When 
 the Jesuits arrived, these atrocities had driven many 
 
150 COLONIZATION 
 
 tribes into the fiercest hostility, and so evident was it 
 that nothing but these atrocities had made, or kept 
 them hostile, that when they heard the joyful report that 
 the Jesuits were come as friends and protectors of the 
 Indians, and when they saw their conduct so con- 
 sonant to these tidings, they brought their hows to the 
 governor^ and solicited to he received as allies! How 
 universally, on the slightest opportunity, have those 
 called savage nations shamed the Europeans styling 
 themselves civilized, by proofs of their greater faith and 
 disposition to peace ! Amicable intercourse and civili- 
 zation are the natural order of things between the 
 powerful and enlightened, and the weak and simple, 
 if avarice and lust did not intervene. 
 
 Nobrega and his brethren soon produced striking 
 changes on these poor people. They persuaded them 
 to live in peace, to abandon their old habits, to build 
 churches and schools. The avidity of the children to 
 learn to read was wonderful. One of the natives soon 
 was able to make a catechism in the Tupi tongue, 
 and to translate prayers into it. They taught them 
 not only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to sing 
 in the church ; an accomplishment which perfectly en- 
 chanted them. " Nobrega usually took with him four 
 or five of these little choristers on his preaching ex- 
 peditions. When they approached an inhabited place, 
 one carried the crucifix before them, and they began 
 singing the Litany. The savages, like snakes, were 
 won by the voice of the charmer. They received him 
 joyfully ; and when he departed with the same cere- 
 mony, the children followed the music. He set the 
 catechism, creed, and ordinary prayers to sol fa; and 
 the pleasure of learning to sing was such a temptation, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 151 
 
 that the little Tupis sometimes ran away from their 
 parents to put themselves under the care of the 
 Jesuits." 
 
 Fresh coadjutors arrived, and with them the cele- 
 brated Joseph de Anchieta, who became more cele- 
 brated than Nobrega himself. Nobrega now estab- 
 lished a college in the plains of Piratininga, and sent 
 thither thirteen of the brethren, with Anchieta as 
 schoolmaster. If our settlers, in the different new 
 nations where they have located themselves, had imi- 
 tated the conduct of this great man, what a world 
 would this be now! what a history of colonization 
 would have to be written ! how different to the scene 
 I am doomed to lay open. " Day and night," says the 
 historian, " did this indefatigable man labour in dis- 
 charging the duties of his office. There were no 
 books for the pupils ; he wrote for every one his lesson 
 on a separate leaf, after the business of the day was 
 done, and it was sometimes day-light before his task 
 was completed. The profane songs that were in use, 
 he parodied into hymns in Portugueze, Castilian, Latin 
 and Tupinamban. The ballads of the natives under- 
 went the same travesty in their own tongue." * He 
 did not disdain to act as physician, barber, nor even 
 shoemaker, to win them and to benefit them. 
 
 But it was not merely in such peaceful and blessed 
 acts that the Jesuits were obliged to employ them- 
 selves. They were soon called upon to save the very 
 colonies from their enemies. The French entered the 
 country, and the native tribes smarting under the wrongs 
 which the Portuguese had heaped plentifully on them, 
 were only too glad to unite with them against their 
 merciless oppressors. The Jesuits defended their own 
 
152 COLONIZATION 
 
 settlements, and then proceeded to give one of the 
 most splendid examples in history of the power there 
 is in Christian principle to suspersede wars, and to 
 extort attention and protection even from men in the 
 fiercest irritation and resentment of injuries. While 
 the Portuguese were making war on the Tamoyos, 
 and other martial tribes, Nobrega denounced their pro- 
 ceedings as heaping injustice upon injustice, for the 
 natives would, he said, trust in the Portuguese if they 
 saw any hope of fair treatment — any safety from the 
 man-hunters. But when the Indians were triumphant, 
 and had surrounded Espirito Santo, and threatened 
 the very existence of the place, Nobrega and Anchieta 
 set sail for that port, everybody looking upon them 
 as madmen rushing upon certain destruction. A more 
 fearful, and to all but that noble faith in truth' and 
 justice which is capable of working wonders, a more 
 hopeless enterprise never was undertaken. As they 
 entered the port, a host of war-canoes came out to 
 meet them ; but the moment they saw that they were 
 Jesuits, the Indians knew that they came with peaceful 
 intentions, and dropped their hostile attitude. Spite 
 of all the exasperation of their wrongs, and the natural 
 presumption of success, they carried the vessel with^ 
 out injury or insult into port, and listened with atten- 
 tion to the words of the fathers. 
 
 For two months these excellent men lived in the 
 midst of those exasperated Indians, nay, one of them 
 remained there alone for a considerable time, labouring 
 to soothe their wrath, to convince them of better treat- 
 ment, and dispose them to peace. The fiercer natives 
 threatened them daily with death, and with being 
 devoured, but the better spirits and their own blame- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 153 
 
 less lives protected them. They built a little church, 
 and thatched it with palm-leaves, where they preached 
 and celebrated mass daily, and at length effected a 
 peace, and the salvation of the colonies ; for they found 
 that a wide-spread coalition was forming amongst the 
 Indian tribes to sweep their oppressors out of the land. 
 One would have thought that such instances as 
 these of the wisdom and sound policy of virtue, would 
 have been enough to persuade the Portuguese to 
 adopt more righteous measures towards the natives; 
 but avarice and cruelty are not easily eradicated — a 
 famine broke out — they purchased the Indians for 
 slaves with provisions ! Nothing can equal the blind- 
 ness of base minds. Whenever affairs went wrong with 
 them, the Portuguese had recourse to the Jesuits, and 
 the Jesuits by tlieir influence with the Indians, achieved 
 the most signal service for them. They marched 
 against the French, and drove them out. They built 
 towns ; they protected the state from hostile tribes. 
 A Jesuit, with his crucifix in his hand, was of more 
 avail at the head of armies than the most able general ; 
 but these things once accomplished, all these services 
 were forgotten — the slave-hunters were at work again, 
 and the colonies fell again as rapidly into troubles and 
 consequent decline. By the end of the century, from 
 the discovery of Brazil, the Jesuits had collected all 
 the natives along the coast as far as the Portuguese 
 territories reached, into their aldeas, or villages, and 
 were busy in the work of civilization. Nothing in- 
 deed would have been easier than for them to civilize 
 the whole country, had it been possible to civilize the 
 Portuguese first. But their conduct to the natives 
 was but one continued practice of treachery and out- 
 
 h2 
 
154 COLONIZATION 
 
 rage. When they needed their aid to defend them 
 from their enemies, out marched the natives under 
 their Jesuit leaders, and fought for them; and the 
 first act of the colonists, when the victory was won, 
 was to seize on their benefactors and portion them out 
 as slaves. The man-hunters broke into the villages 
 and caried off numbers, having, in fact, depopulated 
 the whole country besides. There is no species of 
 kidnapping, no burnings of huts, no fomenting of 
 wars between different tribes ; no horror, in short, 
 which has made the names of Christians so infamous 
 for the last three hundred years in Africa that had not 
 its parallel then in Brazil. 
 
 Besides, for more than a hundred years, Brazil was 
 the constant scene of war and contention between 
 the European powers terming themselves Christian. 
 French, English, and Dutch, were in turn endeavour- 
 ing to seize upon one part or other of it; and every 
 description of rapine, bloodshed, and treachery which 
 can disgrace nations pretending to any degree of 
 civilization was going on before the eyes of the asto- 
 nished natives. What notions of Christianity must 
 the Indians have had, when these people called them- 
 selves Christians? They saw them assailing one 
 another, fighting like madmen for what in reality 
 belonged to none of them; burning towns, destroy- 
 ing sugar plantations ; massacring all, native or colo- 
 nist, that fell into their hands, or seizing them for 
 slaves. They saw bishops contending with governors, 
 priests contending with one another; they saw their 
 beautiful country desolated from end to end (down to 
 1664), and every thing wliich is sacred to heaven or 
 honourable or valuable to men, treated with contempt. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 155 
 
 — What was it possible for them to believe of Christ- 
 ianity, than that it was some devilish compact, which 
 at once invested men with a terrible power, and with 
 the will to wield it, for the accomplishment of the 
 widest ruin and the profoundest misery ? 
 
 Through all this, under all changes, whoever were 
 masters, or whoever were contending — the Indians 
 experienceid but one lot, slavery and ruin. Laws 
 indeed were repeatedly enacted in Portugal on their 
 behalf — they were repeatedly declared free — but as 
 everywhere else, they were laughed at by the colonists, 
 or resisted with rebellious fury. 
 
 Amid this long career of violence, the only thing 
 which the mind can repose on with any degree of 
 pleasure, is the conduct of the Jesuits, the steady 
 friends of justice and the Indians; and towards the 
 latter part of this period there arrived in Maranham 
 one of the most extraordinary men, which not only 
 that remarkable order, but which the world has pro- 
 duced. This was Antonio Vieyra, a young Jesuit, 
 who had left the favour of the king and court, and the 
 most brilliant prospects, for the single purpose of de- 
 voting himself to the cause of the Indians. His bold- 
 ness, his honesty of speech and purpose, his resolute 
 resistance to the system of base oppression, operating 
 through the whole mass of society around him — were 
 perhaps equalled by his fellows; but the greatness of 
 his talents, and the vehement splendour of his elo- 
 quence, have few equals in any age. Mr. Southey has 
 given the substance of a sermon preached by him be- 
 fore the governor at St. Lewis, which so startled and 
 moved the whole people, by the novel and fearful view 
 in which he exhibited to them their treatment of the 
 
155 COLONIZATION 
 
 Indians, that with one accord they resolved to set 
 them free. 
 
 It is worth while here to give a slight specimen 
 or two of this extraordinary discourse. His text 
 was, the offer of Satan : — *' All these things will I 
 give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." 
 — " Things," said he, " are estimated at what they 
 cost. What then did the world cost our Saviour, and . 
 what did a soul cost him ? The world cost him a 
 word — He spoke, and it was made. A soul cost Him 
 his life, and his blood. But if the world cost only a 
 word of God, and a soul cost the blood of God, a 
 soul is worth more than all the world. This Christ 
 thought, and this the devil confessed. Yet you know 
 how cheaply we value our souls ? you know at what 
 rate we sell them ? We wonder that Judas should 
 have sold his Master and his soul for thirty pieces of 
 silver ; but how many are there who offer their own to 
 the devil for less than fifteen ! Christians ! I am 
 not now telling you that you ought not to sell your 
 souls, for I know that you must sell them ; — I only 
 entreat that you will sell them by weight. Weigh 
 well what a soul is worth, and what it cost, and then 
 sell it and welcome ! But in what scales is it to be 
 weighed? You think I shall say. In those of St. 
 Michael the archangel, in which souls are weighed. 
 I do not require so much. W^eigh them in the devil's 
 own balance, and I shall be satisfied ! Take the 
 devil's balance in one hand, put the whole world in 
 one scale and a soul in the other, and you will find that 
 your soul weighs more than the world. — ' All this 
 will I give thee, if thou vA\t fall down and worship 
 me.' But at what a different price now does 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 157 
 
 the devil purchase souls from that which he formerly 
 offered for them? I mean in this country. The 
 devil has not a fair in the world where they go 
 cheaper ! In the Gospel he offers all the kingdoms 
 of the world to purchase a single soul ; — he does not 
 require so large a price to purchase all that are in 
 Maranham. It is not necessary to offer worlds ; it is 
 not necessary to offer kingdoms, nor cities, nor towns, 
 nor villages ; — it is enough for the devil to point at a 
 plantation, and a couple of Tapuyas, and down goes 
 the man upon his knees to worship him ! Oh what a 
 market ! A negro for a soul, and the soul the blacker 
 of the two ! The negro shall be your slave for the 
 few days you have to live, and your soul shall be my 
 slave through all eternity — as long as God is God ! 
 This is the bargain which the devil makes with you.'' 
 Amazing as was the effect of this celebrated ser- 
 mon, of course it did not last long. But Vieyra did 
 not rest here. He hastened to Portugal, and stated 
 the treatment of the Indians to the king. He ob- 
 tained an order, that all the Indian settlements in the 
 state of Maranham should be under the direction of 
 the Jesuits ; that Vieyra should direct all expeditions 
 into the interior, and settle the reduced Indians where 
 he pleased ; and that all ransomed Indians should be 
 slaves for five years and no longer, their labour in that 
 time being an ample compensation for their original 
 cost. Here was a sort of apprenticeship system more 
 favourable than the modern British one, but destined 
 to be just as little observed. 
 
158 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 THE PORTUGUESE IN BRAZIL, — CONTINUED. 
 
 I regret that my limits will not permit me to follow 
 further the labours and enterprises of Vieyra and 
 his brethren in behalf of the Indians, whom they, 
 sought far and wide in that immense region, and 
 brought in thousands upon thousands into settle- 
 ments, only to arouse afresh the furious opposition, 
 and bring down upon themselves the vengeance of 
 the colonists. But the history of this great strife be- 
 tween Christianity and Injustice, in Brazil, fills three 
 massy quarto volumes, and runs through three cen- 
 turies. It is full of details of the deepest interest ; 
 but there is no chapter, either^in that history or any 
 other, more heart-rending, than that of the transfer of 
 the seven Reductions of the Jesuits lying east of the 
 Uruguay. These were ceded by Spain to Portugal 
 in 1750, in a treaty of demarcation. 
 
 " They contained," to use the words of Mr. 
 Southey, " thirty thousand Guaranies, not fresh from 
 the woods or half reclaimed, and therefore willing to 
 revert to a savage state, and capable of enduring its 
 exposure, hardships, and privations ; but born as their 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 159 
 
 fathers and grandfathers had been, in easy servitude, 
 and bred up in the comforts of regular domestic life. 
 These persons, with their wives and their children, 
 their sick and their aged, their horses, and their sheep 
 and their oxen, were to turn out, like the children of 
 Israel from Egypt, into the wilderness ; not to escape 
 from bondage, but in obedience to one of the most 
 tyranical commands that ever were issued in the reck- 
 lessness of unfeeling power." Mr. Southey adds, 
 " Yet Ferdinand must be acquitted of intentional 
 injustice. His disposition was such, that he would 
 have rather suffered martyrdom than have issued so 
 wicked an edict, had he been sensible of, its inhu- 
 manity and wickedness." 
 
 This might more readily be credited, if, when the 
 abominable enormity of the measure was made mani- 
 fest to him, any disposition was shewn to stop the 
 proceedings, or make reparation for the misery in- 
 flicted. But nothing of the kind took place. The 
 Jesuits made immediate and earnest representations ; 
 the Indians cried out vehemently against their expatria- 
 tion ; the colonists of both countries werejiverse to the 
 measure; the very governors and officers proceeded 
 tardily with it, in the hope that the moment the evil 
 was discovered it would be countermanded; but no 
 such countermand was ever issued. And what was 
 there to hinder it? The King of Spain and the 
 Queen of Portugal, were man and wife, dwelling in 
 one palace, and of the greatest accord in life and sen- 
 timent; it had only to be willed by one of them, and 
 it might, and would have been, speedily done. If 
 ever there was a cold-blooded transaction, in which 
 the lives and happiness of thirty thousand innocent 
 
160 COLONIZATION 
 
 people were reckoned of no account in the mere trac- 
 ing of a boundary line between two countries, this 
 appears to be one; and if ever the retribution of 
 heaven was displayed in this world, it would seem to 
 have been in the persons of the monarchs who issued 
 this brutal order, and suflfered it to stand, spite of the 
 cries of the thousands of sufferers. Happy in each 
 other, while they thus remained insensible to the 
 happiness of these poor Indians, the queen was con- 
 sumed by a slow and miserable malady, and the king, 
 a weak man of a melancholy temperament, sunk heart- 
 broken for her loss. 
 
 But meantime, commissioners and armies of both 
 Spanish and Portuguese were drawing towards the 
 confines of the doomed land, to carry into effect the 
 expulsion of its rightful inhabitants. The Jesuits 
 behaved with the utmost submission and propriety. 
 Finding that they could do nothing by remonstrance, 
 they offered to yield up the charge of the Reductions 
 to whatever parties might be appointed to receive it. 
 The natives appealed vehemently to the Spanish 
 governor. "Neither we nor our forefathers," said 
 they, " have ever offended the king, or ever attacked 
 the Spanish settlements. How then, innocent as we 
 are, can we believe that the best of princes would 
 condemn us to banishment? Our fathers, our fore- 
 fathers, our brethren, have fought under the king's 
 banner, often against the Portuguese, often against 
 the savages. Who can tell how many of them have 
 fallen in battle, or before the walls of Nova Colonia, 
 so often besieged ? We ourselves can shew in our 
 scars, the proofs of our fidelity and our courage. We 
 have ever had it at heart to extend the limits of the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 161 
 
 Spanish empire, and to defend it against all enemies ; 
 nor have we ever been sparing of our blood, or our 
 lives. Will then the Catholic king requite these 
 services by the bitter punishment of expelling us 
 from our native land, our churches, our homes, and 
 fields, and fair inheritance ? This is beyond all be- 
 lief ! By the royal letters of Philip V., which, ac- 
 cording to his own injunctions, were read to us from 
 the pulpits, we were exhorted never to suffer the 
 Portuguese to approach our borders, because they 
 were his enemies and ours. Now we are told- that 
 the^ king will have us yield up, to these very Portu- 
 guese, this wide and fertile territory, which for a 
 whole century we have tilled with the sweat of our 
 brows. Can any one be persuaded that Ferdinand 
 the son should enjoin us to do that which was so fre- 
 quently forbidden by his father Philip ? But if time 
 and change have indeed brought about such friend- 
 ship between old enemies, that the Spaniards are 
 desirous to gratify the Portuguese, there are ample 
 tracts of country to spare, and let those be given 
 them. What ! shall we resign our towns to the Por- 
 tuguese ? The Portuguese ! — by whose ancestors so 
 many hundred thousands of ours have been slaugh- 
 tered, or carried away into cruel slavery in Brazil ? 
 This is as intolerable to us, as it is^ incredible that it 
 should be required. When, with the Holy Gospels 
 in our hands, we promised and vowed fidelity to God 
 and the king of Spain, his priests and governors pro- 
 mised us on his part, friendship and perpetual protec- 
 tion, — and now we are commanded to give up our 
 country ! Is it to be believed that the promises, and 
 faith, and friendship of the Spaniards can be of sp 
 little stability ?" 
 
162 COLONIZATION 
 
 But the Spaniards and Portuguese advanced with 
 their troops into their country. The poor people, 
 driven frantic by their grief and indignation, deter- 
 mined to resist. They brought out their cannon, 
 made of pieces of large cane, covered with wet hides 
 and bound with iron hoops, and determined with such 
 arms even, to oppose those more dreadful ones, of 
 which they had too often witnessed the effect. For 
 some time they repelled their enemies, and even 
 obliged them to retire from the territory ; but in the 
 next campaign, the allied army made dreadful havoc 
 amongst them. Yet they still remained in arms ; and 
 their sentiments may be well understood by the fol- 
 lowing characteristic extract, sent from one of their 
 officers to an officer of the Spanish troops, — " Sir, 
 look well ; it is a well-known thing, that since our 
 Lord God in his infinite wisdom created the heavens 
 and the earth, with all which beautifies it, which is to 
 endure till the day of judgment, we have not known 
 that God, who is the Lord of these lands, gave them 
 to the Spaniards before he came into the world. 
 Three parts of the earth are for them ; namely, Eu- 
 rope, Asia, and Africa, which are to the east ; and this 
 remaining part in which we dwell, our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, as soon as he died, set apart for us. We poor 
 Indians have fairly possessed this country during all 
 these years, as children of God, according to his will, 
 not by the will of any other living being. Our Lord 
 God permitted all this that it might be so. We of 
 this country remember our unbelieving grandfathers, 
 and we are greatly amazed when we think that God 
 should have pardoned so many sins as we ourselves 
 have committed. Sir, consider that which you are 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 163 
 
 about is a thing which we poor Indians have never 
 seen done amongst Christians !" 
 
 Poor people ! how little did they know how feeble 
 are the strongest reasons drawn from the Christian 
 faith, when addressed to those who would resent as 
 a deadly insult the true charge that they are no Chris- 
 tians at all. In this case the Indians were the only 
 Christians concerned in this melancholy affair. Well 
 might they say, " Your actions are so different from 
 your words, that we are more amazed than if we saw 
 two suns in the firmament." Well might they ask, 
 " What will God say to you after your death on this 
 account? What answer will you make in the day of 
 judgment when we shall all be gathered together ?" 
 Like all other Europeans when doing their will on 
 the natives of their colonies, they cared neither for 
 God, nor the day of judgment; they went on and 
 drove the genuine Christians, the poor simple-hearted 
 Indians, to the woods, or compelled them to submit. 
 Their lands were laid waste, their towns burnt; many 
 were slain, many were dispersed, many died heart- 
 broken in the homeless woods, — and scarcely was all 
 this misery and wickedness completed, — when the 
 news of the king's death arrived,, and soon after, the 
 annulment of this very treaty; so that these lands 
 were not to be yielded to the Portuguese, and all this 
 evil had been done, even politically, in vain. The 
 poor people were invited to return to their posses- 
 sions, and the Jesuits to their sorrowful labour of 
 repairing the ravages so foolishly and heartlessly com- 
 mitted. 
 
 Mr. South ey thinks that the Portuguese in Brazil 
 were more lenient to the natives than the Spaniards 
 
164 COLONIZATION 
 
 in their South- American colonies. I must confess 
 that his own History of Brazil does not give me that 
 impression. It is true that they did not succeed in so 
 speedily depopulating the country ; but that in part, 
 must be attributed to the more warlike and hardy 
 character of the people, and to the fact that Brazil did 
 not for a long time become a mining country. By 
 the time that it did, all the Indians that the horrible 
 man-hunters of San Paulo could seize in their wild 
 excursions, were wanted in the cultivated lands and 
 sugar plantations, and negroes were imported in 
 abundance — the English for a long time supplying 
 by contract four thousand annually. The final expul- 
 sion of the Jesuits deprived the Indians of the only 
 body of real friends that they ever knew. Finer 
 materials than those poor people for civilization, no 
 race on the earth ever presented. Had the Jesuits 
 been permitted to continue their peaceful labours, the 
 whole continent would have become one wide scene of 
 peace, fertility, and happiness. What a contrast does 
 Brazil present, after the lapse of three centuries, and 
 even after the introduction of European royalty ! 
 The people are described by modern travellers as living 
 in the utmost filth, idleness, licentiousness, and dis- 
 honesty. " The Indians are driven into the interior, 
 where," says Mr. Luccock, " they form a great bar to 
 civilization ; their animosity to the whites being of the 
 bitterest sort, and their purposes of vengeance ,for 
 injuries received, so long bequeathed from father to 
 son, as to be rooted in their hearts as firmly as the 
 colour is attached to their skin. Under the influence 
 of this passion, they destroy every thing belonging to 
 the Europeans or their descendants, which falls in their 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 166 
 
 way ; even tlie cow and the dog are not spared. For 
 such outrages they pay dearly ; small forts, or military 
 stations, being placed around the colonized parts of the 
 district, from whence a war of plunder and extermina- 
 tion is carried on against them. In this warfare not 
 only are fire-arms made use of, but the lasso, dogs, and 
 all the stratagems which are usually employed against 
 beasts of prey." Mr. Luccock met with one man who 
 had been thus engaged against the Indians j'^rfy years, 
 and was on his way to ask some honorary distinction 
 from the sovereign for his services ! 
 
 Instead of a country swarming with labourers and 
 good citizens, as it would have been under a Christian 
 policy, Brazil now suffers for want of inhabitants, and 
 the barbarous slave-trade is made to supply the whole 
 country with servants. Ten thousand negroes are 
 annually brought into Rio alone, whence we may infer 
 how vast must be the demand for the whole empire ; 
 and of the estimation in which they are held, and of 
 the sort of religion which still bears the abused name 
 of Christianity there, one anecdote will give us suffi- 
 cient idea. " Two negroes," says Mr. Luccock, 
 " being extremely ill, a clergyman was sent for, who 
 on his arrival found one of them gone beyond the 
 reach of his art ; and the other, having crawled off his 
 bed, was lying on the floor of his cabin. As we 
 entered, the priest was jesting and laughing in the 
 most volatile manner — then filled both his hands with 
 water, and dropped it on the poor creature's head, 
 pronouncing the form of baptism. The dying man, 
 probably experiencing some little relief from the effu- 
 sion, exclaimed, * Good — very good.' * Oh,* said the 
 priest, ' it is very good, is it ? — then there is more for 
 
166 COLONIZATION 
 
 you ; ' dashing upon him what remained in the basin. 
 Without delay he resumed his jokes, and in the midst 
 of them the man expired." 
 
 We must now quit South America, to follow the 
 European Christians in their colonial career in another 
 quarter of the globe. And in thus taking leave of 
 this immense portion of the N«w World, where such 
 cruelties have been perpetrated, and so much inno- 
 cent blood shed by the avarice and ambition of Eu- 
 rope, we may ask, — What has been done by way of 
 atonement; or what is the triumph of civilization? 
 We have already quoted Mr. Ward on the present 
 state of the aborigines of Mexico, and Mr. Luccock 
 on those of Rio Janeiro. Baron Humboldt can furnish 
 the reader with ample indications of a like kind in vari- 
 ous parts of South America. Maria Graham tells us, 
 so recently as 1824, that in Chili, Peru, and the pro- 
 vinces of La Plata, the system of Spain, which had 
 driven those realms to revolt, had diffused " sloth and 
 ignorance " as their necessary consequences. That 
 in Brazil, " the natives had been either exterminated 
 or wholly subdued. The slave-hunting, which had 
 been systematic on the first occupation of the land, 
 and more especially after the discovery of the mines, 
 had so diminished the wretched Indians, that the in- 
 troduction of negroes was deemed necessary: they 
 now people the Brazilian fields ; and if here and 
 there an Indian aldea is to be found, the people are 
 wretched, with less than negro comforts, and much less 
 than negro spirit or industry : the Indians are nothing 
 in Brazil." 
 
 That the system of exterminating the Indians has 
 been continued to the latest period where any re- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 167 
 
 mained, we may learn from a horrible fact, which she 
 tells us she relates on good authority. " In the Cap- 
 taincy of Porto Seguro, within these twenty years, an 
 Indian tribe had been so troublesome that the Capitam 
 Mor resolved to get rid of it. It was attacked, but 
 defended itself so bravely, that the Portuguese re- 
 solved to desist from open warfare ; but with unnatural 
 ingenuity exposed ribbons and toys, infested with 
 small-pox matter, in the places where the poor savages 
 were likely to find them. The plan succeeded. The 
 Indians were so thinned that they were easily over- 
 come !" — Voyage to Brazil, p. 9. 
 
 But if any one wishes to learn what are the wretched 
 fruits of all the bloodshed and crimes perpetrated by 
 the Spaniards in America, he has only to look into 
 Sir F. B. Head's " Rough Notes on the Pampas," 
 made in 1826. What a scene do these notes lay open ! 
 Splendid countries, overrun with a most luxuriant 
 vegetation, and with countless troops of wild horses 
 and herds of wild cattle, but thinly peopled, partly 
 with Indians and partly with the Gauchos, or descend- 
 ants of the Spanish, existing in a state of the most 
 hideous hostility and hatred one towards another. 
 The Gauchos, inflamed with all the ancient demoniacal 
 cruelty and revenge of the Spaniards, — the Indians, 
 educated, raised, and moulded by ages of the most 
 inexpiable wrongs into an active and insatiable spirit 
 of vengeance, coming, like the whirlwind from the 
 deserts, as fleet and unescapable, to burn, destroy, 
 and exterminate — in a word, to inflict on the Gauchos 
 all the evils of injury and death that they and their 
 fathers have inflicted on them. As Captain Head 
 scoured across those immense plains, from Buenos 
 
168 COLONIZATION 
 
 Ayres, and across the Andes to Chili, he was ever 
 and anon coming to the ruins of huts where the 
 Indians had left the most terrible traces of their fury. 
 It may be well to state, in his own words, what every 
 family of the Gauchos is liable to : — 
 
 " In invading the country, the Pampas Indians 
 generally ride all night, and hide themselves on the 
 ground during the day; or if they do travel, crouch 
 almost under the bellies of their horses, who, by this 
 means, appear to be dismounted and at liberty. They 
 usually approach the huts at night, at a full gallop, 
 with their usual shriek, striking their mouths with 
 their hands ; and this cry, which is to intimidate their 
 enemies, is continued through the whole of the dread- 
 ful operation. 
 
 " Their first act is to set fire to the roof of the hut, 
 and it is almost too dreadful to fancy what the feelings 
 of a family must be, when, after having been alarmed 
 by the barking of the dogs, which the Gauchos always 
 keep in great numbers, they first hear the wild cry 
 which announces their doom, and in an instant after- 
 wards find the roof burning over their heads. 
 
 '* As soon as the families rush out, which they of 
 course are obliged to do, the men are wounded by 
 the Indians with their lances, which are eighteen feet 
 long; and as soon as they fall, they are stripped of 
 their clothes ; for the Indians, who are very desirous 
 to get the clothes of the Christians, are careful not to 
 have them spotted with blood. While some torture 
 the men, others attack the children, and will literally 
 run the infants through the body with their lances, 
 and raise them to die in the air. The women are 
 also attacked ; and it would form a true but dreadful 
 
ANb CHRISTIANITY. 169 
 
 picture to describe tlieir fate, as it is decided by the 
 momentary gleam which the burning roof throws 
 upon their countenances. 
 
 " The old women, and the ugly young ones, are 
 instantly butchered; but the young and beautiful are 
 id6ls by whom even the merciless hand of the savage 
 is arrested. Whether the poor girls can ride or not, 
 they are instantly placed upon horses, and when the 
 hasty plunder of the hut is concluded, they are driven 
 away from its smoking ruins, and from the horrid 
 scene which surrounds it. At a pace which in Europe 
 is unknown, they gallop over the trackless regions 
 before them, feed upon mare's flesh, sleeping on the 
 ground, until they arrive in the Indian's territory, 
 when they have instantly to adopt the wild life of 
 their captors." 
 
 Scenes of such horrors, where the mangled remains 
 of the victims were still lying around the black ruins 
 of their huts, which Captain Head passed, are too 
 dreadful to transcribe. But what are the feelings of 
 the Gaucho towards these terrible enemies ? Captain 
 Head asked a Gaucho what they did with their Indian 
 prisoners when they took any. — "To people accus- 
 tomed to the cold passions of England, it would be 
 impossible to describe the savage, inveterate, furious 
 hatred which exists between the Gauchos and the 
 Indians. The latter invade the country for the ecs- 
 tatic pleasure of murdering the Christians, and in the 
 contests which take place between them, mercy is un- 
 known. Before I was quite aware of those feelings, 
 I was galloping with a very fine-looking Gaucho who 
 had been fighthig with the Indians, and after listening 
 to his report of the killed and wounded, I happened, 
 
170 COLONIZATION 
 
 very simply, to ask him how many prisoners they had 
 taken. The man replied with a look which I shall 
 never forget— he clenched his teeth, opened his lips, 
 and then sawing his fingers across his bare throat for a 
 quarter of a minute, bending towards me, with his spurs 
 sticking into his horse's sides, he said, in a sort of low, 
 choking voice, ' Se matan todas,' — we kill them all!" 
 Here then we have a thinly populated country in- 
 habited, so far as it is inhabited at all, by men that 
 are inspired towards each other by the spirit of fiends. 
 It is impossible that civilization can ever come there 
 except by some fresh and powerful revolution. We 
 hear of the new republics of South America, and 
 naturally look for more evidences of good from the 
 spirit of liberty : but in the towns we find the people 
 indolent, ignorant, superstitious, and most filthy ; and 
 in the country naked Indians on horseback, scouring 
 the wilds, and making use of the very animals by 
 which the Spaniards subjugated them, to scourge and 
 exterminate their descendants. In the opinion of 
 Captain Head, they only want fire-arms, which one 
 day they may get, to drive them out altogether ! And 
 what are they whom they would drive out? Only 
 another kind of savages. People who, calling them- 
 selves Christians, live in most filthy huts swarming 
 with vermin — sit on skeletons of horses' heads in- 
 stead of chairs — lie during summer out of doors in 
 promiscuous groups — and live entirely on beef and 
 water ; the beef, chiefly mare's flesh, being roasted on 
 a long spit, and every one sitting round and cutting 
 off pieces with long knives. The cruelty and beast- 
 liness of their nature exceeding even that of the 
 Indians themselves. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 171 
 
 This then is the result of three centuries of blood- 
 shed and tyranny in those regions — one species of 
 barbarism merely substituted for another. What a 
 different scene to that which the same countries 
 would now have exhibited, had the Jesuits not been 
 violently expelled from their work of civilization by 
 the lust of gold and despotism. " When we compare," 
 says Captain Head, " the relative size of America with 
 the rest of the world, it is singular to reflect on the 
 history of these fellow-creatures, who are the abori- 
 gines of the land ; and after viewing the wealth and 
 beauty of so interesting a country, it is painful to con- 
 sider what the sufferings of the Indians have been, and 
 still may be. Whatever may be their physical or na- 
 tural character *• . . still they are the human beings 
 placed there by the Almighty ; the country belonged 
 to them ; and they are therefore entitled to the regard 
 of every man who has religion enough to believe that 
 God has made nothing in vain, or whose mind is just 
 enough to respect the persons and the rights of his 
 fellow-creatures.' ' 
 
 The view I have been enabled in my space to take 
 of the treatment of the South Americans by their 
 invaders, is necessarily a mere glance, — for, unfor- 
 
 * '• I sincerely believe they are as fine a set of men as ever existed, 
 under the circumstances in which they are placed. In the mines I 
 have seen them using tools which our miners declared they had not 
 strength to work with, and carrying burdens which no man in 
 England could support ; and I appeal to those travellers who have 
 been carried over the snow on their backs, whether they were able to 
 have returned the compliment ; and if not, what can be more gro- 
 tesque than the figure of a civilized man riding upon the shoulders of a 
 fellow-creature whose physical strength he has ventured to despise?" 
 
 Head's Rough Notes, p. 112. 
 
172 COLONIZATION 
 
 tunately for the Christian name and the name of 
 humanity, the history of blood and oppression there is 
 not more dreadful than it is extensive. I have not 
 staid to describe the conduct of the French, Dutch, 
 and English, in their possessions on the southern con- 
 tinent, simply because they are only too much like 
 those of the Spaniards and Portuguese — they form 
 no bright exception, and we shall only too soon meet 
 with these refined nations in other regions. 
 
 Note. — The fate of Venezuela ought not to be 
 quite passed over. It is a striking instance of the 
 indifference with which the lives and fortunes of a 
 whole nation are often handed over by great kings to 
 destruction as a mere matter of business. Charles V. 
 of Spain being deeply indebted to a trading house of 
 Augsburgh, the Welsers, gave them this province. 
 They, in their turn, made it over to some German 
 military mercenaries, who overrun the whole country 
 in search of mines, and plundered and oppressed the 
 people with the most dreadful rapacity. In the course 
 of a few years their avarice and exactions had so com- 
 pletely exhausted and ruined the province that the 
 Germans threw it up, and it fell again into the hands 
 of the Spaniards, but in such a miserable condition 
 that it continued to languish and drag on a miserable 
 existence, if it has even recovered from its fatal in- 
 juries at the present time. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 173 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 
 
 Son mui buenos Catolicos, pero mui malos Christianos ; — They are 
 very good Catholics, but nevertheless very bad Christians indeed. 
 
 Saying of an old Catholic priest. Ward's Mexico. 
 Most of the countries in India have been filled with tyrants who 
 prefer piracy to commerce — who acknowledge no right but that of 
 power ; and think that whatever b practicable is just. 
 
 The Abbe Raynal. 
 
 Scarcely had Columbus made known the New World 
 when the Portuguese, under Vasco de Gama, opened 
 the sea-path to the East Indies. Those affluent and 
 magnificent regions, which had so long excited the 
 wonder and cupidity of Europe, and whose gems, 
 spices, and curious fabrics, had been introduced over- 
 land by the united exertions of the Arabs, the 
 Venetians, and Genoese, were now made accessible 
 by the great highway of the ocean; and the Pope 
 generously gave all of them to the Portuguese ! The 
 language of the Pontiff was like the language of 
 another celebrated character to our Saviour, and 
 founded on about as much real right : " All these 
 kingdoms will I give unto thee, if thou wilt fall down 
 
174 COLONIZATION 
 
 and worship me." The Portuguese were nothing 
 loath. They were, in the expressive language of a 
 great historian, "all on fire for plunder and the pro- 
 pagation of their religion V Away, therefore, they 
 hastened, following the sinuous guidance of those 
 African coasts which they had already traced out — on 
 which they had already commenced that spoliation and 
 traffic in men which for three centuries was to grow 
 only more and more extensive, dreadful, and detest- 
 able — " those countries where," says M. Malte Brun, 
 " tyranny and ignorance have not had the power to 
 destroy the inexhaustible fecundity of the soil, but 
 have made them, down 'to the present times, the 
 theatre of eternal robbery, and one vast market of 
 human blood." 
 
 They landed in Calicut, under Gama, in 1498, and 
 speedily gave sufficient indications of the object of 
 their visit, and the nature of their character.' But in 
 India they had more formidable obstacles to their 
 spirit of dominance and extermination than they and 
 the Spaniards had found in the New World. They 
 beheld themselves on the limits of a vast region, 
 inhabited by a hundred millions of people — countries 
 of great antiquity, of a higher civilization, and under 
 the rule of active and military princes. Populous 
 cities, vast and ancient temples, palaces, and other 
 public works ; a native literature, science handed 
 down from far-oif times, and institutions of a fixed 
 and tenacious caste, marked them as a people not so 
 easily to be made a prey of as the Mexicans or Peru- 
 vians. Peaceful as were the habits, and bloodless as 
 were the religion and the social principles of a vast 
 body of the Hindoos, their rulers, whether the de- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 175 
 
 scendants of the great Persian and Tartar conquerors, 
 and Mahomedans in faith, or of their own race and 
 religion, were disposed enough to resist any foreign 
 aggression. At sea, indeed, swarmed the Moorish 
 fleets, which had long enjoyed the monopoly of the 
 trade of these rich and inexhaustible regions; but 
 these they soon subdued. Their conquests and cruel- 
 ties were therefore necessarily confined chiefly to the 
 coasts and to the paradisiacal islands which stud the 
 Indian seas, and, as Milton has beautifully expressed 
 it, cast their spicy odours abroad, till 
 
 Many a league 
 Cheered with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. 
 
 We must take a rapid view of the Portuguese in 
 India, — for our object is not a history of European con- 
 quests, but of European treatment of the natives of 
 the countries they have entered ; and the atrocities of 
 the Portuguese in the East are too notorious to re- 
 quire tracing minutely, and step by step in their pro- 
 gress. Every reader is familiar with the transactions 
 between Gama and the Zamorin of Calicut, through 
 the splendid poem of Camoens. Alvarez Cabral, the 
 discoverer of Peru, who succeeded him, was by no 
 means particular in his policy. On the slightest sus- 
 picion of evil intention, he fell upon the people and 
 made havoc amongst them. The inhabitants of Ca- 
 licut, between the intrigues of the Moorish merchants ^ 
 and those of the Portuguese adventurers, were always 
 the dupes and the sufferers. They attempted to drive 
 out the Portuguese, and Cabral, in revenge, burnt all 
 the Arabian vessels in the harbour, cannonaded the 
 town, and then sailed, first to Cochin, and then to 
 Cananor. These and other places being tributary to 
 
176 COLONIZATION 
 
 the Zamorin, received them as saviours, and enabled 
 them to build forts, to gain command of the seas, and 
 drive from them the ships of the Zamorin and the 
 Moors. But the celebrated Alphonso Albuquerque 
 made the most rapid strides, and extended the con- 
 quests of the Portuguese there beyond any other com- 
 mander. He narrowly escaped with his life in endea- 
 vouring to sack and plunder Calicut. He seized on 
 Goa, which thenceforward became the metropolis of 
 all the Portuguese settlements in India. He con- 
 quered Molucca, and gave it up to the plunder of his 
 soldiers. The fifth part of the wealth thus thievishly 
 acquired, was reserved for the king, and was purchased 
 on the spot by the merchants for 200,000 piece§ of 
 gold. Having established a garrison in the conquered 
 city, he made a traitor Indian, who had deserted from 
 the king of Molucca, and had been an instrument in 
 the winning of the place, supreme magistrate ; but 
 again finding Utimut, the renegade, as faithless to 
 himself, he had him and his son put to death, even 
 though 100,000 pieces of gold, a bait that was not 
 easily resisted by these Christian marauders, was 
 offered for their lives. He then proceeded to Ormuz 
 in the Persian Gulph, which was a great harbour for 
 the Arabian merchants ; reduced it, placed a garrison 
 in it, seized on fifteen princes of the blood, and carried 
 them off to Goa. Such were some of the deeds of this 
 celebrated general, whom the historians in the same 
 breath in which they record these unwarrantable acts 
 of violence, robbery and treachery, term an excellent 
 and truly glorious commander. He made a descent 
 on the isle of Ceylon, and detached a fleet to the Mo- 
 luccas, which established a settlement in those delight- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 177 
 
 ful regions of the cocaa, the sago-tree, the nutmeg, 
 and the clove. The kings of Persia, of Siam, Pegu, 
 and others, alarmed at his triumphant progress, sought 
 his friendship ; and he completed the conquest of the 
 Malabar coast. With less than forty thousand troops 
 the Portuguese struck terror, says the historian, " into 
 the empire of Morocco, the barbarous nations of 
 Africa, the Mamelucs, the Arabians, and all the 
 eastern countries from the island of Ormuz to China." 
 How much better for their pretensions to Christianity, 
 and for their real interests, if they had struck them 
 with admiration of that faith and integrity, and of 
 those noble virtues which Christianity can inspire, and 
 which were never yet lost on the attention of nations 
 where they have been righteously displayed. But 
 the Portuguese unfortunately did not understand what 
 Christianity was. Their notions of religion made 
 avarice, lust, and cruelty, all capable of dwelling 
 together in one heart; and, in the language of their 
 own historians, the vessels bound for the east were 
 crowded with adventurers who wanted to enrich them- 
 selves, secure their country, and make proselytes. 
 They were on the eve of opening a most auspicious 
 intercourse with China, when some of these adven- 
 turers, under Simon Andrada, appeared on the coast. 
 This commander treated the Chinese in the same 
 manner as the Portuguese had been in the habit of 
 treating all the people of Asia. He built a fort with- 
 out permission, in the island of Taman, from whence 
 he took opportunities of pillaging, and extorting 
 money from all the ships bound from, or to, all the 
 ports of China. He carried off young girls from the 
 eoast; he seized upon the men and made them slaves; 
 I 2 
 
178 COLONIZATION 
 
 he gave himself up to the most licentious acts of 
 piracy, and the most shameful dissoluteness. His 
 soldiers and sailors followed his example with avidity ; 
 and the Chinese, enraged at such outrages, fell upon 
 them, drove them from the coast, and for a long time 
 refused all overtures of trade from them. 
 
 In Japan, they were for a time more fortunate. 
 They exported, in exchange for European goods or 
 commodities, from India, gold, silver, and copper to the 
 value of about 634,000/. annually. They married the 
 richest heiresses, and allied themselves to the most 
 powerful families. 
 
 " With such advantages," says the Abbe Raynal, 
 " the avarice as well as the ambition of the Portuguese 
 might have been satisfied. They were masters of the 
 coast of Guinea, Arabia, Persia, and the two penin- 
 sulas of India. They were possessed of the Moluccas, 
 Ceylon, and the isles of Sunda, while their settlement 
 at Macao insured to them the commerce of China and 
 Japan. Throughout these immense regions, the will 
 of the Portuguese was the supreme law. Earth and 
 sea acknowledged their sovereignty. Their authority 
 was so absolute, that things and persons were depen- 
 dent upon them, and moved entirely by their direc- 
 tions. No native, nor private person dared to make 
 voyages, or carry on trade, without obtaining their 
 permission and passport. Those who had this liberty 
 granted them, were prohibited trading in cinnamon, 
 ginger, pepper, timber, and many other articles, of 
 which the conquerors reserved to themselves the ex- 
 clusive benefit. 
 
 " In the midst of so much glory, wealth, and con- 
 quest, the Portuguese had not neglected that part of 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 179 
 
 Africa which lies between the Cape of Good Hope 
 and the Red Sea, and in all ages has been famed for 
 the richness of its productions. The Arabians had been 
 settled there for several ages ; they had formed along 
 the coast of Zanguebar several small independent 
 states, abounding in mines of silver and gold. To 
 possess themselves of this treasure was deemed by the 
 Portuguese an indispensable duty. Agreeable to this 
 principle, these Arabian merchants were attacked and 
 subdued about the year 1508. Upon their ruin was 
 established an empire extending from Sofala as far 
 as Melinda, of which the island of Mozambique was 
 made the centre. 
 
 " These successes properly improved, might have 
 formed a power so considerable that it could not have 
 been shaken ; but the vices and follies of some of their 
 chiefs, the abuse of ^riches and power, the wantonness 
 of victory, the distance of their own country, changed 
 the character of the Portuguese. Religious zeal, 
 which had added so much force and activity to their 
 courage, now produced in them nothing but ferocity. 
 They made no scruple of pillaging, cheating, and 
 enslaving the idolaters. They supposed that the 
 pope, in bestowing the kingdoms of Asia on the 
 Portuguese monarchs, had not withholden the pro- 
 perty of individuals from their subjects. Being abso- 
 lute masters of the Eastern seas, they extorted a tribute 
 from the ships of every country; they ravaged the 
 coasts, insulted the princes, and became the terror and 
 scourge of all nations. 
 
 " The king of Sidor was carried oflf from his own 
 palace, and murdered, with his children, whom he 
 had entrusted to the care of the Portuguese. 
 
180 COLONIZATION 
 
 " At Ceylon, the people were not suffered to cul- 
 tivate the earth, except for their new masters, who 
 treated them with the greatest barbarity. 
 
 "At Goa they established the inquisition, and who- 
 ever was rich became a prey to the ministers of that 
 infamous tribunal. 
 
 " Faria, who was sent out against the pirates from 
 Malacca, China, and other parts, made a descent on 
 the island of Calampui, and plundered the tombs of 
 the Chinese emperors. 
 
 " Sousa caused all the pagodas on the Malabar 
 coast to be destroyed, and his people inhumanly mas- 
 sacred the wretched Indians who went to weep over 
 the ruins of their temples. 
 
 " Correa terminated an obstinate war with the king 
 of Pegu, and both parties were to swear on the books 
 of their several religions to observe the treaty. Cor- 
 rea swore on a collection of songs, and thought by 
 this vile stratagem to elude his engagement. 
 
 " Nuno d* Acughna attacked the isle of Daman on 
 the coast of Cambaya. The inhabitants offered to 
 surrender to him if he would permit them to carry off 
 their treasures. This request was refused, and Nuno 
 put them all to the sword. 
 
 " Diego de Silveira was cruizing in the Red Sea. 
 A vessel richly laden saluted him. The captain came 
 on board, and gave him a letter from a Portuguese 
 general, which was to be his passport. The letter 
 contained only these words: I desire the captains of 
 ships belonging to the king of Portugal, to seize upon 
 this Moorish vessel as lawful prize. 
 
 " Henry Garcias, when governor of the Moluccas, 
 was requested by the king of Tidore, who was ill, to 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 181 
 
 send him a physician. Garcias accordingly sent one 
 who villanously poisoned him. He then made a de- 
 scent upon the island ; besieged the capital, took it, 
 plundered it, and used the inhabitants very cruelly. 
 This event happening in time of peace, and without 
 the least provocation, caused an implacable hatred to 
 the Portuguese amongst all the people, not only of 
 that island, but of all the Moluccas. 
 
 " In a short time the Portuguese preserved no 
 more humanity or good faith with each other than 
 with the natives. Almost all the states, where they 
 had the command, were divided into factions. There 
 prevailed everywhere in their manners, a mixture of 
 avarice, debauchery, cruelty, and devotion. They had 
 most of them seven or eight concubines, whom they 
 kept to work with the utmost rigour, and forced from 
 them the money they gained by their labour. Such 
 treatment of women was very repugnant to the spirit 
 of chivalry. The chiefs and principal officers admitted 
 to their tables a multitude of those singing and danc- 
 ing women, with which India abounds. Effeminacy 
 introduced itself into their houses arid armies. The 
 officers marched to meet the enemy in palanquins. 
 That brilliant courage which had confounded so many 
 nations, existed no longer amongst them. They were 
 with difficulty brought to fight, except for plunder. 
 In a short time, the king no longer received the 
 tribute which was paid him by one hundred and fifty 
 eastern princes. It was lost on its way from them to 
 him. Such corruption prevailed in the finances, that 
 the tributes of S9vereigns, the revenues of provinces, 
 which ought to have been immense, the taxes levied on 
 gold, silver, and spices, on the inhabitants of the con- 
 
182 COLONIZATION 
 
 tinent and islands, were not sufficient to keep up a 
 few citadels, and to fit out the shipping necessary for 
 the protection of trade." 
 
 Some gleams of valour blazed up now and then ; 
 Don Juan de Castro revived the spirit of the settlers 
 for awhile; Ataida, and fresh troops from Portugal 
 repelled the native powers, who, worn out with en- 
 durance of outrages and indignities, and alive to the 
 growing effeminacy of their oppressors, rose against 
 them on all hands. But these were only temporary 
 displays. The island of Amboyna was the first to 
 avenge itself; and the words addressed to them by 
 one of its citizens are justly descriptive of their real 
 character. A Portuguese had, at a public festival, 
 seized upon a very beautiful woman, and regardless 
 of all decency, had proceeded to the grossest of out- 
 rages. One of the islanders, named Genulio, armed 
 his fellow-citizens ; after which he called together the 
 Portuguese, and addressed them in the following 
 manner: — " To revenge affronts so cruel as those we 
 have received from you, requires actions, not words ; 
 yet we will speak to you. You preach to us a Deity, 
 who delights, you say, in generous actions ; but theft, 
 murder, obscenity, and drunkenness are your common 
 practice: your hearts are inflamed with every vice. 
 Our manners can never agree with yours. Nature 
 foresaw this when she separated us by immense seas, 
 and you have overleaped her barriers. This audacity, 
 of which you are not ashamed to boast, is a proof of 
 the corruption of your hearts. Take my advice ; 
 leave to their repose those nations that resemble you 
 so little ; go, fix your habitations amongst those who 
 are as brutal as yourselves ; an intercourse with you 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 183 
 
 would be more fatal to us than all the evils which it 
 is in the power of your God to inflict upon us. We 
 renounce your alliance for ever. Your arms are more 
 powerful than ours; but we are more just than you, 
 and we do not fear them. The Itons are from this 
 day your enemies ; — fly from this country, and beware 
 how you approach it again." 
 
 Equally detested in every quarter, they saw a con- 
 federacy forming to expel them from the east. All 
 the great powers of India entered into the league, 
 and for two or three years carried on their prepara- 
 tions in secret. Their old enemy, the Zamorin, 
 attacked Manjalor, Cochin, and Cananor. The king 
 of Cambaya attacked Chaul, Daman, and Baichaim. 
 The king of Achen laid siege to Malacca. . The king 
 of Ternate made war on them in the Moluccas. 
 Agalachem, a tributary to the Mogul, imprisoned the 
 Portuguese merchants at Surat; and the queen of 
 Gareopa endeavoured to drive them out of Onor, 
 The exertions of Ataida averted immediate destruc- 
 tion ; but a more formidable power was now preparing 
 to expel them from their ill-acquired and ill-governed 
 possessions, — the Dutch. In little more than a cen- 
 tury from the appearance of the Portuguese in India, 
 this nation drove them from Malacca and Ceylon ; from 
 most of their possessions on the coast of Malabar ; and 
 had, moreover, made settlements on the Coromandel 
 coast. It was high time that this reign of crime and 
 terror came to an end, had a better generation suc- 
 ceeded them. After the death of Sebastian, and the 
 reduction of Portugal by Philip II., the last traces of 
 order or decency seemed to vanish from the Indian 
 settlements. Portugal itself exhibited, with the usual 
 
184 COLONIZATION 
 
 result of ill-gotten wealth, a scene of miserable ex- 
 tremes — profusion and poverty. Those who had been 
 in India were at once indolent and wealthy; the 
 farmer and the artizan were reduced to the most abject 
 condition. "In the colonies the Portuguese gave 
 themselves," says Raynal, " up to all those excesses 
 which make men hated, though they had not courage 
 enough left to make them feared. They were mon- 
 sters. Poison, fire, assassination, every sort of crime 
 was become familiar to them ; nor were they private 
 persons only who were guilty of such practices, — men 
 in office set them the example ! They massacred the 
 natives ; they destroyed one another. The governor 
 just arrived, loaded his predecessor with irons, that he 
 might deprive him of his wealth. The distance of the 
 scene, false witnesses, and large bribes secured every 
 crime from punishment." 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 185 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE DUTCH IN INDIA. 
 
 A free nation, which is its own master, is born to command the 
 ocean. It cannot secure the dominion of the sea without seizing upon 
 the land, which belongs to the first possessor ; that is, to him who is 
 able to drive out the ancient inhabitants. Tbey are to be enslaved 
 by force or fraud, and exterminated in order to get their possessions. 
 
 Rai/nal. 
 
 We come now to the conduct of a Protestant people 
 towards the natives of their colonies; and happy would 
 it be if we came with this change to a change in their 
 policy and behaviour. But the Dutch, though zea- 
 lous Protestants at home, were zealous Catholics 
 abroad in cruelty and injustice. Styling themselves 
 a reformed people, * there was no reformation in their 
 treatment of Indians or Caffres. They, as well as 
 other Protestant nations, cast oiF the outward forms 
 and many of the inward superstitions of the Roman 
 church : but they were far, far indeed from compre- 
 hending Christianity in its glorious greatness ; in the 
 magnificence of its moral elevation ; in the sublimity 
 of its objects; in the purity of its feeling, and the 
 
186 COLONIZATION 
 
 beautiful humanity of its spirit. The temporal yoke 
 of Rome was cast off, but the mental yoke still lay 
 heavy on their souls, and it required ages of bitter 
 experience to restore sufficiently their intellectual 
 sensibility to permit them even to feel it. Popery 
 was dethroned in them, but not destroyed. They 
 recognized their rights as meii, and the slavery under 
 which they had been held; but their vision was not 
 enough restored to allow them to recognize the rights 
 of others, and to see that to hold others in slavery, 
 was only to take themselves out of the condition of 
 the victim, to put themselves into the more odious, 
 criminal, and eventually disastrous one of the tyrant. 
 They were still infinitely distant from the condition 
 of freemen. They were free from the immediate 
 compulsion of their spiritual task-masters, but they 
 were not free from the iron which they had thrust 
 into their very souls, — from ihe corrupt morals, the 
 perverted principles, the debased tone of feeling and 
 perception, which the Papal church had inflicted on 
 them. The wretched substitution of ceremonies, 
 legends, and false maxims, for the grand and rege- 
 nerating doctrines of Christian truth, which had ex- 
 isted for more than a thousand years, had generated a 
 spurious morality, which ages only could obliterate. 
 It is a fallacy to suppose that the renunciation of the 
 Romish faith, carried with it a renunciation of the 
 habits of mind which it had created, — or that those 
 who called themselves reformers were thoroughly 
 reformed, and rebaptized with the purity and fulness 
 of Christianity. Many and glorious examples were 
 given of zeal for the right, even unto death ; of the 
 love of truth, which cast out all fear of flames and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 187 
 
 scaffolds ; of that devotion to the dictates of conscience 
 that shrunk from no sacrifice, however severe; — but 
 even in the instance of the noblest of those noble 
 martyrs, it would be self-delusion for us to suppose 
 that they had sprung from the depth of darkness to 
 perfect light at one leap ; that they rose instantane- 
 ously from gross ignorance of Christian truths, to the 
 perfection of knowledge ; that they had miraculously 
 cast off at one effort all slavery of spirit, and the dim- 
 ness of intellectual vision, which were the work of 
 ages. They had regained the wish and the will to 
 explore the regions of truth ; they had made some 
 splendid advances, and shewn that they descried some 
 of the most prominent features of the genuine faith : 
 but they were, the best of them, but babes in Christ. 
 To become full-grown men required the natural lapse 
 of time ; and to expect them to start up into the full 
 standard of Christian stature, was to expect an im- 
 possibility. And if the brightest and most intrepid, 
 and most honest intellects were thus circumstanced, 
 what was the condition of the mass ? That may be 
 known by calling to mind how readily Protestants 
 fell into the spirit of persecution, and into all the 
 cruelties and outrages of their Popish predecessors. 
 Ages upon ages were required, to clear away the 
 dusty cobwebs of error, with which a spurious faith 
 had involved them ; and to raise again the Christian 
 world to the height of Christian knowledge. We 
 are yet far and very far from having escaped from the 
 one, or risen to the other. There are yet Christian 
 truths, of the highest import to humanity, that are 
 treated as fables and fanatic dreams by the mass of 
 the Christian world ; and we shall see as we proceed, 
 
188 COLONIZATION 
 
 that to this hour the most sacred principles of Chris- 
 tianity are outraged ; and the worst atrocities of the 
 worst ages of Rome are still perpetrated on millions 
 of millions of human beings, over whom we vaunt our 
 civilization, and to whom we present our religion as 
 the spirit of heaven, and the blessing of the earth. 
 
 When, therefore, we see the Dutch, ay, and the 
 English, and the Anglo-Americans, still professing 
 truth and practising error ; still preaching mercy, and 
 perpetrating the basest of cruelties ; still boasting of 
 their philosophy and refinement, and enacting the 
 savage ; still vapouring about liberty, with a whip in 
 one hand and a chain in the other ; still holding the 
 soundness of the law of conquest, and the equal 
 soundness of the commandment, Not to covet our 
 neighbour's goods; the soundness of the belief that 
 Negroes, Indians, and Hottentots, are an inferior 
 species, and the equal soundness of the declaration 
 that "God made of one blood all the nations of the 
 earth;" still declaring that Love, the love of our 
 neighbour as of ourselves, is the great distinction of 
 Christians ; — and yet persisting in slavery, war, massa- 
 cres, extermination of one race, and driving out of 
 others from their ancient and hereditary lands — we 
 must bear in mind that we behold only the melancholy 
 result of ages of abandonment of genuine Christianity 
 for a base and accommodating forgery of its name, — 
 and the humiliating spectacle of an inconsistency in 
 educated nations unworthy of the wildest dwellers in 
 the bush, entailed on us by the active leaven of that 
 very faith which we pride ourselves in having re- 
 nounced. We have, indeed, renounced mass and the 
 confessional, and the purchase of indulgences; but 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 189 
 
 have tenaciously retained the mass of our tyrannous 
 propensities. We practise our crimes without confess- 
 ing them ; we indulge our worst desires without even 
 having the honesty to pay for it; and the old, spurious 
 morality, and political barbarism of Rome, are as 
 stanchly maintained by us as ever — while we claim to 
 look back on Popery with horror, and on our present 
 condition as the celestial light of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. 
 
 What a glorious thing it would have been, if when 
 the Dutch and English had appeared in America and 
 the Indies, they had come there too as Protestants and 
 Reformed Christians ! If they had protested against the 
 cruelties and aggressions of the popish Spaniards and 
 Portuguese — if they had reformed all their rapacious 
 practices, and remedied their abuses — if they had, in- 
 deed, shown that they were really gone back to the 
 genuine faith of Christ, and were come to seek honest 
 benefit by honest means ; to exchange knowledge for 
 wealth, and to make the Pagans and the Mahomedans 
 feel that there was in Christianity a power to refine, 
 to elevate, and to bless, as mighty as they professed. 
 But that day was not arrived, and has only par- 
 tially arrived yet, and that through the missions. 
 For anything that could be discovered by their prac- 
 tice, the Dutch and English might be the papists, and 
 the Spaniards and Portuguese the reformed. From 
 their deeds the natives, wherever they came, could 
 only imagine their religion to be something espe- 
 cially odious and mischievous. 
 
 The Dutch having thrown off the Spanish yoke at 
 home, applied themselves diligently to commerce ; and 
 they would have continued to purchase from the 
 
190 COLONIZATION 
 
 Spaniards and Portuguese, the commodities of the 
 eastern and western worlds, to supply their customers 
 .therewith ; — but Philip II., smarting under the loss of 
 the Netherlands, and being master of both Spain and 
 Portugal, commanded his subjects to hold no dealings 
 with his hated enemies. Passion and resentment are 
 the worst of counsellors, and Philip soon found it so 
 in this instance. The Dutch, denied Indian goods in 
 Portugal, determined to seek them in India itself. 
 They had renounced papal as well as Spanish autho- 
 rity, and had no scruples about interfering with the 
 pope's grant of the east to the Portuguese. They soon, 
 therefore, made their appearance in the Indian seas, 
 and found the Portuguese so thoroughly detested 
 there, that nothing was easier for them than to avenge 
 past injuries and prohibitions, by supplanting them. 
 It was only in 1594 that Philip issued his impolitic 
 order that they should not be permitted to receive 
 goods from Portuguese ports,-— and by 1602, under 
 their admirals, Houtman and Van Neck, they had 
 visited Madagascar, the Maldives, and the isles of 
 Sunda ; they had entered into alliance with the prin- 
 cipal sovereigns of Java ; established factories in several 
 of the Moluccas, and brought home abundance of pep- 
 per, spices, and other articles. Numerous trading com- 
 panies were organized ; and these all united by the 
 policy of the States-general into the one 4nemorable 
 one of the East India Company, the model and original 
 of all the numerous ones that sprung up, and especially 
 of the far greater one under the same name, of Eng- 
 land. The natives of India had now a similar spectacle 
 exhibited to their eyes, which South America had 
 about the same period— the Christian nations, boasting 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 191 
 
 •f their superior refinement and of their heavenly re- 
 igion, fighting like furies, and intriguing like fiends 
 )ne against another. But the Portuguese were now 
 become debauched and effeminate, and were unsup- 
 ported by fresh reinforcements from Europe; the 
 Dutch were spurred on by all the ardour of united 
 revenge, ambition, and the love of gain. The time 
 was now come when the Portuguese were to expiate 
 their perfidy, their robberies, and their cruelties; and 
 the prediction of one of the kings of Persia was ful- 
 filled, who, asking an ambassador just arrived at Goa, 
 how many governors his master had beheaded since 
 the establishment of his power in India, received for 
 answer — " none at all." " So much the worse," re- 
 plied the monarch, " his authority cannot be of long 
 duration in a country where so many acts of outrage 
 and barbarity are committed." 
 
 The Dutch commenced their career in India with 
 an air of moderation that formed a politic contrast with 
 the arrogance and pretension of the Portuguese. 
 They fought desperately with the Portuguese, but 
 they kept a shrewd eye all the time on mercantile op- 
 portunities. They sought to win their way by duplicity, 
 rather than by decisive daring. By these means they 
 gradually rooted their rivals out of their most impor- 
 tant stations in Java, the Moluccas, in Ceylon, on the 
 Coromandel and Malabar coasts. Their most lucrative 
 posts were at Java, Bantam, and the Moluccas. No 
 sooner had they gained an ascendency than they as- 
 sumed a haughtiness of demeanor that even surpassed 
 that of the Portuguese ; and in perfidy and cruelty, 
 they became more than rivals. All historians have re- 
 marked with astonishment the fearful metamorphosis 
 
192 COLONIZATION 
 
 which the Dutch underwent in their colonies. At 
 home they were moderate, kindly, and liberal ; abroad 
 their rapacity, perfidy, and infamous cruelty made 
 them resemble devdls rather than men. Whether 
 contending with their European rivals, or domineering 
 over the natives, they showed no mercy and no remorse. 
 Their celebrated massacre of the English in Amboyna 
 has rung through all lands and languages, and is 
 become one of the familiar horrors of history. There 
 is, in fact, no narrative of tortures in the annals oH 
 the Inquisition, that can surpass those which the Dutch 
 practised on their English rivals on this occasion. 
 The English had five factories in the island of Amboy- 
 na, and the Dutch determined to crush them. For 
 this purpose they got up a charge of conspiracy against 
 the English — collected them from all their stations 
 into the town of Amboyna, and after forcing confes- 
 sions of guilt from them by the most unheard-of tor- 
 ture, put them to death. The following specimen of the 
 agonies which Protestants could inflict on their fellow- 
 protestants, may give an idea of what sort of increase 
 of religion the Reformation. had brought these men. 
 
 " Then John Clark, who also came from Hitto, 
 was fetched in, and soon after was heard to roar out 
 amain. They tortured him with fire and water for 
 two hours. The manner of his torture, as also that of 
 Johnson's and Thompson's, was as foUoweth : — 
 
 " They first hoisted him by the hands against a 
 large door, and there made him fast to two staples of 
 iron, fixed on both sides at the top of the door-posts, 
 extending his arms as wide as they could stretch them. 
 When thus fastened, his feet, being two feet from the 
 ground, were extended in the same manner, and made 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 193 
 
 ast to the bottom of the door-trees on each side. 
 Then they tied a cloth about the lower part of his 
 ace and neck, so close that scarce any water could 
 jass by. That done, they poured water gently upon 
 lis head till the cloth was full up to his mouth and 
 nostrils, and somewhat higher, so that he could not 
 draw breath but he must swallow some, which being 
 continually poured in softly, forced all his inward 
 parts to come out at his nose, ears, and eyes, and 
 often, as it were choking him, at length took away 
 his breath, and caused him to faint away. Then they 
 took him down in a hurry to vomit up the water, and 
 when a little revived, tied him up again, using him 
 as before. In this manner they served him three or 
 four times, till his belly was as big as a tun, his 
 cheeks like bladders, his eyes strutting out beyond 
 his forehead ; yet all this he bore without confessing 
 anything, insomuch that the fiscal and tormentors 
 reviled him, saying he was a devil, and no man ; or 
 was enchanted, that he could bear so much. Here- 
 upon they cut off his hair very short, supposing he 
 had some witchcraft hidden therein. Now they 
 hoisted him up again, and burnt him with lighted 
 candles under his elbows and arm-pits, in the palms 
 of his hands, and at the bottoms of his feet, even till 
 th& fat dropped out on the candles. Then they ap- 
 plied fresh ones ; and under his arms they burnt so 
 deep that his inwards might be seen." — History of 
 Voyages to the East and West Indies, 
 
 And all this that they might rule sole kings over 
 the delicious islands of cloves and cinnamon, nutmegs 
 and mace, camphor and coffee, areca and betel, gold, 
 pearls and precious stones ; every one of them more 
 
194 COLONIZATION 
 
 precious in the eyes of the thorough trader, whether 
 he call himself Christian or Infidel, than the blood of 
 his brother, or the soul of himself. 
 
 To secure the dominion of these, they compelled 
 the princes of Ternate and Tidore to consent to the 
 rooting up of all the clove and nutmeg trees in the 
 islands not entirely under the jealous safeguard of 
 Dutch keeping. For this they utterly exterminated 
 the inhabitants of Banda, because they would not 
 submit passively to their yoke. Their lands were 
 divided amongst the white people, who got slaves 
 from other islands to cultivate them. For this Ma- 
 lacca was besieged, its territory ravaged, and its navi- 
 gation interrupted by pirates ; Negapatan was twice 
 attacked; Cochin was engaged in resisting the kings 
 of Calicut and Travancore; and Ceylon and Java 
 have been made scenes of perpetual disturbances. 
 These notorious dissensions have been followed by as 
 odious oppressions, which have been practised at Japan, 
 China, Cambodia, Arracan, on the banks of the 
 Ganges, at Achen, Coromandel, Surat, in Persia, at 
 Bassora, Mocha, and other places. For this they 
 encouraged and established in Celebes a system of 
 kidnapping the inhabitants for slaves which converted 
 that island into a perfect hell. 
 
 Sir Stamford Raffles has given us a most appalling 
 picture of this system, and the miseries it produced, in 
 an official document in his History of Java. In this 
 document it is stated that whole villages were made 
 slaves of; that there was scarcely a state or a family 
 that had not its assortment of these unhappy beings, 
 who had been reduced to this condition by the most 
 cruel and insidious means. There are few things in 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. ^ 195 
 
 history more darkly horrible than this kidnapping sys- 
 tem of the Celebes. The Vehme Gerichte, or secret 
 tribunals of Germany, were nothing to the secret 
 prisons of the Celebes. In Makasar, and other places, 
 these secret prisons existed ; and such was the dreadful 
 combination of power, influence, and avarice, in this 
 trade, — for the magistrates and princes were amongst 
 the chief dealers in it, — that no possibility of exposing 
 or destroying these dens of thieves existed. Any man, 
 woman, or child might be suddenly pounced on, and 
 immured in one of these secret prisons till there were 
 sufficient victims to send to the slave-ships. They 
 were then marched out chained at midnight, and put 
 on board. Any one may imagine the terror and 
 insecurity which such a state of things occasioned. 
 Everybody knew that such invisible dungeons of 
 despair were in the midst of them, and that any mo- 
 ment he might be dragged into one of them, beyond 
 the power or any hope of rescue. 
 
 " A rich citizen," says this singular official report, 
 "who has a sufficient number of emissaries called 
 bondsmen, carries on this trade of kidnapping much 
 more easily than a poor one does. The latter is 
 often obliged to go himself to the Kdmpong Bupis, or 
 elsewhere, to take a view of the stolen victim, and to 
 carry him home ; while the former quietly smokes his 
 pipe, sure that his thieves will in every corner find 
 out for him sufficient game without his exerting him- 
 self at all. The thief, the interpreter, the seller, aire 
 all active in his service, because they are paid by him. 
 In some cases the purchaser unites himself with the 
 seller to deceive the interpreter, while in others the 
 interpreter agrees with the thief and pretended seller 
 
196 COLONIZATION 
 
 to put the victim into the hands of the purchaser. 
 What precautions, what scrutiny can avail, when we 
 reflect, that the profound secresy of the prisons is 
 equalled only by the strict precautions in carrying the 
 person on board ?" 
 
 The man-stealers were trained for the purpose. 
 They marked out their victims, watched for days, and 
 often weeks, endeavoured to associate themselves with 
 them, and beguile them into some place where they 
 might be easily secured. Or they pounced on them 
 in the fields or woods. They roved about in gangs 
 during the night, and in solitary places. None dare 
 cry for help, or they were stabbed instantly, even 
 though it were before the door of the purchaser. 
 
 What hope indeed could there be for anybody, 
 when the authorities were in this diabolical league ? 
 and this was the custom of legalizing a kidnapping : "A 
 person calling himself an interpreter, repairs, at the 
 desire of one who says that he has bought a slave, to 
 the secretary's office, accompanied by any native who, 
 provided with a note from the purchaser, gives himself 
 out as the seller. For three rupees, a certificate of 
 sale in the usual form is immediately made out ; three 
 rupees are paid to the notary ; two rupees are put into 
 the hands of the interpreter ; the whole transaction is 
 concluded, and the purchaser has thus become the 
 owner of a free-born man, who is very often stolen 
 without his (the purchaser's) concurrence; but about this 
 he does not trouble himself, for the victim is already 
 concealed where nobody can find him; nor can the 
 transaction become public, because there never were 
 found more faithful receivers than the slave-traders. 
 It is a maxim with them, in their own phrase, " never 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 197 
 
 to betray their prison." Both purchaser and seller are 
 often fictitious — the public officers being in league 
 with the interpreters. By such means it is obvious a 
 stolen man is as easily procured as if he were already 
 pinioned at the door of his purchaser. You have only- 
 to give a rupee to any one to say that he is the seller, 
 and plenty are ready to do that. Numbers maintain 
 themselves on such profits, and slaves are thus often 
 bribed against their own possessors. The victims are 
 never examined, nor do the Dutch concern themselves 
 about the matter, so that at any time any number of 
 orders for transport may, if necessary, be prepared 
 before-hand with the utmost security. 
 
 " Let us," continues the report, " represent to our- 
 selves this one town of Makasar, filled with prisons, 
 the one more dismal than the other, which are stuffed 
 with hundreds of wretches, the victims of avarice and 
 tyranny, who, chained in fetters, and taken away from 
 their wives, children, parents, friends, and comforts, 
 look to their future destiny with despair." 
 
 On the other hand, wives missing their husbands, 
 children their parents, parents their children, with 
 their hearts filled with rage and revenge, were running 
 through the streets, if possible, to discover where 
 their relatives were concealed. It was in vain. They 
 were sometimes stabbed, if too troublesome in their 
 inquiries ; or led on by false hopes of ransom, till they 
 were themselves thrown into debt, and easily made 
 a prey of too. Such was the terror universally ex- 
 isting in these islands when the English conquered 
 them, that the inhabitants did not dare to walk the 
 streets, work in the fields, or go on a journey, except 
 in companies of five or six together, and well armed. 
 
198 COLONIZATION 
 
 Such were some of the practices of the Protestant 
 Dutch. But their sordid villany in gaining posses- 
 sion of places was just as great as that in getting 
 hold of people. Desirous of becoming masters of 
 Malacca, they bribed the Portuguese governor to 
 betray it into their hands. The bargain was struck, 
 and he introduced the enemy into the city in 1641. 
 They hastened to his house, and massacred him, to 
 save the bribe of 500,000 livres— 21,875/. of English 
 money! The Dutch commander then tauntingly 
 asked the commander of the Portuguese garrison, as 
 he marched out, when he would come back again to 
 the place. The Portuguese gravely replied — " When 
 your crimes are greater than ours f" 
 
 Desirous of seizing on Cochin on the coast of Ma- 
 labar, they had no sooner invested it than the news 
 of peace between Holland and Portugal arrived ; but 
 they kept this secret till the place was taken, and 
 when reproached by the Portuguese with their base 
 conduct, they coolly replied — " Who did the same on 
 the coast of Brazil ?" 
 
 Like all designing people, they were as suspicious of 
 evil as they knew themselves capable of it. On first 
 touching at the isle of Madura, the prince intimated 
 his wish to pay his respects to the commander on board 
 his vessel. It was assented to ; but when the Dutch 
 saw the number of boats coming off, they became 
 alarmed, fired their cannon on the unsuspicious crowd, 
 and then fell upon the confounded throng with such fury 
 that they killed the prince, and the greater part of his 
 followers. 
 
 Their manner of first gaining a footing in Batavia 
 is thus recorded by the Javan historians. "In the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 199 
 
 first place they wished to, ascertain the strength of 
 Jdkatra (the native town on the ruins of which Batavia 
 was built). They therefore landed like mata-matas 
 (peons or messengers) ; the captain of the ship dis- 
 guising himself with a turban, and accompanying 
 several Khojas, (natives of the Coromandel coast.) 
 When he had made his observations, he entered upon 
 trade ; offering however much better terms than were 
 just, and making more presents than were necessary. 
 A friendship thus took place between him and the 
 prince : when this was established, the captain said that 
 his ship was in want of repairs, and the prince allowed 
 the vessel to come up the river. There the captain 
 knocked out the planks of the bottom, and sunk the 
 vessel, to obtain a pretence for further delay, and then 
 requested a very small piece of ground on which to 
 build a shed for the protection of the sails and other 
 property during the repair of the vessel. This being 
 granted, the captain raised a wall of mud, so that 
 nobody could know what he was doing, and continued 
 to court the favour of the prince. He soon requested 
 as much more land as could be covered by a buffalo's 
 hide, on which to build a small pondok. This being 
 complied with, he cut the hide into strips, and claimed 
 all the land he could inclose with them. He went on 
 with his buildings, engaging to pay all the expenses 
 of raising them. When the fort was finished, he threw 
 down his mud wall, planted his cannon, and refused 
 to pay a doitP' 
 
 But the whole history of the Dutch in Java is too 
 long for our purpose. It may be found in Sir Stam- 
 ford Raffles's two great quartos, and it is one of 
 the most extraordinary relations of treachery, bribery. 
 
200 COLONIZATION 
 
 massacre and meanness. The slaughter of the Chinese 
 traders there is a fearful transaction. On pretence of 
 conveying those who yielded out of the country, they 
 took them to sea, and threw them overboard. On 
 one occasion, they demanded the body of Surapdti — 
 a brave man, who rose from the rank of a slave to 
 that of a chief, and a very troublesome one to them— 
 from the very grave. They placed it upright in a 
 chair, the commandant approached it, made his obei- 
 sance, treated it as a living person, with an expression 
 of ironical mockery, and the officers followed his ex- 
 ample. They then burnt the body, mixed it with 
 gun-powder, and fired a salute with it in honour of 
 the victory. 
 
 Such was their treatment of the natives, that the 
 population of one province, Banyuawngi, which in 
 1750 amounted to upwards of 80,000 souls, in 1811 
 was reduced to 8,000. It is no less remarkable, says 
 Sir Stamford Raffles, that while in all the capitals of 
 British India the population has increased, wherever 
 the Dutch influence has prevailed the work of depo- 
 pulation has followed. In the Moluccas the oppres- 
 sions and the consequent depopulation was monstrous. 
 Whenever the natives have had the opportunity they 
 have fled from the provinces under their power to the 
 native tracts. With the following extract from Sir 
 Stamford Raffles we will conclude this dismal notice 
 of the deeds of a European people, claiming to be 
 Christian, and what is more, Protestant and Re- 
 formed. 
 
 " Great demands were at all times made on the 
 peasantry of Java for the Dutch army. Confined in un- 
 healthy garrisons, exposed to unnecessary hardships and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 201 
 
 privations, extraordinary casualties took place amongst 
 them, and frequent new levies became necessary, 
 vi'hile the anticipation of danger and suffering pro- 
 duced an aversion to the service, which was only 
 aggravated by the subsequent measures of cruelty and 
 oppression. The conscripts raised in the provinces 
 were usually sent to the metropolis by water; and 
 though the distance be short between any two points 
 of the island, a mortality similar to that of a slave-ship 
 in the middle passage took place on board these re- 
 ceptacles of reluctant recruits. They were generally 
 confined in the stocks till their arrival at Batavia. . . . 
 Besides the supply of the army, one half of the male 
 population of the country was constantly held in readi- 
 ness for other public services, and thus a great portion 
 of the effective hands were taken from their families, 
 and detained at a distance from home in labours which 
 broke their spirit and exhausted their strength. Dur- 
 ing the administration of Marshal Daendals, it has been 
 calculated that the construction of public roads alone 
 destroyed the lives of at least ten thousand workmen. 
 The transport of government stores, and the capri- 
 cious requisitions of government agents of all classes, 
 perpetually harassed, and frequently carried off num- 
 bers of the people. If to these drains we add the 
 waste of life occasioned by insurrections which tyranny 
 and impolicy excited in Cheribon ; the blighting 
 effects of the coffee monopoly, and forced services in 
 the Priang'en Regencies, and the still more desolating 
 operations of the policy pursued, and the conse- 
 quent anarchy produced, in Bantam, we shall have 
 some idea of the depopulating causes which existed 
 under the Dutch administration." 
 k2 
 
202 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN INDIA. — SYSTEM OF TERRITORIAL 
 ACQUISITION. 
 
 ^' And Ahab came into his house, heavy and displeased, because of 
 the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him ; for he had 
 said, I will not give thee the inheritance of my fathers. And he laid 
 him down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no 
 bread. But Jezebel his wife came to him and said unto him. Why 
 is thy spirit so sad that thou eatest no bread ? And he said unto her, 
 Because I spoke unto Naboth the Jezreelite, and said unto him, give 
 me thy vineyard for money ; or else if it please thee, I will give thee 
 another vineyard for it ; and he answered I will not give thee my 
 vineyard. 
 
 And Jezebel, his wife, said unto him, Dost thou now govern the 
 kingdom of Israel ? Arise, and eat bread, and let thine heart be merry ; 
 I will give thee the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite. 
 
 *♦**»** 
 
 And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 
 Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of Israel, which is in Samaria ; 
 behold he is in the vineyard of Naboth, whither he is gone down to 
 possess it. And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the 
 Lord, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession ?' 1 Kings xxi. 4-19. 
 
 The appearance of the Europeans in India, if the 
 inhabitants could have had the Bible put into their 
 hands, and been told that that was the law which these 
 strangers professed to follow, must have been a curious 
 spectacle. They who professed to believe the com- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 203 
 
 mands that they should not steal, covet their neigh- 
 bour's goods, kill, or injure — must have been seen 
 with wonder to be the most covetous, murderous, and 
 tyrannical of men. But if the natives could have read 
 the declaration of Christ — " By this shall men know 
 that ye are my disciples, that ye love one another," — 
 the wonder must have been tenfold; for never did men 
 exhibit such an intensity of hatred, jealousy, and 
 vengeance towards each other. Portuguese, Dutch, 
 French, English, and Danes, coming together, or one 
 after the other, fell on each other's forts, factories, and 
 ships with the most vindictive fury. They attacked 
 each other at sea or at land ; they propagated the most 
 infamous characters of each other wherever they came, 
 in order to supersede each other in the good graces of 
 the people who had valuable trading stations, or were 
 in possession of gold or pearls, nutmegs or cinnamon, 
 coffee, or cotton cloth. They loved one another to that 
 degree that they were ready to join the natives any 
 where in the most murderous attempts to massacre 
 and drive away each other. What must have seemed 
 most extraordinary of all, was the English expelling 
 with rigour those of their own countrymen who ven- 
 tured there without the sanction of the particular tra- 
 ding company which claimed a monopoly of Indian 
 commerce. The rancour and pertinacity with which 
 Englishmen attacked and expelled Englishmen, was 
 even more violent than that which they shewed to 
 foreigners. The history of European intriguers, espe- 
 cially of the Dutch, Portuguese, English, and French, 
 in the East, in which every species of cruelty and bad 
 faith have been exhibited, is one of the most melan- 
 choly and humiliating nature. Those of the English 
 
204 COIyONIZATION 
 
 and French did not cease till the very last peace. At 
 every outbreak of war between these nations in 
 Europe, the forts and factories and islands which 
 had been again and again seized upon, and again 
 and again restored by treaties of peace in India, 
 became immediately the scene of fresh aggressions, 
 bickerings, and enormities. The hate which burnt in 
 Europe was felt hotly, even to that distance ; and men 
 of another climate, who had no real interest in the 
 question, and to whom Europe was but the name of a 
 distant region which had for generations sent out 
 swarms of powerful oppressors, were called upon to 
 spill their blood and waste their resources in these 
 strange deeds of their tyrants. It is to be hoped that 
 the bulk of this evil is now past. In the peninsula of 
 India, to which I am intending in the following chapters 
 to confine my attention, the French now retain only 
 the factories of Chandernagore, Caricall, Mahee, and 
 Pondicherry; the Portuguese Goa, Damaun, and Diu; 
 the Dutch, Serampore and Tranquebar ; while the 
 English power had triumphed over the bulk of the 
 continent — over the vast regions of Bengal, Madras, 
 Bombay, the Deccan and the Carnatic — over a surface 
 of upwards of five hundred thousand square miles, and 
 a population of nearly a hundred millions of people ! 
 These states are either directly and avowedly in 
 British possession, or are as entirely so under the 
 name of allies. We may well, therefore, leave the 
 history of the squabbles and contests of the European 
 Christians with each other for this enormous power, 
 disgraceful as that history is to the name of Chris- 
 tianity — to inquire how we, whose ascendency has so 
 wonderfully prevailed there, have gained this dominion 
 and how we have used it. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 205 
 
 When Europe sought your subject-realms to gain. 
 And stretched her giant sceptre o'er the main. 
 Taught her proud barks the winding way to shape, 
 And braved the stormy spirit of the Cape ; 
 Children of Brama ! then was Mercy nigh, 
 To wash the stain of blood's eternal dye ? 
 Did Peace descend to triumph and to save, 
 When free-born Britons crossed the Indian wave 1 
 Ah no ! — to more than Rome's ambition true, 
 The muse of Freedom gave it not to you ! 
 She the bold route of Europe's guilt began, 
 And, in the march of nations, led the van ! 
 
 Pleasures of Hope. 
 
 We are here to witness a new scene of conquest. 
 The Indian natives were too powerful and populous 
 to permit the Europeans to march at once into the 
 heart of their territories, as they had done into South 
 America, to massacre the people, or to subject then> 
 to instant slavery and death. The old inhabitants of 
 the empire, the Hindoos, were indeed, in general, a 
 comparatively feeble and gentle race, but there were 
 numerolis' and striking exceptions ; the mountaineers 
 were, as mountaineers in other countries, of a hardy, 
 active, and martial character. The Mahrattas, the 
 Rohillas, the Seiks, the Rajpoots, and others, were 
 fierce and formidable tribes. But besides this, the 
 ruling princes of the country, whether Moguls or 
 Hindoos, had for centuries maintained their sway by 
 the same power by which they had gained it, that of 
 arms. They could bring into the field immense bodies 
 of troops, which though found eventually unable to 
 compete with European power and discipline, were 
 too formidable to be rashly attacked, and have cost 
 oceans of blood and treasure finally to reduce them 
 to subjection. Moreover, the odium which the Spa- 
 
Q06 COLONIZATION 
 
 niards and Portuguese had everj'^where excited by 
 their unceremonious atrocities, may be supposed to 
 have had their effect on the English, who are a re- 
 flecting people; and it is to be hoped also that the 
 progress of sound policy and of Christian knowledge, 
 however slow, may be taken into the account in some 
 degree. They went out too under different circum- 
 stances — not as mere adventurers, but as sober traders, 
 aiming at establishing a permanent and enriching 
 commerce with these countries ; and if Christianity, if 
 the laws of justice and of humanity were to be violated, 
 it must be under a guise of policy, and a form of law. 
 We shall not enter into a minute notice of the 
 earliest proceedings of the English in India, because 
 for upwards of a century from the formation of their 
 first trading association, those proceedings are compara- 
 tively insignificant. During that period Bombay had 
 been ceded as part of a marriage-portion by the Por- 
 tuguese to Charles II. ; factories had been established 
 at Surat, Madras, Masulipatam, Visigapatam, Cal- 
 cutta, and other places ; but it was not till the different 
 chartered companies were consolidated into one grand 
 company in 1708, styled " The United Company of 
 Merchants trading to the East Indies/' that the 
 English affairs in the east assumed an imposing 
 aspect. From that period the East India Company 
 commenced that career of steady grasping at dominion 
 over the Indian territories, which has never been 
 relaxed for a moment, but, while it has for ever worn 
 the grave air of moderation, and has assumed the lan- 
 guage of right, has gone on adding field to field and 
 house to house — swallowing up state after state, and 
 prince after prince, till it has finally found itself the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 207 
 
 sovereign of this vast and splendid empire, as it would 
 fain persuade itself and the world, by the clearest 
 claims, and the most undoubted justice. By the laws 
 and principles of modern policy, it may be so; but 
 by the eternal principles of Christianity, there never 
 was a more thorough repetition of the hankering 
 after Naboth's vineyards, of the "slaying and taking 
 possession " exhibited to the world. It is true that, as 
 the panegyrists of our Indian policy contend, it may 
 be the design of Providence that the swarming mil- 
 lions of Indostan should be placed under our care, that 
 they may enjoy the blessings of English rule, and of 
 English knowledge : but Providence had no need that 
 we should violate all his most righteous injunctions to 
 enable him to bring about his designs. Providence, 
 the Scriptures tell us, intended that Jacob should 
 supersede Esau in the heritage of Israel: but Provi- 
 dence had no need of the deception which Rebecca and 
 Jacob practised, — had no need of the mess of pottage 
 and the kid-skins, to enable Him to eflfect his object. 
 We are much too ready to run the wilful career of our 
 own lusts and passions, and lay the charge at the door 
 of Providence. It is true that English dominion is, 
 or will become, far better to the Hindoos than that 
 of the cruel and exacting Moguls ; but who made us 
 the judge and the ruler over these people? If the 
 real object of our policy and exertions in India has 
 been the achievement of wealth and power, as it un- 
 doubtedly has, it is pitiful and hypocritical to endea- 
 vour to clothe it with the pretence of working the 
 will of Providence, and seeking the good of the 
 natives. We shall soon see which objects have been 
 most zealously and undeviatingly pursued, and by 
 
208 COLONIZATION 
 
 what means. If our desires have been, not to enrich 
 and aggrandize ourselves, but to benefit the people and 
 rescue them from the tyranny of bad rulers, heaven 
 knows what wide realms are yet open to our benevo- 
 lent exertions ; what despots there are to pull down ; 
 what miserable millions to relieve from their oppres- 
 sions; — and when we behold Englishmen levelling their 
 vengeance against such tyrants, and visiting such un- 
 happy people with their protective power, where 
 neither gold nor precious merchandise are to be won 
 at the same time, we may safely give the amplest cre- 
 dence and the profoundest admiration to their claims of 
 disinterested philanthropy. If they present themselves 
 as the champions of freedom, and the apostles of social 
 amelioration, we shall soon have opportunities of ask- 
 ing how far they have maintained these characters. 
 
 Mr. Auber, in his " History of the British Power in 
 India," has quoted largely from letters of the Board of 
 Directors of the Company, passages to shew how sin- 
 cerely the representatives of the East India Company 
 at home have desired to arrest encroachment on the 
 rights of the natives ; to avoid oppressive exactions ; 
 to resist the spirit of military and political aggression. 
 They have from year to year proclaimed their wishes 
 for the comfort of the people ; they have disclaimed all 
 lust of territorial acquisition ; have declared that they 
 were a mercantile, rather than a political body; and 
 have rebuked the thirst of conquest in their agents, 
 and endeavoured to restrain the avidity of extortion in 
 them. Seen in Mr. Auber's pages, the Directors 
 present themselves as a body of grave and honorable 
 merchants, full of the most admirable spirit of modera- 
 tion, integrity, and benevolence; and we may give 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 209 
 
 them the utmost credit for sincerity in their profes- 
 sions and desires. But unfortunately, we all know 
 what human nature is. Unfortunately the power, the 
 wealth, and the patronage brought home to them by 
 the very violation of their own wishes and maxims 
 were of such an overwhelming and seducing nature, 
 that it was in vain to resist them. Nay, in such 
 colours does the modern philosophy of conquest and 
 diplomacy disguise the worst transactions between one 
 -State and another, that it is not for plain men very 
 readily to penetrate to the naked enormity beneath. 
 When all the world was applauding the success of 
 Indian aflfairs, — the extension of territory, the ability 
 of their governors, the valour of their troops; and 
 when they felt the flattering growth of their greatness, 
 it required qualities far higher than mere mercantile 
 probity and good intentions, to enable them to strip 
 away the false glitter of their official transactions, and 
 sternly assure themselves of the unholiness of their 
 nature. We may therefore concede to the Directors 
 of the East India Company, and to their governors 
 and officers in general, the very best intentions, know- 
 ing as we do, the force of influences such as we have 
 already alluded to, and the force also of modern diplo- 
 matic and military education, by which a policy and 
 practices of the most dismal character become gra- 
 dually to be regarded not merely unexceptionable, 
 but highly honorable. We may allow all this, and 
 yet pronounce the mode by which the East India 
 Company has possessed itself of Hindostan, as the 
 most revolting and unchristian that can possibly be 
 conceived. The most masterly policy, regarded inde-r 
 pendent of its morale^ and a valour more than Roman 
 
210 COLONIZATION 
 
 have been exhibited by our governors-generals and 
 armies on the plains of Hindostan : but if there ever 
 was one system more Machiavelian — more appro- 
 priative of the shew of justice where the basest injus- 
 tice was attempted — more cold, cruel, haughty and 
 unrelenting than another, — it is the system by which 
 the government of the different states of India has 
 been wrested from the hands of their respective 
 princes and collected into the grasp of the British 
 power. Incalculable gainers as we have been by this 
 system, it is impossible to review it without feelings 
 of the most poignant shame and the highest indig- 
 nation. Whenever we talk to other nations of British 
 faith and integrity, they may well point to India in 
 derisive scorn. The system which, for more than a 
 century, was steadily at work to strip the native princes 
 of their dominions, and that too under the most sacred 
 pleas of right and expediency, is a system of torture 
 more exquisite than regal or spiritual tyranny ever 
 before discovered; such as the world has nothing 
 similar to shew. 
 
 Spite of the repeated instructions sent out by the 
 Court of Directors to their servants in India, to avoid 
 territorial acquisitions, and to cultivate only honest 
 and honorable commerce ; there is evidence that from 
 the earliest period the desire of conquest was enter- 
 tained, and was, spite of better desires, always too 
 welcome to be abandoned. In the instructions for- 
 warded in 1689, the Directors expounded themselves in 
 the following words : " The increase of our revenue 
 is the subject of our care, as much as our trade: — His 
 that must maintain our force when twenty accidents 
 may interrupt our trade ; — 't is that must make us a 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 211 
 
 nation in India. Without that, we are but as a great 
 number of interlopers, united by his Majesty's royal 
 charter, fit only to trade \vhere nobody of power 
 thinks fit only to prevent us; and upon this account 
 it is that the wise Dutch, in all their general advices 
 which we have seen, write ten paragraphs concerning 
 their government, their civil and military policy, war- 
 fare, and the increase of their revenue, for one para- 
 graph they write concerning trade/'* 
 
 Spite of all pretences to the contrary — spite of all 
 advices and exhortations from the government at 
 home of a more unambitious character, this was the 
 spirit that never ceased to actuate the Company, and 
 was so clearly felt to be it, that its highest servants, 
 in the face of more peaceful injunctions, and in the 
 face of the Act of Parliament strictly prohibiting 
 territorial extension, went on perpetually to add con- 
 quest to conquest, under the shew of necessity or 
 civil treaty; and they who offended most against the 
 letter of the law, gratified most entirely the spirit of 
 the company and the nation. Who have been looked 
 upon as so eminently the benefactors and honourers 
 of the nation by Indian acquisition as Lord Clive, 
 Warren Hastings, and the Marquess Wellesley? It 
 is for the determined and successful opposition to the 
 ostensible principles and annually reiterated advices 
 of the Company, that that very Company has heaped 
 wealth and distinctions upon these and other persons, 
 and for which it has just recently voted an additional 
 pension to the latter nobleman. 
 
 What then is this system of torture by which the 
 possessions of the Indian princes have been wrung 
 
 * Mills's Hist, of British India, i. 74. Bruce, iii. 78. 
 
212 COLONIZATION 
 
 from them ? It is this — the skilful application of the 
 process by which cunning men create debtors, and 
 then force them at once to submit to their most exor- 
 bitant demands. From the moment that the English 
 felt that they had the power in India to " divide and 
 conquer,*' they adopted the plan of doing it rather by 
 plausible manoeuvres than by a bold avowal of their 
 designs, and a more honest plea of the right of con- 
 quest — the ancient doctrine of the strong, which they 
 began to perceive was not quite so much in esteem as 
 formerly. Had they said at once, these Mahomedan 
 princes are arbitrary, cruel, and perfidious — we will 
 depose them, and assume the government ourselves — 
 we pretend to no other authority for our act than our 
 ability to do it, and no other excuse for our conduct 
 than our determination to redress the evils of the people : 
 that would have been a candid behaviour. It would 
 have been so far in accordance with the ancient doctrine 
 of nations that little would have been thought of it ; 
 and though as Christians we could not have applauded 
 the " doing evil that good might come of it," yet had 
 the promised benefit to more than eighty millions of 
 people followed, that glorious penance would have 
 gone far in the most scrupulous mind to have justified 
 the crime of usurpation. But the mischief has been, 
 that while the exactions and extortions on the people 
 have been continued, and in many cases exaggerated, 
 the means of usurpation have been those glozing and 
 hypocritical arts, which are more dangerous from their 
 subtlety than naked violence, and more detestable be- 
 cause wearing the face, and using the language, of 
 friendship and justice. A fatal friendship, indeed, 
 has that of the English been to all those princes that 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 213 
 
 were allured by it. It has pulled them every one 
 from their thrones, or has left them there the con- 
 temptible puppets of a power that works its arbitrary 
 will through them. But friendship or enmity, the 
 result has been eventually the same to them. If they 
 resisted alliance with the encroaching English, they 
 were soon charged with evil intentions, fallen upon, 
 and conquered; if they acquiesced in the proflPered 
 alliance, they soon became ensnared in those webs of 
 diplomacy from which they never escaped, without the 
 loss of all honour and hereditary dominion — of every 
 thing, indeed, but the lot of prisoners where they had 
 been kings. The first step in the English friendship 
 with the native princes, has generally been to assist 
 them against their neighbours with troops, or to locate 
 troops with them to protect them from aggression. 
 For these services such enormous recompense was 
 stipulated for, that the unwary princes, entrapped by 
 their fears of their native foes rather than of their pre- 
 tended friends, soon found that they were utterly un- 
 able to discharge them. Dreadful exactions were 
 made on their subjects, but in vain. Whole provinces, 
 or the revenues of them, were soon obliged to be 
 made over to their grasping friends ; but they did not 
 suffice for their demands. In order to pay them their 
 debts or their interest, the princes were obliged to 
 borrow large sums at an extravagant rate. These 
 sums were eagerly advanced by the English in their 
 private and individual capacities, and securities 
 again taken on lands or revenues. At every step the 
 unhappy princes became more and more embarrassed, 
 and as the embarrassment increased, the claims of the 
 Company became proportionably pressing. In the 
 
214 COLONIZATION 
 
 technical phraseology of money-lenders, "the screw 
 was then turned," till there was no longer any en- 
 during it. The unfortunate princes felt themselves, 
 instead of being relieved by their artful friends, actu- 
 ally introduced by them into 
 
 •Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
 And rest can never dwell ; hope never comes 
 That comes to all ; but torture without end 
 Still urges. 
 
 To escape it, there became no alternative but to 
 throw themselves entirely upon the mercy of their 
 inexorable creditors, or to break out into armed 
 resistance. In the one case they found themselves 
 speedily stripped of every vestige of their power — 
 their revenues and management of their territories 
 given over to these creditors, which still never were 
 enough to liquidate their monstrous and growing 
 demands ; so that the next proposition was that they 
 should entirely cede their territories, and become 
 pensioners on their usurpers. In the other case, they 
 were at once declared perfidious and swindling, — no 
 faith was to be kept with them, — they were assaulted 
 by the irresistible arms of their oppressors, and inevi- 
 tably destroyed or deposed. 
 
 If they sought aid from another state, that became 
 a fortunate plea to attack that state too; and the 
 English were not contented to chastise the state thus 
 aiding its ancient neighbour, it was deemed quite suf- 
 ficient ground to seize and subjugate it also. There 
 was no province that was for a moment safe from this 
 most convenient system of policy, which feared public 
 opinion sufficiently to seek arguments to make a case 
 before it, but resolved still to seize, by hook or by 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 215 
 
 crook, all that it coveted. It did not suffice that a 
 province merely refused an alliance, if the proper 
 time was deemed to be arrived for its seizure — some 
 plea of danger or suspicion was set up against it. It 
 was called good policy not to wait for attack, but to 
 charge it with hostile designs, though not a hostile indi- 
 cation was given — it was assailed with all the forces 
 in the empire. Those princes that were once sub- 
 jected to the British power or the British friendship, 
 were set up or pulled down just as it suited their 
 pleasure. If necessary, the most odious stigmas 
 were fixed on them to get rid of them — they were 
 declared weak, dissolute, or illegitimate. If a prince 
 or princess was suspected of having wealth, some 
 villanous scheme was hatched to plunder him or her 
 of it. For more than a century this shocking system 
 was in operation, every day growing more daring in 
 its action, and more wide in its extent. Power both gave 
 security and augmented audacity — for every British 
 subject who was not belonging to the Company, and 
 therefore interested in its operations, was rigidly ex- 
 cluded from the country, and none could therefore 
 complain of the evil deeds that were there done under 
 the sun. It is almost incredible that so abominable 
 an influence could be for a century exercised over a 
 great realm, by British subjects, many of whom were 
 in all other respects worthy and most honourable men ; 
 and, what is more, that it could be sanctioned by the 
 British parliament, and admired by the British nation. 
 But we have yet the proofs to adduce, and unfortu- 
 nately they are only too abundant and conclusive. 
 Let us see them. 
 
 We will for the present pass the operations of Clive 
 
216 COLONIZATION 
 
 in the Carnatic at once to destroy the French influ- 
 ence there, and to set up Mahomet Ali, a creature 
 of the English. We shall anon see the result of that : 
 we will observe in the first place the manner of ob- 
 taining Bengal, as it became the head of the English 
 empire in India, and the centre of all future trans- 
 actions. 
 
 In 1756, Suraja Dowla, the Subahdar of Bengal, 
 demanded an officer belonging to him who, according tp 
 the custom amongst the colonists there, had taken re- 
 fuge at Calcutta. The English refused to give him 
 up. The Subahdar attacked and took the place. One 
 hundred and forty-six of the English fell into the con- 
 queror's hands, and were shut up for the night in the 
 celebrated Black-hole, whence only twenty-three were 
 taken out alive in the morning. It may be said in 
 vindication of the Subahdar, that the act of immur- 
 ing these unfortunate people in this horrible den was 
 not his, but that of the guards to whom they were 
 entrusted for the night, and who put them there as 
 in a place of the greatest security ; and it may be 
 added, not to the credit of the English, that this very 
 hlack-hole was the English prison, where they were in 
 the habit of confining their prisoners. As Mr. Mills 
 very justly asks — " What had they to do with a hlack- 
 hole? Had no hlack-hole existed, as none ought to 
 exist anywhere, least of all in the sultry and unwhole- 
 some climate of Bengal, those who perished in the 
 hlack-hole of Calcutta would have experienced a dif- 
 ferent fate." 
 
 On the news of the capture of Calcutta arriving at 
 Madras, a body of troops was dispatched under Ad- 
 miral Watson and Colonel Clive, for its recovery ; 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 217 
 
 which was soon effected, and Hoogly, a considerable 
 city about twenty-three miles further up the river, 
 was also attacked and reduced. A treaty was now 
 entered into with Suraja Dowla, the Subahdar, which 
 was not of long continuance ; for, lest the Subahdar, 
 who was not at bottom friendly to the English, as he 
 had in reality no cause, should form an alliance with 
 the French at Chandernagore, they resolved to depose 
 him ! This bold and unwarrantable scheme of depos- 
 ing a prince in his own undoubted territories, and that 
 by mere strangers and traders on the coast, is the 
 beginning of that extraordinary and unexampled as- 
 sumption which has always marked the conduct of the 
 English in India. Scarcely had they entered into 
 the treaty with this Subahdar than they resolved to 
 depose him because he would protect the French, who 
 were also permitted to hold a factory in his territory 
 as well as they. This audacious scheme was Clive's. 
 Admiral Watson, on the contrary, declared it an ex- 
 traordinary thing to depose a man they had so lately 
 made a solemn treaty with. But Clive, as he after- 
 wards avowed, when examined before the House of 
 Commons, declared that " they must now go further; 
 they could not stop there. Having established them- 
 selves by force and not by consent of the Nabob, he would 
 endeavour to drive them out again." This is the 
 robber's doctrine ; — having committed one outrage, a 
 second, or a series of outrages must be committed, to 
 prevent punishment, and secure the booty. But 
 having once entertained the idea of pulling the Subah- 
 dar from his throne, they did not scruple to add 
 treason and rebellion to the crime of invading the 
 rights of the sovereign. They began by debauching 
 
218 COLONIZATION 
 
 his own officers. They found out one Meer Jaffier 
 Khan, a man of known traitorous mind, who had been 
 paymaster-general under the former Subahdar, and 
 yet retained great power in the army. This wretch, 
 on condition of being placed on the throne, agreed to 
 betray his master, and seduce as many of the influen- 
 tial of his ofiicers as possible. The terms of this 
 diabolical confederacy between this base traitor and 
 the baser Christian English, as they stand in the first 
 parliamentary report on Indian affairs, and as related 
 by Orme in his History of India (ii. 133), and by 
 Mills (ii. 110), are very instructive* 
 
 The English had got an idea which wonderfully 
 sharpened their desire to depose Suraja Dowla, that 
 he had an enormous treasure. The committee (of 
 the council of Calcutta) really believed, says Mr. 
 Orme, the wealth of Suraja Dowla much greater than 
 it possibly could be, even if the whole life of the 
 late Nabob Aliverdi had not been spent in defending 
 his dominions against the invasions of ruinous ene- 
 mies ; and even if Suraja Dowla had reigned many, 
 instead of one year. They resolved, accordingly, not 
 to be sparing in their commands ; and the situation of 
 Meer Jaffier, and the manners and customs of the 
 country, made him ready to promise whatever they 
 desired. In the name of compensation for losses by 
 the capture of Calcutta, 10,000,000 rupees were pro- 
 mised to the English Company ; 5,000,000 rupees to 
 English inhabitants; 2,000,000 to the Indians, and 
 700,000 to the Armenian merchants. These sums 
 were specified in the formal treaty. Besides this, the 
 Committee resolved to ask 2,500,000 rupees for the 
 squadron, and the same amount for the army. " When 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 219 
 
 this was settled," says Lord Clive, " Mr. Becher (a 
 member) suggested to the committee, that he thought 
 that committee, who managed the great macliine of 
 government, was entitled to some consideration, as 
 well as the army and navy." Such a proposition in 
 such an assembly could not fail to appear eminently 
 reasonable. It met with a suitable approbation. Mr. 
 Becher informs us, that the sums received were 
 280,000 rupees by Mr. Drake the governor ; 280,000 
 by Col. Clive ; and 240,000 each by himself, Mr. 
 Watts, and Major Kilpatrick, the inferior members 
 of the committee. The terms obtained by favour of 
 the Company were, that all the French factories and 
 effects should be given up ; that the French should 
 be for ever excluded from Bengal ; that the territory 
 surrounding Calcutta to the distance of 600 yards 
 beyond the Mahratta ditch, and all the land lying 
 south of Calcutta as far as Culpee, should be granted 
 them on Zemindary tenure, the Company paying the 
 rent in the same manner as the other Zemindars. 
 
 Thus did these Englishmen bargain with a traitor 
 to betray his prince and country, — the traitor, for the 
 bribe of being himself made prince, not merely sell 
 his master, but give two millions three hundred and 
 ninety-eight thousand pounds sterling,* with valuable 
 privileges and property of the state, — while these 
 dealers in treason and rebellion pocketed each, from 
 two hundred and forty to two hundred and eighty 
 thousand pounds sterling ! A more infamous trans- 
 action is not on record. 
 
 To carry this wicked conspiracy into effect, the 
 
 * According to Orme, 2,750,000/. 
 
220 COLONIZATION 
 
 English took the field against their victim Suraja 
 Dowla ; and Meer Jafl&er, the traitor, in the midst of 
 of the engagement moved off, and went over to the 
 English with his troops — thus determining the fate of 
 a great kingdom, and of thirty millions of people, with 
 the loss of twenty Europeans killed and wounded, of 
 sixteen Sepoys killed, and only thirty-six wounded. 
 The unfortunate prince was soon afterwards seized 
 and assassinated by the son of this traitor Meer Jaffier. 
 The vices and inefficiency of this bad man soon com- 
 pelled the English to pull him down from the throne 
 into which they had so criminally raised him. They 
 then set up in his stead his son-in-law, Meer Causim. 
 This man for a time served their purpose, by the 
 activity with which he raised money to pay their claims 
 upon him. He resorted to every species of cruelty 
 and injustice to extort the necessary funds from his 
 unfortunate subjects. But about three years, nearly the 
 same period as their former puppet-nabob had reigned, 
 sufficed to weary them of him. He was rigorous 
 enough to raise money to pay them, but he was not tool 
 enough, when that was done, to humour every scheme 
 of rapacity which they dictated to him. They com- 
 plained of his not allowing their goods to pass duty- 
 free through his territories ; he therefore abolished all 
 duties, and thus laid open the trade to everybody. 
 This enraged them, and they determined to depose 
 him. Meer Causim, however, was not so readily dis- 
 missed as Meer Jaffier had been. He resisted vigo- 
 rously ; massacred such of their troops as fell into his 
 hands, and fleeing into Oude, brought them into war 
 with its nabob. What is most remarkable, they again 
 set up old Meer Jaffier, whom they had before deposed 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 221 
 
 for his crimes and his imbecility. But probably, from 
 their experience of Meer Causim, they now preferred 
 an easy tool to one with more self-will. In their 
 treaty with him they made a claim upon him for 
 ten lacs of rupees; which demand speedily grew to 
 twenty, thirty, forty, and finally to fifty-three lacs of 
 rupees. All delicacy was laid aside in soliciting the 
 payment, and one half of it was soon extorted from 
 him. The Subahdar, in fact, was now become the 
 merest puppet in their hands. They were the real 
 lords of Bengal, and in direct receipt of more than 
 half the revenues. Within less than ten years from 
 the disgraceful bargain with the traitor Meer Jaffier, 
 they had made Bengal their own, though they still 
 hesitated to avow themselves as its sovereigns ; they 
 had got possession of Benares ; they had acquired that 
 power over the Nabob of Oude, in consequence of the 
 successful war brought upon him by his alliance with 
 the deposed nabob Meer Causim, that would at any 
 time make them entirely his masters ; the Mogul him- 
 self was ready and anxious to obtain their friendship ; 
 they were, in short, become the far greatest power in 
 India. 
 
 Here then is an opening instance of the means by 
 which we acquired our territories in India; and the 
 language of Lord Clive, when he returned thither as 
 governor of Bengal in 1765, may shew what other 
 scenes were likely to ensue. " We have at last ar- 
 rived at that critical period which I have long fore- 
 seen ; I mean that period which renders it necessary 
 for us to determine whether we can or shall take the 
 whole to ourselves. Jaffier Ali Khan is dead. His 
 natural son is a minor ; but I know not whether he is 
 
222 COLONIZATION 
 
 yet declared successor. Sujah Dowla is beat from 
 his dominions. We are in possession of it; and it 
 is scarcely hyperbole to say — to-morrow the whole 
 Mogul empire is in our power. The inhabitants of the 
 country, we know by long experience, have no attach- 
 ment to any obligation. Their forces are neither 
 disciplined, commanded, nor paid like ours. Can it 
 then be doubtful that a large army of Europeans will 
 effectually preserve us sovereigns ?" 
 
 The scene of aggression and aggrandizement here 
 indicated, soon grew so wide and busy, that it would 
 far exceed the whole space of this volume to trace 
 even rapidly its great outlines. The Great Mogul, the 
 territories of Oude and Arcot, Mysore, Travancore, 
 Benares, Tanjore, the Mahrattas, the whole peninsula 
 in fact, speedily felt the effect of these views, in di- 
 plomatic or military subjection. We can point out no 
 fortunate exception, and must therefore content our- 
 selves with briefly touching upon some of the more 
 prominent cases. 
 
 The first thing that deserves attention, is the treat- 
 ment of the Mogul himself. This is the, statement of 
 it by the French historian : " The Mogul having been 
 driven out of Delhi by the Pattans, by whom his son 
 had been set up in his room, was wandering from one 
 province to another in search of a place of refuge in 
 his own territories, and requesting succour from his 
 own vassals, but without success. Abandoned by his 
 subjects, betrayed by his allies, without support and 
 without an army, he was allured by the power of the 
 English, and implored their protection. They pro- 
 mised to conduct him to Delhi, and re-establish him 
 on his throne ; but they insisted that he should pre- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 223 
 
 viously cede to them the absolute sovereignty over 
 Bengal. This cession was made by an authentic 
 act, attended by all the formalities usually practised 
 throughout the Mogul empire. The English, pos- 
 sessed of this title, which was to give a kind of legiti- 
 macy to their usurpation, at least in the eyes of the 
 vulgar, soon forgot the promises they had made. 
 They gave the Mogul to understand, that particular 
 circumstances would not suffer them to be concerned 
 in such an enterprise ; but some better opportunity 
 was to be hoped for ; and to make up for his losses, 
 they assigned him a pension of six millions of rupees, 
 (262,500/.), with the revenue of Allahabad, and Sha 
 Ichanabad, or Delhi, upon which that unfortunate 
 prince was reduced to subsist himself, in one of the 
 principal towns of Benares, where he had taken up his 
 residence. ' ' — liaynaL 
 
 Hastings, in fact, made it a reason for depriving 
 him again even of this pension, that he had sought 
 the aid of the Mahrattas, to do that which he had 
 vainly hoped from the English — to restore him to his 
 throne. This is Mills's relation of this fact, founded 
 on the fifth Parliamentary Report. — " Upon receiv- 
 ing from him the grant of the duannee, or the receipt 
 and management of the revenues of Bengal, Bahar, 
 and Orissa, it was agreed that, as the royal share of 
 these revenues, twenty-six lacs of rupees should be 
 annually paid to him by the Company. His having 
 accepted of the assistance of the Mahrattas to place 
 him on the throne of his ancestors, was now made use 
 of as a reason for telling him, that the tribute of these 
 provinces should be paid to him no more. Of the 
 honour, or the discredit, however, of this transaction. 
 
224 COLONIZATION 
 
 the principal share belongs not to the governor, but to 
 the Directors themselves ; who, in their letter to Ben- 
 gal, of the 11th of November 1768, had said, ' If the 
 emperor flings himself into the hands of the Mahrattas, 
 or any other power, we are disengaged from him, 
 and it may open a fair opportunity of loithholding the 
 twenty-six lacs we now pay him.' " Upon the whole, 
 indeed, of the measure dealt out to this unhappy 
 sovereign, — depriving him of the territories of Corah 
 and Allahabad ; depriving him of the tribute which 
 was due to him from these provinces of his which 
 they possessed — the Directors bestowed unqualified 
 approbation; and though they condemned the use 
 which had been made of their troops in subduing the 
 country of the Rohillas, they frankly declare, " We, 
 upon the maturest deliberation, confirm the treaty of 
 Benares." " Thus," adds Mills, " they had plundered 
 the unhappy emperor of twenty-six lacs per annum, 
 and the two provinces of Corah and Allahabad, which 
 they had sold to the Vizir for fifty lacs of rupees, on 
 the plea that he had forfeited them by his alliance 
 with the Mahrattas ;" as though he was not free, if 
 one party would not assist him to regain his rights, to 
 seek that assistance from another. 
 
 Passing over the crooked policy of the English, in 
 seizing upon the isles of Salsette and Bassein, near 
 Bombay, and treating for them afterwards, and all the 
 perfidies of the war for the restoration of Ragabah, 
 the Peshwa of the Mahrattas, the fate of the Nabob 
 of Arcot, one of their earliest allies, is deserving of par- 
 ticular notice, as strikingly exemplifying their policy. 
 They began by obtaining a grant of land in 1750, 
 surrounding Madras. They then were only too happy 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 225 
 
 to assist the Nabob against the French. For these 
 military aids, in which Ciive distinguished himself, the 
 English took good care to stipulate for their usually- 
 monstrous payments. Mahomed Ali, the nabob, 
 soon found that he was unable to satisfy the demands 
 of his allies. They urged upon him the maintenance 
 of large bodies of troops for the defence of his territo- 
 ries against these French and other enemies. This 
 threw him still more inextricably into debt, and there- 
 fore more inextricably into their power. He became 
 an unresisting tool in their hands. In his name the 
 most savage exactions were practised on his subjects. 
 The whole revenues of his kingdom, however, proved 
 totally inadequate to the perpetually accumulating de- 
 mands upon them. He borrowed money where he 
 could, and at whatever interest, of the English them- 
 selves. When this interest could not be paid, he made 
 over to them, under the name of tuncaus^ the revenues 
 of some portion of his domains. These assignments 
 directly decreasing his resources, only raised the de- 
 mands of his other creditors more violently, and the 
 fleecing of his subjects became more and more dread- 
 ful. In this situation, he began to cast his eyes on 
 the neighbouring states, and to incite his allies, by the 
 assertion of various claims upon them, to join him in 
 falling upon them, and thus to give him an opportu- 
 nity of paying them. This exactly suited their views. 
 It gave them a prospect of money, and of conquest 
 too, under the plausible colour of assisting their ally 
 in urging his just claims. They first joined him in fall- 
 ing on the Rajah of Tanjore, whom the Nabob claimed 
 as a tributary, and indebted to him in a large amount 
 of revenue. The Rajah was soon reduced to submis- 
 
 l2 
 
226 COLONIZATION 
 
 sion, and agreed to pay thirty lacs and fifty thousand 
 rupees, and to aid the Nabob in all his wars. Scarcely, 
 however, was this treaty signed, than they repented 
 of it ; thought they had not got enough ; hoped the 
 Rajah would not be exact to a day in his payment, in 
 which case they would fall on him again for breach of 
 treaty. It so happened; — they rushed out of their 
 camp, seized on part of Vellum, and the districts of 
 Coiladdy and Elangad, to the retention of which the 
 poor Rajah was obliged to submit. 
 
 This affair being so fortunately adjusted, the Nabob 
 called on his willing allies to attack the Marawars. 
 They too, he said, owed him money; and money 
 was what the English were always in want of. They 
 readily assented, though they declared that they be- 
 lieved the Nabob to have no real claim on the Mara- 
 wars whatever. But then, they said, the Nabob has 
 made them his enemies, and it is necessary for his 
 security that they should be reduced. They did not 
 pretend it was just — but then, it was politic. The 
 particulars of this war are barbarous and disgraceful to 
 the English. The Nabob thirsted for the destruction 
 of these states : he and his Christian-allies soon re- 
 duced Ramnadaporam, the capital of the great Mara- 
 war, seized the Polygar, a minor of twelve years old, 
 his mother, and the Duan ; they came suddenly upon 
 the Polygar of the lesser Marawar while he was trust- 
 ing to a treaty just made, and killed him; and pursued 
 the inhabitants of the country with severities that can 
 only be represented by the language of one of the 
 English officers addressed to the Council. Speaking of 
 the animosity of the people against them, and their 
 attacking the baggage, he says, "I can only deter- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 227 
 
 mine it by reprisals, which will oblige me to plunder 
 and burn the villages ; kill every man in them ; and 
 take prisoners the women and children. These are 
 actions which the nature of this war will require." * 
 
 Such were the unholy deeds into which the Nabob 
 and the great scheme of acquisition of territory had 
 led our countrymen in 1773; but this was only the 
 beginning of these affairs. This bloody campaign 
 ended, and large sums of money levied, the Nabob 
 proposed another war on the Rajah of Tanjore ! There 
 was not the remotest plea of injury from the Rajah, 
 or breach of treaty. He had paid the enormous sum 
 demanded of him before, by active levies on his sub- 
 jects, and by mortgaging lands and jewels; but the 
 Nabob had now made him a very dangerous enemy — 
 he might ally himself with Hyder Ali, or the French, 
 or some power or other — therefore it was better that 
 he should be utterly destroyed, and his country put 
 into the power of the Nabob ! " Never," exclaims 
 Mr. Mills, " I suppose, was the resolution taken to 
 make war upon a lawful sovereign, with the view of 
 reducing him entirely, that is, stripping him of his 
 dominions, and either putting him and his family to 
 death, or making them prisoners for life, upon a more 
 accommodating reason ! We have done the Rajah 
 great injury — we have no intention of doing him 
 right — this is a sufficient reason for going on to his 
 destruction." But it was not only thought, but done; 
 and this was the bargain : The Nabob was to advance 
 money and all due necessaries for the war, and to pay 
 10,000 instead of 7,000 sepoys. The unhappy Rajah 
 was speedily defeated, and taken prisoner with his 
 
 • Tanjore Papers. Mills' History. 
 
2*28 COLONIZATION 
 
 family; and his country put into the hands of his 
 mortal enemy. There were men of honour and virtue 
 enough amongst the Directors at home, however, to 
 feel a proper disgust, or at least, regard for public 
 opinion, at these unprincipled proceedings, and the 
 Rajah, through the means of Lord Paget was restored, 
 not however without having a certain quantity of 
 troops quartered upon him ; a yearly payment of four 
 lacs of pagodas imposed; and being bound not to 
 make any treaty or assist any power without the con- 
 sent of the English. He was, in fact, put into the 
 first stage of that process of subjection which would, 
 in due time, remove from him even the shadow of 
 independence. 
 
 Such were the measures by which the Nabob of 
 Arcot endeavoured to relieve himself from his embar- 
 rassments with the English; but they would not all 
 avail. Their demands grew faster than he could find 
 means to satisfy them. Their system of action was 
 too well devised to fail them; their victims rarely 
 escaped from their toils: he. might help them to ruin 
 his neighbours, but he could not escape them himself. 
 During his life he was surrounded by a host of cor- 
 morant creditors ; his country, harassed by perpetual 
 exactions, rapidly declined ; and the death of his son 
 and successor, Omdut ul Omrah, in 1801, produced 
 one of the strangest scenes in this strange history. 
 The Marquis Wellesley was then Governor-general, 
 and, pursuing that sweeping course which stripped 
 away the hypocritical mask from British power in 
 India, threw down so many puppet princes, and dis- 
 played the English dominion in Indostan in its gigantic 
 nakedness. The revenues of the Carnatic had been 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 229 
 
 before taken in the hands of the English, but Lord 
 Wellesley resolved to depose the prince ; and the 
 manner in which this deposition was effected, was 
 singularly despotic and unfeeling. They had come to 
 the resolution to depose the Nabob, and only looked 
 about for some plausible pretence. This they pro- 
 fessed to have found in a correspondence which, by 
 the death of Tippoo Saib, had fallen into their hands 
 — a correspondence between Tippoo and some officers 
 of the Nabob. They alleged, that this correspon- 
 dence contained injurious and even treasonable lan- 
 guage towards the English. When, therefore, the 
 Nabob lay on his death-bed they surrounded his house 
 with troops, and immediately that the breath had de- 
 parted from him they demanded to see his will. This 
 rude and unfeeling behaviour, so repugnant to the 
 ideas of every people, however savage and brutal, at a 
 moment so solemn and sacred to domestic sorrow, was 
 respectfully protested against — but in vain. The will 
 they insisted upon seeing, and it accordingly was put 
 into their hands by the son of the Nabob, now about 
 to mount the throne himself. Finding that the son 
 was nominated as his heir and successor by the Nabob, 
 the Commissioners immediately announced to him the 
 charge of treason against his father, and that the 
 throne was thereby forfeited by the family. This 
 charge, of course, was a matter of surprise to the 
 family ; especially when the papers said to contain the 
 treason were produced, and they could find in them 
 nothing but terms of fidelity and respect towards the 
 English government. But the English had resolved 
 that the charge should be a sufficient charge, and the 
 young prince manfully resisting it, they then declared 
 
230 COLONIZATION 
 
 him to be of illegitimate birth, — a very favourite and 
 convenient plea with them. On this they set him aside, 
 and made a treaty with another prince, in which for a 
 certain provision the Carnatic was made over to them 
 for ever. The young nabob, Ali Hussein, did not long 
 survive this scene of indignity and arbitrary deposition 
 — his death occurring in the spring of the following 
 year. 
 
 Such was the English treatment of their friend the 
 Nabob of Arcot; — the Nabob of Arcot, whose name 
 was for years continually heard in England as the 
 powerful ally of the British, as their coadjutor against 
 the French, against the ambitious Hyder Ali, as their 
 zealous and accommodating friend on all occasions. 
 It was in vain that either the old Nabob, or the young 
 one, whom they so summarily deposed, pleaded the 
 faith of treaties, their own hereditary right, or ancient 
 friendship. Arcot had served its turn; it had been 
 the stalking-horse to all the aggressions on other 
 states that they needed from it, — they had exacted all 
 that could be exacted in the name of the Nabob from 
 his subjects — they had squeezed the sponge dry ; and 
 moreover the time was now come that they could with 
 impunity throw off the stealthy crouching attitude of 
 the tiger, the smiling meek mask of alliance, and 
 boldly seize upon undisguised sovereign powers in 
 India. Arcot was but one state amongst many that 
 were now to be so treated. Benares, Oude, Tanjore, 
 Surat, and others found themselves in the like case. 
 
 Benares had been a tributary of Oude ; but in 1764, 
 when the English commenced war against the Nabob 
 of Oude, the Rajah of Benares joined the English, and 
 rendered them the most essential services. For these 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 231 
 
 he was taken under the English protection. At first 
 with so much delicacy and consideration was he treated, 
 that a resident was not allowed, as in the case of other 
 tributaries, to reside in his capital, lest in the words 
 of the minute of the Governor-general in command 
 in 1775: "such resident might acquire an improper 
 influence over the Rajah and his country, which would 
 in effect render him master of both ; lest it should end," 
 as they knew that such things as a matter of course 
 did end, " in reducing him to the mean and depraved 
 state of a mere Zemindar." The council expressed 
 its anxiety that the Rajah's independence should be in 
 no way compromised than by the mere fact of the 
 payment of his tribute, which, says Mills, continued to 
 be paid with an exactness rarely exemplified in the 
 history of the tributary princes of Hindustan. But un- 
 fortunately, the Rajah gave some offence to the power- 
 ful Warren Hastings, and there was speedily a requi- 
 sition made upon him for the maintenance of three 
 battalions of Sepoys, estimated at five lacs of rupees. 
 The Rajah pleaded inability to pay it forthwith ; but 
 five days only were given him. This was followed by 
 a third and fourth requisition of the same sort. Seeing 
 how the tide was running against him, the unhappy 
 Rajah sent a private gift of two lacs of rupees to Mr. 
 Hastings, — the pretty sum of 20,000/., in the hope of 
 regaining his favour, and stopping this ruinous course 
 of exaction. That unprincipled man took the money, 
 but exacted the payment of the public demand with 
 unabated rigour, and even fined him 10,000/. for delay 
 in payment, and ordered troops, as he had done before, 
 to march into his country to enforce the iniquitous 
 exaction ! 
 
232 COLONIZATION 
 
 The work of diplomatic robbery on the Rajah now 
 went on rapidly. " The screw was now turned" with 
 vigour, — to use a homely but expressive phrase, the 
 nose was held desperately to the grind-stone. No 
 bounds were set to the pitiless fury of spoliation, for 
 the Governor's revenge had none ; and besides, there 
 was a dreadful want of money to defray the expenses 
 of the wars with Hyder into which the government had 
 plunged. " 1 was resolved,** says Hastings, " to draw 
 from his guilt'* (his having offended Mr. Hastings — the 
 guilt was all on the other side) " the means of relief to 
 the Company's distresses. In a word, I had determined 
 to make him pay largely for his pardon, or to exact a 
 severe vengeance for his past delinquency."* What 
 this delinquency could possibly be, unless it were not 
 having sent Mr. Hastings a second present of two lacs, 
 is not to be discovered; but the success of the first 
 placebo was not such as to elicit a second. The 
 Rajah, therefore, tried what effect he could produce 
 upon the council at large ; he sent an offer of twenty 
 LACS for the public service. It was scornfully rejected, 
 and a demand of fifty lacs was made ! The impos- 
 sibility of compliance with such extravagant demands 
 was what was anticipated; the Governor hastened to 
 Benares, arrested the Rajah in his own capital ; set at 
 defiance the indignation of the people at this insult. 
 The astounded Rajah made his escape, but only to 
 find himself at war with his insatiable despoilers. In 
 vain did he propose every means of accommodation. 
 Nothing would now serve but his destruction. He 
 was attacked, and compelled to fly. Bidgegur, where, 
 
 * Governor-general's own Narrative. Second Report of Select 
 Committee, 1781. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 233 
 
 says Heistings himself, " he had left his wife, a woman 
 of amiable character, his mother, all the other women 
 of his family, and the survivors of the family of his 
 father, Bulwant Sing," was obliged to capitulate ; and 
 Hastings, in his fell and inextinguishable vengeance, 
 even, says Mills, "in his letters to the commanding 
 officer, employed expressions which implied that the 
 plunder of these women was the due reward of the 
 soldiers ; and which suggested one of the most dread- 
 ful outrages to which, in the conception of the coun- 
 try, a human being could be exposed." 
 
 The fort was surrendered on express stipulation for 
 the safety, and freedom from search, of the females ; 
 but, adds Mills, " the idea suggested by Mr. Hastings 
 diffused itself but too perfectly amongst the soldiery ; 
 and when the princesses, with their relatives and 
 attendants, to the number of three hundred women, 
 besides children, withdrew from the castle, the capitu- 
 lation was shamefully violated ; they were plundered of 
 their eifects, and their persons otherwise rudely and 
 disgracefully treated by the licentious people, and fol- 
 lowers of the camp." He adds, " one is delighted for 
 the honour of distinguished gallantry, that in no part 
 of the opprobrious business the commanding officer 
 had any share. He leaned to generosity and the pro- 
 tection of the princesses from the beginning. His ut- 
 most endeavours were exerted to restrain the outrages 
 of the camp ; and he represented them with feeling 
 to Mr. Hastings, who expressed his concurrence, etc." 
 
 The only other consolation in this detestable affair is, 
 that the soldiers, in spite of Hastings, got the plunder 
 of the Rajah, and that the Court of Directors at home 
 censured his conduct. But these are miserable drops 
 
234 COLONIZATION 
 
 of satisfaction in this huge and overflowing cup of bit- 
 terness, — of misery to trusting, friendly, and innocent 
 people; and of consequent infamy on the British name. 
 We must, out of the multitudes of such cases, con- 
 fine ourselves to one more. The atrocities just re- 
 cited had put Benares into the entire power of the 
 English, but it had only tended to increase the pecu- 
 niary difficulties. The soldiery had got the plunder 
 — the expenses of the war were added to the expensesi 
 of other wars ; — some other kingdom must be plun- 
 dered, for booty must be had : so Mr. Hastings con- 
 tinued his journey, and paid a visit to the Nabob of 
 Oude. It is not necessary to trace the complete pro- 
 gress of this Nabob's friendship with the English. It 
 was exactly like that of the other princes just spoken 
 of. A treaty was made with him ; and then, from time 
 to time, the usual exactions of money and the main- 
 tenance of troops for his own subjection were heaped 
 upon him. As with the Nabob of Arcot, so with him, 
 they were ready to sanction and assist him in his most 
 criminal views on his neighbours, to which his need of 
 money drove him. He proposed to Mr. Hastings, in 
 1773, to assist him in exterminating the Rohillas, a peo- 
 ple bordering on his kingdom; "a people," says Mills, 
 " whose territory was, by far, the best governed part 
 of India : the people protected, their industry encou- 
 raged, and the country flourishing beyond all parallel.'' 
 It was by a careful neutrality, and by these acts, that 
 the Rohillas sought to maintain their independence; 
 and it was of such a people that Hastings, sitting at 
 table with his tool, the Nabob of Oude, coolly heard 
 him offer him a bribe of forty lacs of rupees (400,0007.) 
 and the payment of the troops furnished, to as- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 235 
 
 sist him to destroy them utterly ! There does not 
 seem to have existed in the mind of Hastings one hu- 
 man feeling: a proposition which would have covered 
 almost any other man with unspeakable horror, was 
 received by him as a matter of ordinary business. "Let 
 us see," said Hastings, "we have a heavy bonded 
 debt, at one time 125 lacs of rupees. By this a saving 
 of near one third of our military expenses would be 
 effected during the period of such service ; the forty 
 lacs would be an ample supply to our treasury ; and 
 the Vizir (the Nabob of Oude) would be freed from 
 a troublesome neighbour." These are the monster's 
 own words ; the bargain was struck, but it was agreed 
 to be kept secret from the council and court of Direc- 
 tors. In one of Hastings* letters still extant, he tells 
 the Nabob, " should the Rohillas be guilty of a breach 
 of their agreement (a demand of forty lacs suddenly 
 made upon them — for in this vile affair everything had 
 a ruffian character — they first demanded their money, 
 and then murdered them), we will thoroughly extermi- 
 nate them, and settle your excellency in the country."* 
 The extermination was conducted to the letter, as 
 agreed, as far as was in their power. The Rohillas 
 defended themselves most gallantly; but were over- 
 powered, — and their chief, and upwards of a hundred 
 thousand people fled to the mountains. The whole 
 country lay at the mercy of the allies, and the British 
 officers themselves declared that perhaps never were 
 the rights of conquest more savagely abused. Colo- 
 nel Champion, one of them? says in a letter of June 
 1774, published in the Report alluded to below, "the 
 inhumanity and dishonour with which the late proprie- 
 
 * Fifth Parliamentary Report. — Appendix, No. 21,^ 
 
236 COLONIZATION 
 
 tors of this country and their families have been used, 
 is known . all over these parts. A relation of them 
 would swell this letter to an enormous size. I could 
 not help compassionating such unparalleled misery, and 
 my requests to the Vizir to shew lenity were frequent, 
 but as fruitless as even those advices which I almost 
 hourly gave him regarding the destruction of the vil- 
 lages ; with respect to which he always promised fair, 
 but did not observe one of his promises, nor cease to 
 overspread the country with flames, tiil three days 
 after the fate of Hafez Rhamet was decided." The 
 Nabob had frankly and repeatedly assured Hastings 
 that his intention was to exterminate the Rohillas, and 
 every one who bore the name of Rohilla was either 
 butchered, or found his safety in flight and in exile. 
 Such were the diabolical deeds into which our govern- 
 ment drove the native princes by their enormous 
 exactions, or encouraged them in, only in the end to 
 enslave them the more. 
 
 Before the connexion between the English and 
 Oude, its revenue had exceeded three millions ster- 
 ling, and was levied without being accused of deterio- 
 rating the country. In the year 1779, it did not ex- 
 ceed one half of that sum, and in the subsequent years 
 it fell far below it, while the rate of taxation was 
 increased, and the country exhibited every mark of 
 oppressive exaction.* In this year the Nabob repre- 
 sented to the council the wretched condition to which he 
 was reduced by their exactions : that the children of 
 , the deceased Nabob had subsisted in a very distressed 
 manner for two years past ; that the attendants, wri- 
 ters, and servants, had received no pay for that period ; 
 » Mills, ii. 624. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 237 
 
 that his father's private creditors were daily pressing 
 him, and there was not a foot of country which could 
 be appropriated to their payment; that the revenue 
 was deficient fifteen lacs, (a million and a half ster- 
 ling) ; that the country and cultivation were abandoned; 
 the old chieftains and useful attendants of the court 
 were forced to leave it; that the Company's troops 
 were not only useless, but caused great loss to the 
 revenue and confusion in the country ; and that the 
 support of his household, on the meanest scale, was 
 beyond his power. 
 
 This melancholy representation produced — what? 
 — pity, and an endeavour to relieve the Nabob? — no, 
 exasperation. Mr. Hastings declared that, both it 
 and the crisis in which it was made were equally 
 alarming. The only thing thought of was what was 
 to be done if the money did not come in ? But Mr. 
 Hastings, on his visit to the Nabob at Lucknow, made 
 a most lucky discovery. He found that the mother 
 and widow of the late Nabob were living there, and 
 possessed of immense wealth. His rapacious mind, 
 bound by no human feeling or moral principle, and 
 fertile in schemes of acquisition, immediately conceived 
 the felicitous design of setting the Nabob to strip those 
 ladies, well known to English readers since the famous 
 trial of Mr. Hastings, as "the Begums." It was 
 agreed between the Nabob and Mr. Hastings, that his 
 Highness should be relieved of the expense which he 
 was unable to bear, of the English troops and gentle- 
 men ; and he, on his part, engaged to strip the 
 Begums of both their treasure and their jaghires 
 (revenues of certain lands), delivering to the Gover- 
 nor-general the proceeds. As a plea for this most 
 
238 COLONIZATION 
 
 abominable transaction, in which a prince was com- 
 pelled by his cruel necessities and the grinding 
 exactions and threats of the English to pillage forcibly 
 his near relatives, a tale of treason was hatched against 
 these poor women. When they refused to give up their 
 money, the chief eunuchs were put to the torture till 
 the ladies in compassion gave way : 550,000/. sterling 
 were thus forced from them : the torture was still con- 
 tinued, in hope of extracting more ; the women of the 
 Zenana were deprived of food at various times till they 
 were on the point of perishing for want ; and every 
 expedient was tried that the most devilish invention 
 could suggest, till it was found that they had really 
 drawn the last doit from them. But what more than 
 all moves one's indignation against this base Eng- 
 lish Inquisitor, was, that he received as his share 
 of these spoils the sum of ten lacs, or 100,000/.! 
 — ^and that notwithstanding the law of the Company 
 against the receipt of presents ; its avowed distress for 
 want of money ; and the poverty of the kingdom of 
 Oude, which was thus plundered and disgraced from 
 the very inability to pay its debts, if debts such 
 shameful exactions can be called. Hastings did not 
 hesitate to apprise the council of what he had received, 
 and requested their permission to retain it for himself. 
 Of the numerous transactions of a most wicked 
 character connected with these affairs ; of the repug- 
 nance of the Nabob to do the dirty work of Hastings 
 on his relatives, the Begums ; of the haughty insolence 
 by which his tyrant compelled him to the compact ; 
 of the restoration of the jaghires, but not the moneys 
 to the Begums ; of the misery and desolation which 
 forced itself even upon the horny eyes of Hastings as 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 239 
 
 he made his second progress through the territories of 
 Oude, the work of his own oppressions and exactions ; 
 of the twelve and a half millions which he added by 
 his wars and political manoeuvres to the Indian debt — 
 we have not here room to note more than the existence 
 of such facts, which are well known to all the readers 
 of Indian history, or of the trial of Warren Hastings, 
 where every artifice of the lawyers was employed to 
 prevent the evidence of these things being brought 
 forweird ; and where a House of Peers was found base 
 or weak enough to be guided by such artifices, to 
 refuse the most direct evidence against the most 
 atrocious transactions in history; and thus to give 
 sanction and security to the commission of the most 
 dreadful crimes and cruelties in our distant colonies. 
 Nothing could increase from this time the real power 
 of the English over Oude, though circumstances 
 might occasion a more open avowal of it. Even 
 during the government of Lord Cornwallis and Sir 
 John Shore, now Lord Teignmouth, two of the most 
 worthy and honourable rulers that British India ever 
 had, the miseries and exactions continued, and the 
 well-intentioned financial measures of Lord Cornwallis 
 even tended to increase them. In 1 798, the governor. 
 Sir John Shore, proceeded to depose the ruling Nabob 
 as illegitimate (a plea on which the English set aside 
 a number of Indian princes), and elevated another in 
 his place, and that upon evidence, says the historian, 
 ''upon which an English court of law would not 
 have decided against him a question of a few pounds." 
 It was not, however, till 1799, under the govern- 
 ment of the Marquis Wellesley, that the hand 
 of British power was stretched to the utmost 
 
240 COLONIZATION 
 
 over this devoted district. That honest and avowed 
 usurper, who disdained the petty acts of his prede- 
 cessors, but declared that the British dominion over 
 the peninsula of India must be frankly avowed and 
 fearlessly asserted — certainly a much better doc- 
 trine than the cowardly and hypocritical one hitherto 
 acted upon ; — that every Englishman who did not be- 
 long to the Company must and should be expelled 
 from that country ; and that the English power and 
 the Corporate monopoly should be so strenuously and 
 unflinchingly exerted, that foreign aggression or 
 domestic complaint should be alike dispersed; — this 
 straightforward Governor - general soon drove the 
 Nabob of Oude to such desperation, by the severity 
 of his measures and exactions, that he declared his 
 wish to abdicate. Nothing could equal the joy of the 
 Governor-general at the prospect of this easy acqui- 
 sition of this entire territory: but that joy was damped 
 by discovering that the Nabob only wished to resign 
 in favour of — his own son! The chagrin of the 
 Governor-general on this discovery is not to be ex- 
 pressed ; and the series of operations then commenced 
 to force the Nabob to abdicate in favour of the Com- 
 pany ; when that could not be effected, to compel him 
 to sacrifice one half of his territories to save the rest ; 
 when that sacrifice was made, to inform him that he 
 was to have no independent power in his remaining 
 half — is one of the most instructive lessons in the art 
 of diplomatic fleecing, of forcing a man out of his own 
 by the forms of treaty but with the iron-hand of irre- 
 sistible power, which any despot who wishes to do a 
 desperate deed handsomely, and in the most approved 
 style, can desire. It was in vain that the Nabob de- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 241 
 
 clared his payment of exactions ; his hereditary right ; 
 his readiness shewn on all occasions to aid and oblige; 
 the force of treaties in his favour. It was in vain that 
 he asked to what purpose should he give up one half 
 of his dominions if he were not to have power over the 
 other, when it was to secure this independent power 
 that he gave up that half? What are all the argu- 
 ments of right, justice, reason, or humanity, when 
 Ahab wants the vineyard of Naboth, and the Jezebel 
 of political and martial power tells him that she will 
 give it him ? The fate of Oude was predetermined, 
 along with that of various other states, by the Gover- 
 nor-general, and it was decided as he determined it 
 should be. 
 
 Before we close this chapter, we will give one in- 
 stance of the manner in which the territories of those 
 who held aloof, and did not covet the fatal friendship 
 of tlie English were obtained, and the most striking of 
 these are the dominions of Hyder Ali — the kingdom 
 of Mysore. 
 
 Hyder was a soldier of fortune. He had risen by 
 an active and enterprising disposition from the con- 
 dition of a common soldier to the head of the state. 
 The English considered him as an ambitious, able, 
 and therefore very dangerous person in India. There 
 can be no doubt that he considered them the same. 
 He was an adventurer ; so were they. He had ac- 
 quired a great territory by means that would not bear 
 the strictest scrutiny; so had they; — but there was 
 this diflference between them, Hyder acted according 
 to the customs and maxims in which he had been 
 educated, and which he saw universally practised by all 
 the princes around him. He neither had the advan- 
 
 M 
 
242 COLONIZATION 
 
 tage of Christian knowledge and principle, nor pre- 
 tended to them. The English, on the contrary, came 
 there as merchants ; they were continually instructed 
 by their masters at home not to commit military 
 aggressions. They were bound by the laws of their 
 country not to do it. They professed to be in posses- 
 sion of a far higher system of religion and morals than 
 Hyder and his people had. They pretended to be the 
 disciples of the Prince of Peace. Their magnani- 
 mous creed they declared to be, " To do to others as 
 they would wish to be done by." But neither Hyder 
 nor any other Indian ever saw the least evidence of 
 any such superiority of morals, or of faith, in their 
 conduct. They were as ambitious, and far more 
 greedy of money than the heathen that they pre- 
 tended to despise for their heathenism. They ought 
 to have set a better example — but they did not. 
 There never was a people that grasped more convul- 
 sively at dominion, or were less scrupulous in the 
 means of obtaining it. They declared Hyder cruel 
 and perfidious. He knew them to be both. This 
 was the ground on which they stood. There were 
 reasons why the English should avoid interfering with 
 Hyder. There were none why he should avoid en- 
 croaching on them, for he did not profess any such 
 grand principles of action as they did. If they were 
 what they pretended to be, they ought to preach peace 
 and union amongst the Indian princes: but union was 
 of all things in the world the very one which they 
 most dreaded ; for they were not what they pretended 
 to be ; but sought on the divisions of the natives to 
 establish their own power. Had Hyder attacked 
 them in their own trading districts, there could have 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 243 
 
 been no reason why they should not chastise him for 
 it. But it does not appear that he ever did attack 
 them at all till they fell upon him, and that with the 
 avowed intention to annihilate his power as dangerous. 
 No, say they, but he attacked the territories of our 
 ally the Subahdar of Deccan, which we were bound 
 to defend. And here it is that we touch again upon that 
 subtle policy by which it became impossible, when 
 tliey had once got a footing in the country that, hav- 
 ing the will and the power, they should not eventually 
 have the dominion. While professing to avoid con- 
 quest, we have seen that they went on continually 
 making conquests. But it was always on the plea of 
 aiding their allies. They entered knowingly into 
 alliances on condition of defending with arms their 
 allies, and then, when they committed aggressions, it 
 was for these allies. In the end the allies were them- 
 selves swallowed up, with all the additional territories 
 thus gained. It was a system of fattening allies as 
 we fatten oxen, till they were more worthy of being 
 devoured. They cast their subtle threads of policy like 
 the radiating filaments of the spider's web, till the re- 
 motest extremity of India could not be touched with- 
 out startling them from their concealed centre into 
 open day, ready to run upon the unlucky offender. 
 It was utterly impossible, on such a system, but that 
 offences should come, and wo to them by whom they 
 did come. 
 
 The English were unquestionably the aggressors in 
 the hostilities with Hyder. They entered into a 
 treaty with Nizam Ali, the Subahdar of Deccan, 
 offensive and defensive; and the very first deed which 
 they were to do, was to seize the fort of Bangalore, 
 
244 COLONIZATION 
 
 which belonged to Hyder. They had actually marched 
 in 1767 into his territories, when Hyder found means 
 to draw the Nizam from his alliance, and in conjunc- 
 tion with him fell upon them, and compelled them to 
 fly to Trincomalee. By this unprovoked and volun- 
 tary act they found themselves involved at once in a 
 war with a fierce and active enemy, who pursued them 
 to the very walls of Madras; scoured their country 
 with his cavalry ; and compelled them to a dishonour- 
 able peace in 1769, by which they bound themselves 
 to assist him too in his defensive wars ! To enter 
 voluntarily into such conditions with such a man, be- 
 trayed no great delicacy of moral feeling as to what 
 wars they engaged in, or no great honesty in their 
 intentions as regarded the treaty itself. They must 
 soon either fight with some of Hyder's numerous 
 enemies, or break faith with him. Accordingly the 
 very next year the Mahrattas invaded his territories ; 
 lie called earnestly on his English allies for aid, and 
 aid they did not give. Hyder had now the justest 
 reason to term them perfidious, and to hold them in 
 distrust. Yet, though deeply exasperated by this 
 treachery, he would in 1778 most willingly have re- 
 newed his alliance with them ; and the presidency of 
 Madras acknowledged their belief that, had not the 
 treaty of 1769 been evaded, Hyder would never have 
 sought other allies than themselves. * There were 
 the strongest reasons why they should have cultivated 
 an amicable union with him, both to withdraw him 
 from the French, and on account of his own great 
 power and revenues. But they totally neglected him, 
 or insulted him with words of mere cold courtesy ; and 
 * Mills, ii. 480. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 245 
 
 a new aggression upon the fortress of Mahe, a place 
 tributary to Hyder, which they attacked in order to 
 expel the French, and which Hyder resented on the 
 same principle as they would resent an attack upon 
 any tributary of their own, well warranted the decla- 
 ration of Hyder, that they " were the most faithless 
 and usurping of mankind." They were these arbitrary 
 and impolitic deeds which brought down Hyder 
 speedily upon them, with an army 100,000 strong; 
 and soon showed them Madras menaced, the Carnatic 
 overrun, Arcot taken, and a war of such a desperate 
 and bloody character raging around them, as they 
 had never yet seen in India, and which might pro- 
 bably have expelled them thence, had not death re- 
 leased them in 1782 from so formidable a foe, who 
 had been so wantonly provoked. 
 
 Tippoo Sultaun, with all his activity and cunning, 
 had not the masterly military genius of his father, — but 
 he possessed all the fire of his resentment, and it was not 
 to be expected that, after what had passed, there could 
 be much interval of irritation between him and the 
 English. They had roused Hyder as a lion is roused 
 from his den, and he had made them feel his power. 
 They would naturally look on his son with suspicion, 
 and Tippoo had been taught to regard them as " the 
 most faithless and usurping of mankind." Whatever, 
 therefore, may be said for or against him, on the 
 breaking out of the second war with him, the original 
 growth of hostility between the British and the My- 
 sorean monarchs, must be charged to the former, and 
 in the case of the last war, there appears to have been 
 no real breach of treaty on the part of Tippoo. He 
 had been severely punished for any act of irritation 
 
246 COLONIZATION 
 
 which he might have committed against any of the 
 British allies, by the reduction of his capital, the sur- 
 render of his sons as hostages, and the stripping away 
 of one half of his territories to be divided amongst his 
 enemies, each of whom had enriched himself with half 
 a million sterling of annual revenue at his expense. 
 Tippoo must have been nothing less than a madman 
 in his shattered condition, and with his past experi- 
 ence, to have lightly ventured on hostilities with the 
 English. But it was charged on him that he was 
 seeking ah alliance with the French. What then ? 
 He had the clearest right so to do. So long as he 
 maintained the terms of his treaty, the English had 
 no just right to violate theirs towards him. The 
 French were his ancient and hereditary friends. Tip- 
 poo persisted to the last that he had done nothing to 
 warrant an attack upon him ; but Lord Mornington 
 had adopted his notions about consolidating the British 
 power in India, and every possible circumstance, or 
 suspicion of a circumstance, was to be seized upon as 
 a plea for carrying his plans into effect. It was 
 enough that a fear mi^ht be entertained of Tippoo's 
 designs. It became good policy to get the start ; and 
 when once that forestalling system in hostilities, that 
 outstripping in the race of mischief, is adopted, there 
 is no possible violence nor enormity which may not 
 be undertaken, or defended upon it. Tippoo was as- 
 sailed by the British, and their ally the Nizam ; and 
 though he again and again protested his innocence, 
 again and again asked for peace, he was pursued to 
 his capital, and killed bravely defending it. His 
 territories were divided amongst those who had di- 
 vided the former half of them in like manner, the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 247 
 
 English, the Nizam, and the Mahrattas, with a little 
 state appropriated to a puppet-rajah. Thus did the 
 English shew what they would do to those who dared 
 to decline their protection. Thus did they pursue, 
 beat down, and destroy with all their mighty resources 
 an independent prince, whose whole revenue, after 
 their first partition of his realm, did not much exceed 
 a million sterling. We have heard a vast deal in 
 Europe of the partition of Poland, but how much 
 better was the forcible dismemberment of Mysore ? 
 The injury of this dismemberment of his kingdom is, 
 however, not the least heaped upon Tippoo. On his 
 name have been heaped all the odious crimes that 
 make us hate the worst of tyrants. Cruelty, perfidy, 
 low cunning, and all kinds of baseness, make up the 
 idea of Tippoo which we have derived from those who 
 profited by his destruction. But what say the most 
 candid historians ? " That the accounts which we 
 have received from our countrymen, who dreaded and 
 feared him, are marked with exaggeration, is proved 
 by this circumstance, that his servants adhered to him 
 with a fidelity which those of few princes in any age 
 or country have displayed. Of his cruelty we have 
 heard the more, because our own countrymen were 
 amongst the victims of it. But it is to be observed, 
 that unless in certain instances, the proof of which 
 cannot be regarded as better than doubtful, their suf- 
 ferings, however intense, were only the sufferings of a 
 very rigorous imprisonment, of which, considering the 
 manner in which it is lavished upon them by their 
 own laws, Englishmen ought not to be very forward 
 to complain. At that very time, in the dungeons of 
 Madras or Calcutta, it is probable that unhappy suf- 
 
243 COLONIZATION 
 
 ferers were enduring calamities for debts of 100/., not 
 less atrocious than those which Tippoo, a prince born 
 and educated in a barbarous country, and ruling over 
 a barbarous people, inflicted upon imprisoned enemies, 
 part of a nation, who, by the evils they had brought 
 upon him, exasperated him almost to frenzy, and 
 whom he regarded as the enemies both of God and 
 man. Besides, there is among the papers relating to 
 the intercourse of Tippoo with the French, a remark- 
 able proof of his humanity, which, when these papers 
 are ransacked for matters to criminate him, ought not 
 to be suppressed. In a draught of conditions on 
 which he desired to form a treaty with them, these 
 are the words of a distinct article : — 'I demand that 
 male and female prisoners, as well English as Portu- 
 guese, who shall be taken by the republican troops, or 
 by mine, shall be treated with humanity; and, with 
 regard to their persons, that they shall (their property 
 becoming the right of the allies) be transported, at 
 our joint expense, out of India, to places far distant 
 from the territories of the allies.' 
 
 " Another feature in the character of Tippoo was 
 his religion, with a sense of which his mind was most 
 deeply impressed. He spent a considerable part of 
 every day in prayer. He gave to his kingdom a par- 
 ticular religious title, Cudadad^ or God-given ; and he 
 lived under a peculiarly strong and operative convic- 
 tion of the superintendence of a Divine Providence. 
 To one of his French advisers, who urged him zea- 
 lously to obtain the support of the Mahrattas, he 
 replied, ' I rely solely on Providence, expecting that 
 I shall be alone and unsupported ; but God and my 
 courage will accomplish everything.' .... He had 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 249 
 
 the discernment to perceive, what is so generally hid 
 from the eyes of rulers in a more enlightened state of 
 society, that it is the prosperity of those who labour 
 with their hands which constitutes the principle and 
 cause of the prosperity of states. He therefore made 
 it his business to protect them against the intermediate 
 orders of the community, by whom it is so difficult to 
 prevent them from being oppressed. His country 
 was, accordingly, at least during the first and better 
 part of his reign, the best cultivated, and his popula- 
 tion the most flourishing, in India : while under the 
 English and their pageants, the population of Carnatic 
 and Oude, hastening to the state of deserts, was the 
 most wretched upon the face of the earth ; and even 
 Bengal itself, under the operations of laws ill adapted 
 to their circumstances, was suff'ering almost all the 
 evils which the worst of governments could inflict. . . 
 For an eastern prince he was full of knowledge. His 
 mind was active, acute, and ingenious. But in the 
 value which he set upon objects, whether as means, 
 or as an end, he was almost perpetually deceived. 
 Besides, a conviction appears to have been rooted in 
 his mind that the English had now formed a resolution 
 to deprive him of his kingdom, and that it was useless 
 to negotiate, because no submission to which he could 
 reconcile his mind, would restrain them in the grati- 
 fication of their ambitious designs.*' — Mills. 
 
 Tippoo was right. The great design of the Eng- 
 lish, from their first secure footing in India, was 
 to establish their control over the whole Peninsula. 
 The French created them the most serious alarm in 
 the progress of their career towards this object; and 
 any native state which shewed more than ordinary 
 m2 
 
250 COLONIZATION 
 
 energy, excited a similar feeling. For this purpose 
 all the might of British power and policy was exerted 
 to expel these European rivals, and to crush such 
 more active states. The administration of the Mar- 
 quis Wellesley was the exhibition of this system full 
 blown. Tor this, all the campaigns against Holkar 
 and Scindia ; the wars from north to south, and from 
 east to w^est of India, were undertaken ; and blood was 
 made to flow, and debts to accumulate to a degree 
 most monstrous. Yet the admiration of this system 
 of policy in England has shewn how little human life 
 and human welfare, even to this day, weigh in the 
 scale against dominion and avarice. We hear nothing 
 of the horrors and violence we have perpetrated, from 
 the first invasion of Bengal, to those of Nepaul and 
 Burmah ; we have only eulogies on the empire 
 achieved: — ''See what a splendid empire we have 
 won !" True, — there is no objection to the empire, if 
 we could only forget the means by which it has been 
 created. But amid all tliis subtle and crooked policy 
 — this creeping into power under the colour of allies — 
 this extortion and plunder of princes, under the name 
 of protection — this forcible subjection and expatriation 
 of others, we look in vain for the generous policy of 
 the Christian merchant, and the Christian statesman.* 
 
 • Sir Thomas Roe was sent in 1614, on an embassy to the Great 
 Mogul. In his letters to the Company, he strongly advised them 
 against the expensive ambition of acquiring territory. He lells them, 
 " It is greater than trade can bear ; for to maintain a garrison will cut 
 out your profit : a war and traffic are incompatible. The Portuguese, 
 notwithstanding their many rich residences, are beggared by keeping 
 of soldiers : and yet their garrisons are but mean. They never made 
 advantage of the Indies since they defended them; — ebserve this well. 
 It has also been the error of the Dutch^ who seek plantations here by 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 251 
 
 The moderation of a Teignmouth, a Cornwallis, or a 
 Bentinck, is deemed mere pusillanimity. Those di- 
 vine maxims of peace and union which Christianity 
 would disseminate amongst the natives of the countries 
 that we visit, are condemned as the very obstacles to 
 the growth of our power. When we exclaim, '* what 
 might not Englishmen have done in India had they 
 endeavoured to pacify and enlighten, instead of to 
 exact and destroy ?" we are answered by a smile, which 
 informs us that these are but romantic notions, — that 
 the only wisdom is to get rich ! 
 
 the sword. They turn a wonderful stock ; they prowl in all places ; 
 they possess some of the best : yet their dead pays consume all the 
 gain. Let this be received as a rule, that if you will profit, seek it at 
 sea, and in quiet trade : for without controversy, it is an error to affect 
 garrisons, and land-wars in India." 
 
 Had Sir Thomas been inspired, could he have been a truer prophet? 
 The East India Company, after fighting and conquering in India for 
 two centuries, have found themselves, at the dissolution of their char- 
 ter, nearly fifty millions in debt ; while their trade with China, a 
 country in which they did not possess a foot of land, had become the 
 richest commerce in the world ! The article of tea alone returning 
 between three and four millions annually, and was their sole preven- 
 tive against bankruptcy. Can, indeed, any colonial acquisition be 
 pointed out that is not a loss to the parent state ? 
 
252 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN INDIA — CONTINUED. 
 TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES. 
 
 Rich in the gems of India's gaudy zone, 
 And plunder, piled from kingdoms not their own. 
 Degenerate trade ! thy minions could despise, 
 The heart-born anguish of a thousand cries ; 
 Could lock, with impious hands their teeming store, 
 While famished nations died along the shore ; 
 Could mock the groans of fellow-men ; and bear 
 The curse of kingdoms peopled with despair j 
 Could stamp disgrace on man's polluted name, 
 And barter, with their gold, eternal shame. 
 
 Pleasures of Hope. 
 
 We have in some degree caught a glimpse of the 
 subject of this chapter in the course of the last. The 
 treatment of the native chiefs in our pursuit of terri- 
 torial possession is in part the treatment of the natives, 
 but it is unhappily a very small part. The scene of 
 exaction, rapacity, and plunder which India became in 
 our hands, and that upon the whole body of the popu- 
 lation, forms one of the most disgraceful portions of 
 human history; and while the temptations to it existed 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 253 
 
 in full force, defied all the powers of legislation, or the 
 moral influence of public opinion to check the evil. 
 In vain the East India Company itself, in vain the 
 British Parliament legislated on the subject; in vain 
 did the Court of Directors from year to year, send out 
 the most earnest remonstrances to their servants, — the 
 allurement was too splendid, the opportunities too se- 
 ducing, the example too general, the security too 
 great, to permit any one to attend to either law, re- 
 monstrance, or the voice of humanity. The fame of 
 India, as a vast region of inexhaustible wealth, had 
 resounded through the world for ages ; the most 
 astonishing notions of it floated through Europe, 
 before the sea-track to it was discovered ; and when 
 that was done, the marvellous fortunes made there by 
 bold men, as it were in a single day, and by a single 
 stroke of policy, seemed more than to warrant any 
 previous belief. Men in power received their presents 
 of ten, twenty, or a hundred thousand pounds. Clive, 
 for the assistance of the British army, was presented 
 with the magnificent gift of a jaghire, or hereditary 
 revenue of 30,000/. a year ! On another occasion he 
 received his 28,000/., and his fellow-rulers each a 
 similar sum. Hastings received his twenty and his 
 hundred thousand pounds, as familiarly as a gold 
 snufi-box or a piece of plate would be given as a public 
 testimony of respect for popular services, in England. 
 Every man, according to his station and his influence, 
 found the like golden harvest. Who could avoid 
 being inflamed with the thirst for Indian service? — 
 who avoid the most exaggerated anticipations of for- 
 tune ? It was a land, and a vast land, hedged about 
 with laws of exclusion to all except such as went 
 
254 COLONIZATION 
 
 through the doors of the Company. There were there 
 no interlopers, — no curious, because obstructed ob- 
 servers. There was but one object in going thither, 
 and one interest when there. It was a soil made 
 sacred, or rather, doomed, to the exclusive plunder of a 
 privileged number. The highest officers in the gov- 
 ernment had the strongest motives to corruption, and 
 therefore could by no possibility attempt to check the 
 the same corruption in those below them. When the 
 power and influence of the Company became consider- 
 ably extended over Bengal, Bahar, Orissa, Oude, 
 the Carnatic, and Bombay, the harvest of presents 
 grew into a most affluent one. Nothing was to be 
 expected, no chance of justice, of attention, of allevia- 
 tion from the most abominable oppression, but through 
 the medium of presents, and those of such amounts as 
 fairly astonish European ears. Every man, in every 
 department, whether civil, military, or mercantile, was 
 in the certain receipt of splendid presents. When 
 the government had found it necessary to forbid the 
 receipt of presents by any individual in the service, 
 not only for themselves, but for the Company, the 
 highest officers set the laws at defiance, and the mis- 
 chief was made more secret, but not less existent. 
 
 But besides presents and official incomes, there were 
 the farming of the revenues, and domestic trade, 
 which opened up boundless sources of profit. The 
 revenues were received in each district by zemindars 
 from the ryots or husbandmen, and handed, after a 
 fixed deduction, to the chief office of the revenue. 
 But between these zemindars and the ryots were 
 aumils, or other inferior officers, who farmed the 
 revenues in each lesser district or village; that is, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 255 
 
 contracted with the zemindars for the revenues at a 
 certain sum, and took the trouble of exacting them 
 from the ryots, who paid a rate fixed by law or ancient 
 custom, and could not be turned out of their lands while 
 such rate was regularly paid. Wherever the English 
 obtained a claim over the revenues of a prince, which 
 we have seen they speedily did, they soon became 
 the zemindars, or their agents, the aumils, or other 
 middlemen between them and the ryots. Anciently, 
 the ryots paid one tenth of their produce, for all their 
 taxes were paid in kind, but in time the rate grew to 
 more than half. When the English power became 
 more fixed and open, and it was found that under the 
 native zemindars the exactions of the revenues did not 
 at all satisfy their demands, they took on themselves 
 the whole business of collecting these revenues. This, 
 as we shall see, on the evidence of the Company's 
 own officers, became a dreadful system to the people. 
 The Mahomedan exactions had been generally re- 
 garded more considerate than those of the native 
 Hindu chiefs ; but the grinding pressure of the Eng- 
 lish system brought on the unfortunate ryot the most 
 unexampled misery. Of this, however, anon. It only 
 requires here to be pointed out as one of the various 
 sources of enormous profits and jobbing which made 
 India so irresistibly attractive to Englishmen. 
 
 The private trade was another grand source of 
 revenue. The public trade, that is, the transit of 
 goods to and from Europe, was the peculiar monopoly 
 of the Company ; but all coasting trade — trade to and 
 between the isles, and in the interior of India, became a 
 monopoly of the higher servants of the Company, who 
 were at once engaged in the Company's concerns and 
 
25f? COLONIZATION 
 
 their own. The monopoly of salt, opium, betel, and 
 other commodities became a mine of wealth. The 
 Company's servants could fix the price at whatever 
 rate they pleased, and thus enhance it to the unfortu- 
 nate people so as to occasion them the most intense 
 distress. Fortunes were made in a day by this mono- 
 poly, and without the advance of a single shilling. 
 The very Governor-general himself engaged in this 
 private trade ; and contracts were given to favourites 
 on such terms, that two or three fortunes were made 
 out of them before they reached the merchant. In 
 one case that came out on the trial of Warren Has- 
 ings, a contract for opium had been given to Mr. 
 Sullivan, though he was going into quite a different 
 part of India, and on public business ; this, of course, 
 he sold again, to Mr. Benn, for 40,000/. ; and Mr. 
 Benn immediately sold it again for 60,000/., clearing 
 20,000/. by the mere passing of the contract from one 
 hand to the other; and the purchaser then declared 
 that he made a large sum by it. 
 
 All these things put together, made India the 
 theatre of sure and splendid fortune to the adventurer, 
 and of sore and abject misery to the native. We 
 have only to look about us in any part of England, 
 but especially in the metropolis, and within fifty miles 
 round it, to see what streams of wealth have flowed 
 into this country from India. What thousands of 
 splendid mansions and estates are lying in view, 
 which, when the traveller inquires their history, have 
 been purchased by the gold of India. We are told 
 that those days of magical accumulation of wealth are 
 over; that this great fountain of affluence is drained 
 comparatively dry ; that fortunes are not now readily 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 257 
 
 made in India; yet the Company, though they have 
 lost their monopoly of trade, and their territories are 
 laid open to the free observation of their countrymen, 
 are in possession of the government with a revenue 
 of twenty millions. But all this time, what has been 
 doing with and for the natives. We shall see that 
 anon ; yet it may here be asked, What could be doing ? 
 For what did men go to India ? For what did they 
 endure its oppressive and often fatal climate ? Was 
 it from philanthropical or personal motives? Did 
 they seek the good of the Indians or their own ? The 
 latter, assuredly : and it was not to be expected that 
 the majority of men should be so high-minded or dis- 
 interested as to seek the good of others at the expense 
 of their own. The temptations to visit India were 
 powerful, but not the less powerful were the motives 
 to hasten away at the very earliest possible period. 
 It was not to be expected from human nature that the 
 natives could be much thought of. What has been 
 done for them by the devoted few, we shall recognise 
 with delight; at present we must revert to the evil 
 influences of nearly two hundred years. 
 
 Amongst the first to claim our attention, are those 
 doings in high places which have excited so strongly 
 the cupidity of thousands, and especially those dazzling 
 presents which became the direct causes of the most 
 violent exactions on the people, for out of them had 
 all these things to be drawn. The Company could, 
 indeed, with a very bad grace, condemn bribery in its 
 officers, for it has always been accused of this evil 
 practice at home in order to obtain its exclusive privi- 
 leges from government; and so early as 1693, it 
 appeared from parliamentary inquiry, that its annual 
 expenditure under the head of gifts to men in power 
 
258 COLONIZATION 
 
 previous to the Revolution, seldom exceeded l,'200Z., 
 but from that period to that year it had grown to 
 nearly 90,000/. annually. The Duke of Leeds was 
 impeached for a bribe of 5,000/., and 10,000/. were 
 even said to be traced to the king.* Besides this, 
 whenever any rival company appeared in the field, 
 government was tempted with the loans of enormous 
 sums, at the lowest interest. Like fruits were to be 
 expected in India, and were not long wanting. We 
 cannot trace this subject to its own vast extent — it 
 would require volumes — we can only offer a few 
 striking examples: — 
 
 None can be more remarkable than the following 
 list, which, besides sums that we may suppose it to 
 have been in the power of the receivers to conceal, 
 and of the amount of which it is not easy to form a 
 conjecture, were detected and disclosed by the Com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons in 1773. 
 
 The rupees are valued according to the rate of ex- 
 change of the Company's bills at the different periods. 
 
 Account of such sums as have been proved or acknowledged 
 before the Committee to have been distributed by the 
 Princes and other natives of Bengal, from the year 
 1757 to the year 1766, both inclusive ; distinguishing 
 the principal times of the said distributions, and 
 specifying the sums received by each person respec- 
 tively: — 
 
 Resolution in favour of Meer Jaffier — 1757. 
 
 Rupees. Rupees. £.. 
 Mr. Drake (Governor) - . - 280,000 31,500 
 
 Col. Clive, as second in the Select 1 oonAnn 
 
 Committee ] 
 
 Ditto, as Commander-in-Chief - 200,000 
 Ditto, as a private donation - - 1,600,000 
 
 2.080,000 234,000 
 
 * Macpherson's Annals, ii. 652, 662. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 259 
 
 Rupees. 
 Mr. Watts, as a Member of the ^ 240 000 
 
 Cooiraittee - - - 5 ' 
 
 Ditto, as a private donation - 800,000 
 
 Major Kilpatrick 
 Ditto, as a private donation 
 Mr. Maningham 
 Mr. Becher _ - - 
 
 Six Members of Council, one lac each 
 -Mr. Walsh - - - ■ 
 
 Mr. Scrafton - - - - 
 Mr. Lushington - - - 
 
 Captain Grant _ - - - 
 Stipulation to the Navy and Army 
 
 Memorandum — the sum of two lacs to Lord 
 Clive, as Commander-in-Chief, must be de- 
 ducted from this account, it being included in 
 the donation to the army - - - - 
 
 Rupees. £ 
 
 1,040,000 
 
 240,000 
 
 117,000 
 27,000 
 
 300,000 
 
 83,750 
 
 240,000 
 
 27,000 
 
 240,000 
 
 27,000 
 
 i 600,000 
 
 68,000 
 
 500,000 
 
 56,250 
 
 200,000 
 
 22,500 
 
 50,000 
 
 5,625 
 
 100,000 
 
 11,250 
 
 
 600,000 
 
 1,261,075 
 
 22,500 
 
 Resolution in favour of Causim in 1760. 
 Mr. Sumner .._--- 
 
 Mr. Hohvell 270,000 
 
 Mr. M'Guire 180,000 
 
 Mr. Smyth 130,300 
 
 Major Yorke 134,000 
 
 General Caillaud 200,000 
 
 Mr. Vansittart, 1762, received seven lacs, but 
 the two lacs to Gen. Caillaud are included; 
 so that ofily five lacs must be accounted for 
 
 here ._..-''.. 500,000 
 
 Mr. M'Guire 5,000 gold morhs - - - 75,000 
 
 Resolution in favour of Jaffier in 1763. 
 Stipulation to the Army _ _ _ 2,500,000 
 Ditto to the Navy 1,250,000 
 
 1,238,575 
 
 28,C0O 
 30,937 
 20,628 
 15,354 
 15,354 
 22,916 
 
 58,a33 
 8,750 
 
 200,269 
 
 291,666 
 145,83:3 
 
 437,499 
 
260 COLONIZATION 
 
 Rupees. £ 
 
 Major Munro, in 1764, received from Bulwant 
 
 Sing 10.000 
 
 Ditto, from the Nabob _ . - - 3,000 
 The Officers belonging to Major Munro's 
 
 family from ditto 3,000 
 
 The Army, from the merchants at Benares - 400,000 46,666 
 
 62,666 
 Nudjeem ul Dowla's Accession, 1765. 
 
 Mr. Spencer 200,000 23,333 
 
 Messrs. Pleydell, Burdett, and Grey, one lac each 300,000 35,000 
 
 Mr. Johnstone - - - - - - 237,000 27,650 
 
 Mr. Leycester 112,500 13,125 
 
 Mr. Senior 172,500 20,125 
 
 Mr. Middleton 122,500 14,291 
 
 Mr. Gideon Johnstone 50,000 5,833 
 
 139,357 
 
 General Carnac received from Bulwant Sing, 
 
 in 1765 80,000 9,333 
 
 Ditto from the king . - - - . 200,000 23,333 
 
 Lord Clive received from the Begum, in 1766 - 500,000 58,333 
 
 90,999 
 Restitution. — Jaffier, 1757. 
 
 East India Company 1,200,000 
 
 Europeans 600,000 
 
 Natives 250,000 
 
 Armenians - - - - - - - - 100,000 
 
 2,150,000 
 Causim. 1760. 
 East India Company ------- 62,500 
 
 Jaffier. 1763. 
 
 East India Company 375,000 
 
 Europeans, Natives, etc. ------ 600,000 
 
 975,000 
 Peace with Sujah Dowla. 
 East India Company 5,000,000 583,333 
 
 Total of Presents, £2,169,665. Restitution, etc., £3,770,833. 
 Total amount, exclusive of Lord Clive's Jaghire, £5,940,498. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 261 
 
 These are pretty sums to have fallen into the 
 30ckets of the English, chiefly douceurs, in ten years. 
 Let the account be carried on for all India at a simi- 
 lar rate for a century, and what a sum ! Lord Clive's 
 jaghire alone was worth 30,000/. per annum. And, 
 besides this, it appears from the above documents 
 that he also pocketed in these transactions 292,333/. 
 No wonder at the enormous fortunes rapidly made ; 
 at the enormous debts piled on the wretched nabobs, 
 and the dreadful exactions on the still more wretched 
 people. No man could more experimentally than 
 Clive thus address the Directors at home, as he did 
 in 1765: "Upon my arrival, I am sorry to say, I 
 found your affairs in a condition so nearly desperate 
 as would have alarmed any set of men whose sense of 
 honour and duty to their employers had not been 
 estranged by the too eager pursuit of their own 
 immediate advantages. The sudden, and among 
 many, the unwarrantable acquisition of riches (who 
 was so entitled to say this?) had introduced luxury 
 in every shape, and in its most pernicious excess. 
 These two enormous evils went hand in hand toge- 
 ther through the whole presidency, infecting almost 
 every member of every department. Every inferior 
 seemed to have grasped at wealth, that he might be 
 enabled to assume that spirit of profusion which was 
 now the only distinction between him and his supe- 
 riors. Thus all distinction ceased, and every rank 
 became, in a manner, upon an equality. Nor was 
 this the end of the mischief; for a contest of such a 
 nature amongst our servants necessarily destroyed all 
 proportion between their wants and the honest means 
 of satisfying them. In a country where money is 
 
262 COLONIZATION 
 
 plenty, where fear is the principle of government, and 
 where your arms are ever victorious, it is no wonder that 
 the lust of riches should readily embrace the proffered 
 means of its gratification, or that the instruments of your 
 power should avail themselves of their authority, and pro- 
 ceed even to extortion in those cases where simple corrup- 
 tion could not keep pace with their rapacity. Examples 
 of this sort, set by superiors, could not fail being 
 followed, in a proportionate degree, by inferiors. 
 The evil was contagious, and spread among the civil 
 and military, down to the writer, the ensign, and the 
 free merchant." — Clive's Letter to the Directors, 
 Third Report of Parliamentary Committee, 1772. 
 
 The Directors replied to this very letter, lamenting 
 their conviction of its literal truth. — " We have the 
 strongest sense of the deplorable state to which our 
 affairs were on the point of being reduced, from the 
 corruption and rapacity of our seryants, and the uni- 
 versal drpravity of manners throughout the settlement. 
 The general relaxation of all discipline and obedience, 
 both military and civil, was hastily tending to a disso- 
 lution of all government. Our letter to the Select 
 Committee expresses our sentiments of what has been 
 obtained by way of donations; and to that we must 
 add, that we think the vast fortunes acquired in the 
 inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most 
 tyrannic and oppressive conduct that was ever known in 
 any age or country !^^ 
 
 But however the Directors at home might lament, 
 they were too far off to put an end to this " scene of 
 the most tyrannic and oppressive conduct that was 
 ever known in any age or country." This very same 
 grave and eloquent preacher on this oppression and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 263 
 
 corruption, Clive, was tlie first to set the example of 
 contempt of the Directors' orders, and commission of 
 those evil practices. The Directors had sent out fresh 
 covenants to be entered into by all their servants, 
 both civil and military, binding them not to receive 
 presents, nor to engage in inland trade ; but it was 
 found that the governor had not so much as brought 
 the new covenants under the consideration of the 
 council. The receipt of presents, and the inland trade 
 by the Company's servants went on with increased 
 activity. When at length these covenants were for- 
 warded to the different factories and garrisons, Gene- 
 ral Carnac, and everybody else signed them. General 
 Carnac however delayed his signing of them till he 
 had time to obtain a present of two lacs of rupees 
 (upwards of 20,000/.) from the reduced and impo- 
 verished Emperor. Clive appointed a committee to 
 inquire into these matters, which brought to light 
 strange scenes of rapacity, and of " threats to extort 
 gifts." But what did Clive? He himself entered 
 largely into private trade and into a vast monopoly of 
 salt, an article of the most urgent necessity to the 
 people ; and this on the avowed ground of wishing 
 some gentlemen whom he had brought out to make a 
 fortune. His committee sanctioned the private trade 
 in salt, betel-nut, and tobacco, out of which nearly all 
 the abuses and miseries he complained of had grown, 
 only confining it to the superior servants of the Com- 
 pany : and he himself, when the orders of the Direc- 
 tors were laid before him in council, carelessly turned 
 them aside, saying, the Directors, when they wTote 
 them, could not know what changes had taken place 
 in India. No ! they did not know that he and his 
 
2()4 COLONIZATION 
 
 council were now partners in the salt trade, and 
 realizing a profit, including interest, of upwards of 
 fifty per cent. ! Perhaps Clive thought he had done 
 a great service when he had attempted to lessen the 
 number of harpies by cutting off the trading of the 
 juniors, and thus turning the tide of gain more com- 
 pletely into his own pockets, and those of his fellows 
 of the council. It must have been a very provoking 
 sight to one with a development of acquisitiveness 
 so ample as his own, to witness what Verelst, in his 
 "View of Bengal," describes as then existing. " At 
 this time many black merchants found it expedient to 
 purchase the name of any young writer in the Com- 
 pany's service by loans of money, and under this 
 sanction harassed and oppressed the natives. So 
 plentiful a supply was derived from this source, that 
 many young writers were enabled to spend 1500Z. and 
 2000/. per annum, were clothed in fine linen, and 
 fared sumptuously every day." What were the mise- 
 ries and insolent oppressions under which the millions 
 of Bengal were made to groan by such practices, and 
 by the lawless violence with which the revenues were 
 collected about that period by the English, may be 
 sufficiently indicated by the following passages. Mr. 
 Hastings, in a letter to the President Vansittart, dated 
 Bauglepore, April 25th, 1762, says— " I beg to lay 
 before you a grievance which loudly calls for redress, 
 and will, unless duly attended to, render ineffectual 
 any endeavour to create a firm and lasting harmony 
 between the Nabobs and the Company : I mean the 
 oppressions committed under the sanction of the 
 English name, and through the want of spirit to op- 
 pose them. The evil, I am well assured, is not con- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 265 
 
 fined to our dependents alone, but is practised all over 
 the country^ hy people fahely assuming the habit of our 
 sepoys, or caliing themselves our gomastahs. On such 
 occasions, the great power of the English intimi- 
 dates the people from making any resistance; so, on 
 the other hand, the indolence of the Bengalees, or the 
 difficulty of gaining access to those who might do 
 them justice, prevents our having knowledge of the 
 oppressions. I have been surprised to meet with 
 several English flags flying in places which I have 
 passed ; and on the river I do not believe I passed a 
 boat without one. By whatever title they have been 
 assumed, I am sure their frequency can boast no good 
 to the Nabob's revenues, the quiet of the country, or 
 the honour of our nation. A party of sepoys, who 
 were on the march before us, afforded sufficient proofs 
 of the rapacious and insolent spirit of these people 
 when they are left to their own discretion. Many 
 complaints against them were made to us on the road ; 
 and most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at 
 our approach, and the shops shut up, from the apprehen- 
 sion of the same treatment from us" 
 
 Mr. Vansittart endeavoured zealously to put a stop 
 to such abominable practices ; but what could he do ? 
 The very members of the council were deriving vast 
 Emoluments from this state of things, and audaciously 
 denied its existence. Under such sanction, every 
 inferior plunderer set at defiance the orders of the 
 president and the authority of the officers appointed 
 to prevent the commission of such oppressions on the 
 natives. The native collectors of the revenue, when 
 they attempted to levy, under the express sanction 
 of the governor, the usual duties on the English, were 
 
 N 
 
266 COLONIZATION 
 
 not only repelled by them, but seized and punished 
 as enemies of the Company and violaters of its privi- 
 leges. The native judges and magistrates were re- 
 sisted in the discharge of their duties ; and even their 
 functions usurped. Everything was in confusion, and 
 many of the zemindars and other collectors refused to 
 be answerable for the revenues. Even the nabob's 
 own officers were refused the liberty to make purchases 
 on his account. One of them, of high connexions and 
 influence, was seized for having purchased from the 
 nabob some saltpetre ; the trade in which they claimed 
 as belonging exclusively to them. He was put in 
 irons and sent to Calcutta, where some of the council 
 voted for having him publicly whipped, others desired 
 that his ears might be cut off, and it was all that the 
 president could effect to get him sent back to his own 
 master to be punished. In Mr. Vansittart's own 
 narrative, is given a letter from one officer to the 
 nabob, complaining that though he was furnished with 
 instructions to send away Europeans who were found 
 committing disorders to Calcutta, notwithstanding any 
 pretence they shall make for so doing; he had used 
 persuasions, and conciliated, and found them of no 
 avail. That he had then striven by gentle means to 
 stop their violences; upon which he was threatened 
 that if he interfered with them or their servants, they 
 would treat him in such a manner as should cause him 
 to repent. That all their servants had boasted pub- 
 licly, that this was what would be done to him did he 
 presume to meddle. He adds, "Now sir, I am to 
 inform you what I have obstructed them in. This 
 place ( Backergunge ) was of great trade formerly, hut 
 now brought to nothing hy the following practices, A 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 267 
 
 gentleman sends a gomastah here to buy or sell. He 
 immediately looks upon himself as sufficient to force 
 every inhabitant either to buy his goods, or to force 
 them to sell him theirs ; and on refusal, or non-capa- 
 city, a flogging or confinement immediately ensues. 
 This is not sufficient even when willing; but a second 
 force is made use of, which is, to engross the different 
 branches of trade to themselves, and not to suffer any 
 persons to buy or sell the articles they trade in. They 
 compel the people to buy or sell at just what rate 
 they please, and my interfering occasions an imme- 
 diate complaint. These, and many other oppressions 
 which are daily practised, are the reasons that this 
 place is growing destitute of inhabitants. . . . Before, 
 justice was given in the public cutcheree, but now 
 every gomastah is become a judge ; they even pass 
 sentence on the zemindars themselves; and draw 
 money from them for pretended injuries.*' 
 
 Such was the state of the country in 1762, as wit- 
 nessed by Mr. Hastings, and such it continued till 
 Clive's government, — Clive, w^ho so forcibly described 
 it to the Directors ; and what did Clive do ? He 
 aggravated it, enriched himself enormously by the 
 very system, and so left it. Such it continued till 
 Mr. Hastings, — this Mr. Hastings, who so feelingly 
 had written his views and abhorrence of it to the Pre- 
 sident Vansittart, came into supreme power, and what 
 did the wise and benevolent Mr. Hastings? He 
 became the Aaron's-rod of gift-takers ; the prince of 
 exactors, and the most unrelenting oppressor of the 
 natives that ever visited India, or perhaps any other 
 country. In the mean time this system of rapacity 
 and extortion had reduced the people to the most 
 
268 COLONIZATION 
 
 deplorable condition of poverty and wretchedness ima- 
 ginable. The monopoly of trade, and the violent 
 abduction of all their produce in the shape of taxes, 
 dispirited them to the most extreme degree, and 
 brought on the country those famines and diseases for 
 which that period is so celebrated. In 1770 occurred 
 that dreadful famine, which has throughout Europe 
 excited so much horror of the English. They have 
 been accused of having directly created it, by buying 
 up all the rice, and refusing to sell any of it except 
 at the most exorbitant price. The author of the 
 " Short History of the English Transactions in the 
 East Indies," thus boldly states the fact. Speaking 
 of the monopoly just alluded to, of salt, betel-nut, and 
 tobacco, he says, " Money in this current came but by 
 drops. It could not quench the thirst of those who 
 waited in India to receive it. An expedient, such as 
 it was, remained to quicken it. The natives could 
 live with little salt, but could not want food. Some 
 of the agents saw themselves well situated for collect- 
 ing the rice into stores ; they did so. They knew that 
 the Gentoos would rather die than violate the princi- 
 ples of their religion by eating flesh. The alternative 
 would therefore be between giving what they had^ or 
 dying ! The inhabitants sunk. They that cultivated 
 the land, and saw the harvest at the disposal of others, 
 planted in doubt; scarcity ensued. Then the mono- 
 poly was easier managed, — sickness ensued. In some 
 districts, the languid living left the bodies of their 
 numerous dead unburied." — p. 145. 
 
 Many and ingenious have been the attempts to 
 remove this awful opprobrium from our national cha- 
 racter. It has been contended that famines are, or 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 269 
 
 were of frequent occurrence in India; — that the 
 natives had no providence ; and that to charge the 
 English with the miserable consequences of this 
 famine is unreasonable, because it was what they could 
 neither foresee nor prevent. Of the drought in the 
 previous autumn there is no doubt ; but there is un- 
 happily as little, that the regular rapacity of the 
 English had reduced the natives to that condition of 
 poverty, apathy, and despair, in which the slightest 
 derangement of season must superinduce famine ; 
 — that they were grown callous to the sufferings of 
 their victims, and were as alive to their gain by the 
 rising price through the scarcity, as they were in all 
 other cases. Their object was sudden wealth, and they 
 cared not, in fact, whether the natives lived or died, 
 so that that object was effected. This is the relation 
 of the Abbe Raynal, a foreign historian, and the light 
 in which this event was beheld by foreign nations. 
 
 " It was by a drought in 1769, at the season when 
 the rains are expected, that there was a failure of the 
 great harvest of 1769, and the less harvest of 1770. 
 It is true that the rice on the higher grounds did not 
 suffer greatly by this disturbance of the seasons, but 
 there was far from a sufficient quantity for the nourish- 
 ment of all the inhabitants of the country; add to. 
 which the English, who were engaged beforehand to 
 take proper care of their subsistence, as well as of the 
 Sepoys belonging to them, did not fail to keep locked 
 up in their magazines a part of the grain, though the 
 harvest was insufficient. . . . This scourge did not 
 fail to make itself felt throughout Bengal. Rice, 
 which is commonly sold for one sol (id.)^ for three 
 pounds, was gradually raised so high as four or even 
 
270 COLONIZATION 
 
 six sols (3d.) for one pound; neither, indeed, was 
 there any to be found, except in such places where the 
 Europeans had taken care to collect it for their own 
 use. 
 
 " The unhappy Indians were perishing every day 
 by thousands under this want of sustenance, without 
 any means of help and without any revenue. They 
 were to be seen in their villages; along the public 
 ways ; in the midst of our European colonies, — pale, 
 meagre, emaciated, fainting, consumed by famine — 
 some stretched on the ground in expectation of dying; 
 others scarce able to drag themselves on to seek any 
 nourishment, and throwing themselves at the feet 
 of the Europeans, entreating them to take them in 
 as their slaves. 
 
 " To this description, which makes humanity 
 shudder, let as add other objects, equally shocking. 
 Let imagination enlarge upon them, if possible. Let 
 us represent to ourselves, infants deserted, some ex- 
 piring on the breasts of their mothers ; everywhere, the 
 dying and the dead mingled together; on all sides, 
 the groans of sorrow and the tears of despair ; and we 
 shall then have some faint idea of the horrible spec- 
 tacle which Bengal presented for the space of six 
 weeks. 
 
 " During this whole time, the Ganges was covered 
 with carcases; the fields and highways were choked 
 up with them; infectious vapours filled the air, and 
 diseases multiplied ; and one evil succeeding another, 
 it appeared not improbable that the plague would 
 carry off the total population of that unfortunate king- 
 dom. It appears, by calculations pretty generally 
 acknowledged, that the famine carried off a fourth 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 271 
 
 part, that is to say — about three millions ! What is 
 still more remarkable, is, that such a multitude of 
 human creatures, amidst this terrible distress, remained 
 in absolute inactivity. All the Europeans, especi- 
 ally the English, were possessed of magazines. These 
 were not touched. Private houses were so too. No 
 revolt, no massacre, not the least violence prevailed. 
 The unhappy Indians, resigned to despair, confined 
 themselves to the request of succours they did not 
 obtain; and peacefully awaited the relief of death. 
 
 " Let us now represent to ourselves any part of 
 Europe afflicted with a similar calamity. What dis- 
 order ! what fury ! what atrocious acts ! what crimes 
 would ensue ! How should we have seen amongst us 
 Europeans, some contending for their food, dagger in 
 hand, some pursuing, some flying, and without remorse 
 massacring one another ! How should we have seen 
 men at last turn their rage on themselves; tearing 
 and devouring their own limbs ; and, in the blindness 
 of despair, trampling under foot all authority, as well 
 as every sentiment of nature and reason ! 
 
 " Had it been the fate of the English to have had 
 the like events to dread on the part of the people of 
 Bengal, perhaps the famine would have been less 
 general and less destructive. For, setting aside, as 
 perhaps we ought, every charge of monoply, no one 
 will -undertake to defend them against the reproach 
 of negligence and insensibility. And in what a crisis 
 have they merited that reproach ? In the very instant 
 of time in which the life or death of several millions 
 of their fellow-creatures was in their power. One 
 would think that in such alternative, the very love of 
 humankind, that sentiment innate in all hearts, might 
 have inspired them with resources." — i. 460-4. 
 
27*2 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN INDIA, CONTINUED. TREATMENT 
 
 OF THE NATIVES, CONTINUED. 
 
 " If," says the same historian, in whose language we 
 concluded the last chapter, *' to this picture of public 
 oppressions we were to add that of private extortions, 
 we should find the agents of the Company almost 
 everywhere exacting their tribute with extreme 
 rigour, and raising contributions with the utmost cru- 
 elty. We should see them carrying a kind of inqui- 
 sition into every family, and sitting in judgment on 
 every fortune; robbing indiscriminately the artizan 
 and the labourer; imputing it often to a man, as a 
 crime, that he is not sufficiently rich, and punishing 
 him accordingly. We should view them selling their 
 favour and their credit, as well to oppress the innocent 
 as to oppress the guilty. We should find, in conse- 
 quence of these irregularities, despair seizing every 
 heart, and an universal dejection getting the better of 
 every mind, and uniting to put a stop to the progress 
 and activity of commerce, agriculture, and popula- 
 tion." This, which is the language of a foreigner. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 273 
 
 was also the language of the Directors at the same 
 period, addressed to their servants in India. They 
 complained that their '* orders had been disregarded ; 
 that oppression pervaded the whole country ; that 
 youths had been suffered with impunity to exercise 
 sovereign jurisdiction over the natives, and to acquire 
 rapid fortunes by monopolizing commerce," They 
 ask "whether there be a thing which had not been 
 made a monopoly of? whether the natives are not 
 more than ever oppressed and wretched?" They were 
 just then appointing Mr. Hastings their first Govern- 
 or-general, and expressed a hope that he would " set 
 an example of temperance, economy, and application." 
 Unfortunately Mr. Hastings set an example of a very 
 different kind. It was almost immediately after his 
 appointment to his high station that he entered into 
 that infamous bargain with the Nabob of Oude for 
 the extermination of the Rohillas; and during his 
 government scarcely a year passed without the most 
 serious charges being preferred against him to the 
 supreme council, of which he himself was the head, 
 of his reception of presents and annuities contrary to 
 the express injunctions of the Company, and for the 
 purpose of corrupt appointments. In 1775 he was 
 charged with the receipt of 15,000 rupees, as a bribe 
 for the appointment of the Duan of Burdwan, or 
 manager of the revenues; in 1776, of receiving an 
 annual salary from the Phousdar of Hoogly of 36,000 
 rupees for a similar cause. About the same time it 
 came out too, that in 1772, that is, immediately on 
 entering the governorship, he received from the Munny 
 Begum a present of one iac and a half of rupees, for 
 appointing her the guardian and superintendent of the 
 n2 
 
274 COLONIZATION 
 
 aiFairs of the Nabob of Bengal, a minor; and the 
 same sum had been received by Mr. Middleton, his 
 agent. The council felt itself bound to receive evi- 
 dence on these charges. The Maha Rajah Nundco- 
 mar, who had been appointed to various important 
 offices by Mr. Hastings himself, came forward and 
 accused the governor of acquitting Mahmud Reza 
 Khan, the Naib Duan of Bengal, and Rajah Shitabroy 
 the Naib Duan of Bahar, of vast embezzlements in 
 their accounts, and also offered proof of the bribe of 
 upwards of three and a half lacs from Munny Begum 
 and Rajah Gourdass. What answer did he make to 
 these charges ? He refused to enter into them ; but 
 immediately commenced a prosecution of Nundcomar, 
 on a charge of conspiracy ; which failing, he had him 
 tried on a charge of forgery, said to be committed five 
 years before. On this he was convicted by a jury of 
 Englishmen, and hanged, though the crime was not 
 capital by the laws of his country. This was a circum- 
 stance that cast the foulest suspicions upon him. It was 
 said that a man standing in the position and peculiar cir- 
 cumstances of the governor, accused of the high crimes 
 of bribery and corruption, would, had he been innocent, 
 have used every exertion to have saved the life of an 
 accuser, had he been prosecuted by others, instead of 
 himself hastening him out of the way; which must 
 leave the irresistible conviction in the public mind, of 
 his own guilt. But on the celebrated trial of Mr. 
 Hastings, this was exactly the mode in which every 
 accusation was met. When the most celebrated men 
 of the time had united to reiterate these and other 
 charges ; when he stood before the House of Peers, 
 impeached by the Commons, instead of standing for- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 275 
 
 ward as a man conscious of his innocence, and glad of 
 the opportunity to clear his name from such foul taint, 
 every technical obstruction which the ingenuity of his 
 council could devise was thrown in the way of evidence. 
 When the evidence of this Rajah Nundcomar, as taken 
 by the supreme council of Calcutta, was tended, it 
 was rejected because it was not given in the council 
 upon oath; though Mr. Hastings well knew that the 
 Hindoos never gave evidence upon oath, being con- 
 trary to their religion ; that it was never required, — 
 that this very evidence had been received by the coun- 
 cil as legal ; and that he himself had always contended 
 during his own government, that such evidence was 
 legal. When a letter of Munny Begum was presented, 
 proving the reception of her bribe by Mr. Hastings, 
 that letter was not admitted because it was merely a 
 copy, though an attested one ; the original letter itself 
 was however produced, and persons high in office in 
 India at the time of the transaction, came forward to 
 swear to the hand and seal as those of the Begum. 
 And what then ? the original letter itself was rejected 
 because it made part of the evidence before the coun- 
 cil, which had been rejected before on other grounds 1 
 Such was the manner in which these and the other 
 great charges against this celebrated governor, which 
 we have noticed in a former chapter, were met. 
 Every piece of decisive evidence against him was re- 
 sisted by every possible means : so that had he been 
 the most innocent man alive, the only conviction that 
 could remain on the mind of the public must have 
 been that of his guilt. He had neither acted like an 
 innocent, high-minded man, to whom the imputation 
 of guilt is intolerable, himself in India, nor had his 
 
276 COLONIZATION 
 
 advocates in England been instructed to do so. Evi- 
 dence on every charge, of the most conclusive nature, 
 was offered, and resolutely rejected ; and spite of all 
 the endeavours to clear the memory of Warren Hast- 
 ings of cruelty and corruption, the very conduct of 
 himself and his counsel on the trial, must stamp the 
 accusing verdict indelibly on his name. 
 
 But his individual conduct is here of no further 
 concern than to shew what must have been the conta- 
 gion of his example, and what the license given by 
 the House of Peers, by the rejection of evidence in 
 such a case, to all future adventurers in India. Well 
 might Burke exclaim, " That it held out to all future 
 governors of Bengal the most certain and unbounded 
 impunity. Peculation in India would be no longer 
 practised, as it used to be, with caution and with se- 
 cresy. It would in future stalk abroad at noon-day, 
 and act without disguise ; because, after such a deci- 
 sion as had just been made by their lordships, there 
 was no possibility of bringing into a court the proofs 
 of peculation." And indeed every misery which the 
 combined evils of war, official plunder, and remorse- 
 less exaction could heap upon the unhappy natives, 
 seems to have reigned triumphant through the British 
 provinces and dependencies of India at this period. 
 The destructive contests with Hyder Ali, the ravages 
 of the English and their ally, the Nabob of Arcot, in 
 Tanjore and the Marawars, were necessarily produc- 
 tive of extreme ruin and misery. During Mr. Hast- 
 ings' government the duannee, or management of the 
 revenues was assumed in Bengal by the English. 
 Reforms both in the mode of collecting the taxes and 
 in the administration of justice were attempted. The 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 277 
 
 lands were oiFered on leases of five years, and those 
 leases put up to auction to the best bidders. The 
 British Parliament in 1773 appointed a Supreme 
 Court of Judicature, in which English judges adminis- 
 tered English law. But as the great end aimed at 
 was not the relief of the people, but the increase of 
 the amount of taxation, these changes were onlj^ dis- 
 astrous to the natives. Native officers were in many 
 cases removed, and the native ryots only the more 
 oppressed. Every change, in fact, seemed to be 
 tried except the simple and satisfactory one of re- 
 ducing the exactions and cultivating the blessings of 
 peace. Ten years after these changes had been intro- 
 duced, and had been all this time inflicting unspeak- 
 able calamities on the people, Mr. Dundas moved 
 inquiry into Indian affairs, and pronounced the most 
 severe censures on both the Indian Presidencies and 
 the Court of Directors. He accused the Presidencies, 
 and that most justly, of plunging the nation into wars 
 for the sake of conquest, of contemning and violating 
 treaties, and plundering and oppressing the people of 
 India. The Directors he charged with blaming the 
 misconduct of their servants only when it was unat- 
 tended with profit, and exercising a very constant 
 forbearance as often as it was productive of gain or 
 territory. 
 
 Of the effects of his own military and financial 
 changes Mr. Hastings had a good specimen in his 
 journey through the province of Benares in 1784. 
 This was only three years after he had committed the 
 atrocities in this province, related in a former chapter, 
 and driven the Rajah from his throne ; and these are 
 his own words, in a letter to the Council, dated Luck- 
 
278 COLONIZATION 
 
 now, April, 1784: — *«From the confines of Buxar to 
 Benares, I was followed and fatigued by the clamours 
 of the discontented inhabitants. The distresses which 
 were produced by the long-continued drought una- 
 voidably tended to heighten the general discontent : 
 yet I have reason to fear that the cause principally 
 existed in a defective, if not a corrupt and oppres- 
 sive administration. From Buxar to the opposite 
 boundary I have seen nothing but traces of com- 
 plete devastation in every village." And what had 
 occasioned those devastations? The wars and the 
 determined resolve introduced by Mr. Hastings him- 
 self, to have the very uttermost amount that could be 
 wrung from the people. 
 
 For the sort of persons to whom Mr. Hastings was 
 in the habit of farming out the revenues of the pro- 
 vinces, and the motives for which they were appointed, 
 we must refer to particulars which came out on his 
 trial respecting such men as Kelleram, Govind Sing, 
 and Deby Sing ; but nothing can give a more lively 
 idea of the horrid treatment which awaited the poor 
 natives under such monsters as these collectors, than 
 the statements then made of the practices of the last 
 mentioned person, Deby or Devi Sing. This man 
 was declared to have been placed on his post for cor- 
 rupt ends. He was a man of the most infamous cha- 
 racter ; yet that did not prevent Mr. Hastings placing 
 him in such a responsible office, though he himself 
 declared on the trial that he " so well knew the cha- 
 racter and abilities of Rajah Deby Sing that he could 
 easily conceive it was in his power both to commit 
 great enormities and to conceal the real grounds of 
 them from the British collectors in the district." — 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 279 
 
 Well, notwithstanding this opinion, the Rajah offered 
 a very convenient sum of money, four lacs of rupees — 
 upwards of 40,000/. — and he was appointed renter of 
 the district of Dinagepore. Complaints of his cruel- 
 ties were not long in arriving at Calcutta. Mr. Pat- 
 terson, a gentleman in the Company's service, was 
 sent as a commissioner to inquire into the charges 
 against him ; and the account of them, as given by 
 Mr. Patterson, is thus quoted by Mills, from " The 
 History of the Trial of Warren Hastings, Esq." 
 
 " The poor ryots, or husbandmen, were treated in 
 a manner that would never gain belief if it was not 
 attested by the records of the Company : and Mr. 
 Burke thought it necessary to apologize to their lord- 
 ships for the horrid relation with which he would be 
 obliged to harrow their feelings. The worthy Com- 
 missioner Patterson, who had authenticated the parti- 
 culars of this relation, had wished, that for the credit 
 of human nature, he might have drawn a veil over 
 them ; but as he had been sent to inquire into them, 
 he must, in the discharge of his duty state those parti- 
 culars, however shocking they were to his feelings. 
 The cattle and corn of the husbandmen were sold for 
 a third of their value, and their huts reduced to ashes ! 
 The unfortunate owners were obliged to borrow from 
 usurers, that they might discharge their bonds, which 
 had unjustly and illegally been extorted from them 
 while they were in confinement; and such was the 
 determination of the infernal fiend, Devi Sing, to have 
 these bonds discharged, that the wretched husbandmen 
 were obliged to 'borrow money, not at twenty, or 
 thirty, or forty, or fifty, but at six hundred per cent, 
 to satisfy him ! Those who could not raise the money 
 
280 COLONIZATION 
 
 were most cruelly tortured. Cords were drawn tight 
 round their Jingers, till the flesh of the four on each hand 
 was actually incorporated, and became one solid mass. 
 The fingers were then separated again by toedges of iron 
 and wood driven in between them ! Others were tied, 
 two and two, by the feet, and thrown across a wooden 
 bar, upon which they hung with their feet uppermost. 
 They were then beat on the soles of the feet till the 
 toe-nails dropped off! They were afterwards beat 
 about the head till the blood gushed out at the mouth, 
 nose, and ears. They were also flogged upon the 
 naked body with bamboo canes, and prickly bushes, 
 and above all, with some poisonous weeds, which 
 were of a caustic nature, and burnt at every touch. 
 The cruelty of the monster who had ordered all this, 
 had contrived how to tear the mind as well as the 
 body. He frequently had a father and son tied naked 
 to one another by the feet and arms, and then flogged 
 till the skin was torn from the flesh ; and he had the 
 devilish satisfaction to know, that every blow must 
 hurt; for if one escaped the son, his sensibility was 
 wounded by the knowledge he had, that the blow had 
 fallen upon his father. The same torture was felt by 
 the father, when he knew that every blow that missed 
 him had fallen upon his son. 
 
 "The treatment of the females could not be de- 
 scribed. Dragged from the inmost recesses of their 
 houses, which the religion of the country had made so 
 many sanctuaries, they were exposed naked to public 
 view. The Virgins were carried to the Court of Jus- 
 tice, where they might naturally have looked for pro- 
 tection, but they now looked for it in vain ; for in the 
 face of the ministers of justice, in the face of the spec- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 281 
 
 tators, in the face of the sun, those tender and modest 
 virgins were brutally violated. The only difference 
 between their treatment and that of their mothers was, 
 that the former were dishonoured in the face of day, 
 the latter in the gloomy recesses of their dungeon. 
 Other females had the nipples of their breasts put in 
 a cleft bamboo, and torn off." What follows is too 
 shocking and indecent^ to transcribe ! It is almost 
 impossible, in reading of these frightful and savage 
 enormities, to believe that we are reading of a country 
 under the British government, and that these unmanly 
 deeds were perpetrated by British agents, and for the 
 purpose of extorting the British revenue. Thus were 
 these innocent and unhappy people treated, because 
 Warren Hastings wanted money, and sold them to a 
 wretch whom he knew to be a wretch, for a bribe ; 
 thus were they treated, because Devi Sijig had paid 
 his four lacs of rupees, and must wring them again 
 out of the miserable ryots, though it were with their 
 very life's blood, and with fire and torture before 
 unheard of even in the long and black catalogue of 
 human crimes. And it should never be forgotten, 
 that though Mr. Burke pledged himself, if permitted, 
 under the most awful imprecations, to prove every 
 word of this barbarous recital, such permission was 
 stoutly refused ; and that, moreover, the evidence of 
 the Commissioner Patterson stands in the Company's 
 own records. 
 
 But it was not merely the commission of these out- 
 rages which the poor inhabitants had to endure. The 
 English courts of justice, which should have protected 
 them, became an additional means of torture and ruin. 
 The writs of the supreme court were issued at the 
 
282 COLONIZATION 
 
 suit of individuals against the zemindars of the country 
 in ordinary actions of debt. They were dragged from 
 their families and affairs, with the frequent certainty 
 of leaving them to disorder and ruin, any distance, 
 even as great as 500 miles, to give bail at Calcutta ; 
 a thing, which, if they were strangers, and the sum 
 more than trifling, it was next to impossible they 
 should have in their power. In default of this, they 
 were consigned to prison for all the many months 
 which the delays of English judicature might inter- 
 pose between this calamitous stage and the termination, 
 of the suit. Upon the affidavit, into the truth of 
 which no inquiry was made, upon the unquestioned 
 affidavit of any person whatsoever — a person of credi- 
 bility, or directly the reverse, no diiference — the 
 natives were seized, carried to Calcutta, and consigned 
 to prison, where, even when it was afterwards deter- 
 mined that they were not within the jurisdiction of 
 the court, and, of course, that they had been unjustly 
 persecuted, they were liable to lie for several months, 
 and wkence they were dismissed totally without com- 
 pensation. Instances occurred, in which defendants 
 were brought from a distance to the Presidency, and 
 wh6n they declared their intention of pleading, that 
 is, objecting to the jurisdiction of the court, the pro- 
 secution was dropped ; but was again renewed ; the 
 defendant brought down to Calcutta, and again upon 
 his offering to plead, the prosecution was dropped. 
 The very act of being seized, was in India, the deep- 
 est disgrace, and so degraded a man of any rank that, 
 under the Mahomedan government, it never was 
 attempted but in cases of the utmost delinquency.* 
 * Mills, ii. 560-2. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 283 
 
 In merely reading these cases of 
 
 The proud man's contumely, the oppressor's wrong, 
 
 it is difficult to repress the burning indignation of 
 one's spirit. What shame, what disgrace, that under 
 the laws of England, and in a country to which we 
 owe so much wealth and power, such a system of 
 reckless and desperate injustice should for a long 
 series of years have been practising ! But if it be 
 difficult to read of it without curses and imprecations, 
 what must it have been to bear? How must the 
 wretched, hopeless, harassed, persecuted, and oul?t 
 raged people have called on Brahma for that tenth 
 Avatar which should sweep their invincible, their 
 iron-handed and iron-hearted oppressors, as a swarm 
 of locusts from their fair land ! Let any one imagine 
 what must be the state of confusion when the zemin- 
 dars, or higher collectors of the revenues were thus 
 plagued in the sphere of their arduous duties, and 
 called out of it, to the distant capital. When they 
 were degraded in the eyes, and removed from the 
 presence of the ryots, what must have been the 
 natural consequence, but neglect and license on the 
 part of the ryot, only too happy to obtain a little 
 temporary ease ? But the ryots themselves did not 
 escape, as we have already seen. Such, however, 
 continued this dismal state of things to the very end 
 of the century. Lord Cornwallis complained in 1790, 
 ** that excepting the class of shroiFs and banyans, who 
 reside almost entirely in great towns, the inhabitants 
 of these provinces were hastily advancing to a general 
 state of poverty and wretchedness." Lord Cornwallis 
 projected his plans, and in 1802, Sir Henry Strachey, 
 in answer to interrogatories sent to the Indian judges. 
 
284 COLONIZATION 
 
 drew a gloomy picture of the result of all the schemes of 
 finance and judicature that had been adopted. He repre- 
 sented that the zemindars, by the sale of their lands, 
 in default of the payment of their stipulated revenue, 
 were almost universally destroyed, or were reduced 
 to the condition of the lowest ryots. That, in one 
 year (1796) nearly one tenth of all the lands in Ben- 
 gal, Bahar, and Orissa, had been advertised for sale. 
 That in two years alone, of the trial of the English 
 courts, the accumulated causes threatened to arrest 
 the course of justice: in one single district of Burdwan 
 more than thirty thousand suits were before the judge; 
 and that no candidate for justice could expect it in 
 the course of an ordinary life. " The great Jnen, 
 formerly," said Sir Hejiry, "were the Mussulman 
 rulers, whose places we have taken, and the Hindoo 
 zemindars. These two classes are now ruined and 
 destroyed." He adds, " exaction of revenue is now, 
 I presume, and, perhaps, always was, the most pre- 
 vailing crime throughout the country ; and I know 
 not how it is that extortioners appear to us in any 
 other light than that of the worst and most pernicious 
 species of robbers." He tells us that the lands of the 
 Mahrattas in the neighbourhood of his district, Mid- 
 napore, were more prosperous than ours, though they 
 were without regular courts of justice, or police. 
 " Where," says he, "no battles are fought, the ryots 
 remain unmolested by military exactions, and the 
 zemindars are seldom changed, the country was in 
 high cultivation, and the population frequently supe- 
 rior to our own.'* 
 
 Such was the condition and treatment of the natives 
 of Indostan, at the commencement of the present cen- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 285 
 
 tury. In another chapter, on our policy and conduct 
 in this vast and important region — it remains only to 
 take a rapid glance at the effect of these two centuries 
 of despotism upon these subjected millions, and to 
 inquire what we have since been doing towards a 
 better state of things, — more auspicious to them, and 
 honourable to ourselves. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN INDIA, CONTINUED. 
 
 We are accustomed to govern India — a country which God never 
 gave us, by means which God will never justify. 
 
 Lord Erskine — Speech on Stockdale's Trial. 
 
 We have traced something of the misery which a long 
 course of avarice and despotism has inflicted on the 
 natives of India, but we have not taken into the ac- 
 count its moral effect upon* them. Generation after 
 generation of Englishmen flocked over to Indostan, to 
 gather a harvest of wealth, and to return and enjoy it 
 at home. Generation after generation of Indians arose 
 to create this wealth for their temporary visitors, and 
 to sink deeper and deeper themselves into poverty. 
 Haippy had it been for them, had poverty and physical 
 wretchedness come alone. But the inevitable con- 
 
286 COLONIZATION 
 
 comitant of slavery and destitution appeared with 
 them, and to every succeeding generation in a more 
 appalling form — demoralization, vast as their multitude 
 and dreadful as their condition. They were not more 
 unhappy than they were degraded in spirit and de- 
 based in feeling. Ages of virtual though not nominal 
 slavery, beneath Mahomedan and Christian masters, 
 had necessarily done their usual work on the Hindus. 
 They had long ceased to be the gentle, the pure- 
 minded, the merciful Hindus. They had become 
 cruel, thievish, murderous, licentious, as well as 
 blindly superstitious. They had seen no religious 
 purity, no moral integrity practised — how were they 
 to become pure and honest? They had felt only 
 cruelty and injustice — how were they to be anything 
 but cruel and unjust? They had seen from age to 
 age, from day to day, from hour to hour, every sacred 
 tie of blood or honour, every moral obligation, every 
 great and eternal principle of human action violated 
 around them — how were they to reverence such things? 
 How were they to regard them but as solemn and 
 unprofitable mockeries ? They were accordingly cor- 
 rupted into a mean, lying, depraved, and perfidious 
 generation — could the abject tools of a money-scraping 
 race of conquerors be anything else ? — was it probable ? 
 was it possible? Philosophers and poetical minds, 
 when such, now and then, reached India, were aston- 
 ished to find, instead of those delicate and spiritual 
 children of Brahma, of whom they had read such 
 delightful accounts — a people so sordid, and in many 
 instances so savage and cruel. They had not calculated, 
 as they might have done, the certain consequences of 
 long years of slavery's most fatal inflictions. What 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 287 
 
 an eternal debt of generous and Christian retribution 
 do we owe India for all this ! What, indeed, are the 
 pangs we have occasioned, the poverty we have 
 created, the evils of all kinds that we have perpetrated, 
 to the moral degradation we have induced, and the 
 gross darkness, gross superstition, the gross sensuality 
 we have thus, in fact, fostered and perpetuated ? Had 
 we appeared in India as Christians instead of con- 
 querors ; as just merchants instead of subtle plotters, 
 shunning the name of tyrants while we aimed at the 
 most absolute tyranny ; had we been as conspicuous 
 for our diffusion of knowledge as for our keen, cease- 
 less, and insatiable gathering of coin ; long ago that 
 work would have been done which is but now begin- 
 ning, and our power would have acquired the most 
 profound stability in the affections and the knowledge 
 of the people. 
 
 At the period of which I have been speaking — the 
 end of the last and the opening of the present century, 
 the character of the Hindus, as drawn by eye witnesses 
 of the highest authority, was most deplorable. Even 
 Sir William Jones, than whom there never lived a man 
 more enthusijistic in his admiration of the Hindu 
 literature and antiquities, and none more ready to see 
 all that concerned this people in sunny hues — even he, 
 when he had had time to observe their character, was 
 compelled to express his surprise and disappointment. 
 He speaks of their cruelties with abhorrence : in his 
 charge to the grand jury at Calcutta, June 10th, 
 1787, he observed, "Perjury seems to be committed 
 by the meanest, and encouraged by some of the better 
 sort of the Hindus and Mussulmans with as little 
 remorse as if it were a proof of ingenuity, or even of 
 
288 COLONIZATION 
 
 merit" — that he had " no doubt that affidavits of any 
 imaginary fact might be purchased in the markets of 
 Calcutta as readily as any other article— and that, 
 could the most binding form of religious obligation be 
 hit upon, there would be found few consciences to 
 bind." 
 
 All the travellers and historians of the time, Orme, 
 Buchanan, Forster, Forbes, Scott Waring, etc., unite 
 in bearing testimony to their grossness, filth, and dis- 
 regard of their words ; their treachery, cowardice, and 
 thievishness ; their avarice, equal to that of the whites, 
 and their cunning and duplicity more than European; 
 their foul language and quarrelsome habits — all the 
 features of a people depraved by hereditary oppression 
 and moral neglect. Their horrid and barbarous super- 
 stitions, by which thousands of victims are destroyed 
 every year, are now familiar to all Europe. Every 
 particular of these evil lineaments of character were 
 most strikingly attested by the Indian judges, in their 
 answers to the circular of interrogatories put to them 
 in 1801, already alluded to. They all coincided in 
 describing the general moral character of the inhabi- 
 tants as at the lowest pitch of infamy ; that very few 
 exceptions to that character were to be found; that 
 there was no species of fraud or villany that the higher 
 classes would not be guilty of; and that, in the lower 
 classes, were to be added, murder, robbery, adultery, 
 perjury, etc., on the slightest occasion. One of 
 them, the magistrate of Juanpore, added, "I have 
 observed, among the inhabitants of this country, some 
 possessed of abilities qualified to rise to eminence in 
 other countries, hut a moral, virtuous man, I have never 
 met amongst them^ 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. • 289 
 
 Mr. Grant described the Bengalese as depraved and 
 dishonest to a degree to which Europe could furnish 
 no parallel; that they were "cunning, servile, in- 
 triguing, false, and hypocritically obsequious ; that 
 they, however, indemnified themselves for their pas- 
 siveness to their superiors by their tyranny, cruelty, 
 and violence to those in their power." Amongst them- 
 selves he says, " discord, hatred, abuse, slanders, in- 
 juries, complaints, and litigations prevail to a surprising 
 degree. No stranger can sit down among them without 
 being struck with the temper of malevolent contention 
 and animosity as a prominent feature in the character 
 of the society. It is seen in every village: the in- 
 habitants live amongst each other in a sort of repulsive 
 state. Nay, it enters into almost every family: seldom 
 is there a household without its internal divisions and 
 lasting enmities, most commonly, too, on the score of 
 interest. The women, too, partake of this spirit of 
 discord. Held in slavish subjection by the men, they 
 rise in furious passions against each other, which vent 
 themselves in such loud, virulent, and indecent rail- 
 ings, as are hardly to be heard in any other part of the 
 
 world Benevolence has been represented as 
 
 a leading principle in the minds of the Hindus; but 
 those who make this assertion know little of their 
 character. Though a Hindu would shrink with horror 
 from the idea of directly slaying a cow, which is a 
 sacred animal amongst them, yet he who drives one in 
 his cart, galled and excoriated as she is by the yoke, 
 beats her unmercifully from hour to hour, without any 
 care or consideration of the consequence.'* Mr. Fraser 
 Tytler, Lord Teignmouth, Sir James Mackintosh, and 
 others, only expand the dark features of this melan- 
 
290 COLONIZATION 
 
 choly picture; we need not therefore dwell largely 
 upon it. The French missionary, the Abbe Dubois, 
 and Mr. Ward, the English one, bear a like testimony. 
 The latter, on the subject of Hindu humanity, asks — 
 "Are these men and women, too, who drag their 
 dying relations to the banks of rivers, at all seasons, 
 day and night, and expose them to the heat and cold 
 in the last agonies of death, without remorse ; who 
 assist men to commit self-murder, encouraging them 
 to swing with hooks in their backs, to pierce their 
 tongues and sides — to cast themselves on naked knives 
 or bury themselves alive — throw themselves in rivers, 
 from precipices, and under the cars of their idols; — 
 who murder their own children — burying them alive, 
 throwing them to the alligators, or hanging them up 
 alive in trees, for the ants and crows, before their own 
 doors, or by sacrificing them to the Ganges; — who 
 burn alive, amidst savage shouts, the heart-broken 
 widow, by the hands of her own son, and with the 
 corpse of a deceased father ; — who every year butcher 
 thousands of animals, at the call of superstition, cover- 
 ing themselves with blood, consigning their carcases 
 to the dogs, and carrying their heads in triumph 
 through the streets? are these the benignant Hindus." 
 It may be said that these cruelties are the natural 
 growth of their superstitions. True; but, up to the 
 period in question, who had endeavoured to correct, 
 or who cared for their superstitions so that they paid 
 their taxes ? To this hour, or, at least, till but yes- 
 terday, many of these bloody superstitions have had 
 the actual sanction of the British countenance ! To 
 this hour the dreadful indications of their cruel and 
 treacherous character, apart from their superstitions, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 291 
 
 from time to time afFriglit Europe. We have latterly 
 heard much of the horrible deeds of the Thugs and 
 Phasingars. Where such dreadful associations and 
 habits are prevalent to the extent described, there 
 must be a most monstrous corruption of morals, shock- 
 ing neglect of the people, and consequent annihilation 
 of everything like, social security and civilization. In 
 what, indeed, does the practice and temper of the 
 Thugs differ from those of the Decoits, who abounded 
 at the period in question? These were gangs of 
 robbers who associated for their purposes, and prac- 
 tised by subtle subterfuge or open violence, as best 
 suited the occasion. They went in troops, and made 
 a common assault on houses and property, or dispersed 
 themselves under various disguises, to inveigle their 
 victims into their power. Mr. Dowdeswell, in a 
 report to government, in 1809, says, "robbery, rape, 
 and murder itself are not the worst figures in this 
 horrid and disgusting picture. An expedient of com- 
 mon occurrence with the Decoits, merely to induce a 
 .confession of property supposed to be concealed, is to 
 burn the proprietor with straws or torches until he 
 discloses the property or perishes in the flames." He 
 mentions one man who was convicted of having com- 
 mitted fifteen murders in nineteen days, and adds that, 
 "volumes might be filled with the atrocities of the 
 Decoits, every line of which would make the blood 
 run cold with horror.*' He does, indeed, give some 
 <letails of them of the most amazing and harrowing 
 description. 
 
 Sir Henry Strachey in his Report already quoted, 
 says, " the crime of decoity, in the district of Calcutta, 
 has, I believe, greatly increased since the British 
 
292 COLONIZATION 
 
 administration of justice. The number of convicts 
 confined at the six stations of this division (indepen- 
 dent of Zillah twenty-four pergunnahs) is about 
 4000. Of them probably nine-tenths are decoits. Be- 
 sides these, some hundreds of late years have been 
 transported. The number of persons convicted of 
 decoity, however great it may appear, is certainly 
 small in proportion to those who are guilty of the 
 crime. At Midnapore I find, by the reports of 
 the police darogars, that in the year 1802, a period 
 of peace and tranquillity, they sent intelligence of no 
 less than ninety- three robberies, most of them, as 
 usual, committed by large gangs. With respect to 
 fifty-one of these robberies, not a man was taken, and 
 for the remaining forty-two, very few, frequently only 
 one or two in each gang." Other judges describe the 
 extent to which decoity existed, as being much vaster 
 than was generally known, and calculated to excite 
 the most general terror throughout the country. 
 
 This is an awful picture of a people approaching to 
 one hundred millions, and of a great and splendid coun- . 
 try, which has been for the most part in our hands for 
 more than a century. It only remains now to inquire 
 what has been done since the opening of the nine- 
 teenth century for the instruction and general ame- 
 lioration of the condition of this vast multitude of 
 human beings, and thereby for our own justification 
 as a Christian nation. Warren Hastings said most 
 truly, that throwing aside all pretences of any other 
 kind that many were disposed to set up, the simple 
 truth was that **by the sword India had been acquired, 
 and by the sword it must be maintained." If the 
 forcible conquest of a country be, therefore, a crime 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 293 
 
 against the rights of nations and the principles of 
 religion, what retribution can we make for our national 
 offences, except by employing our power to make the 
 subjected people happy and virtuous? But if we do 
 not even hold conquest to be a crime, or war to be 
 unchristian, where is the man that will not deem that 
 we have assumed an awful responsibility on the plainest 
 principles of the gospel, by taking into our hands the 
 fate of so many millions of human creatures, thus 
 degraded, thus ignorant and unhappy ? It is impossi- 
 ble either to "do justice, to love mercy, or to walk 
 humbly before God," without as zealously seeking the 
 social and eternal benefit of so great a people, as we have 
 sought, and still seek, our own advantage, in the pos- 
 session of their wealth. Over this important subject I 
 am unfortunately bound to pass, by my circumscribed 
 limits, in a hasty manner. The subject would require 
 a volume. It is with pleasure, however, that we can 
 point to certain great features in the modern history 
 of improvement in India. It is with pleasure that we 
 can say that some of the most barbarous rites of the 
 Hindu superstitions have been removed. That in- 
 fanticide, and the burning of widows have been abo- 
 lished by the British influence ; and that though the 
 horrible immolations of Juggernaut are not terminated, 
 they are no longer so unblushingly sanctioned, and 
 even encouraged by British interference. These are 
 great steps in the right path. To Colonel Walker, 
 and Mr. Duncan, the governor of Bombay, immortal 
 thanks and honour are due, for first leading the way 
 in this track of great reforms, by at once discouraging, 
 dissuading from, and finally abolishing infanticide in 
 Guzerat. One of the most beneficial acts of the 
 
294 COLONIZATION 
 
 Marquis Wellesley's government, was to put this 
 horrible custom down in Saugur. How little any- 
 thing, however, but the extraction of revenue had 
 throughout all the course of our dominion in India 
 been regarded till the present century, the Christian 
 Researches of Mr. Buchanan made manifest. The 
 publication of that book, coming as it did from a gen- 
 tleman most friendly to our authorities there, was the 
 commencement of a new era in our Indian history. 
 It at once turned, by the strangeness of its details, the 
 ^yes of all the religious world on our Indian territo- 
 ries, and excited a feeling which more than any other 
 cause has led to the changes which have hitherto 
 been effected. At that period (1806), in making a 
 tour through the peninsula of Indostan, he discovered 
 that everything like attention to the moral or religious 
 condition of either natives or colonists was totally 
 neglected. That all the atrocious superstitions of the 
 Hindus were not merely tolerated, but even sanctioned, 
 and some of them patronized by our government. 
 That though there were above twenty English regi- 
 ments in India at that time, not one of them had a chap- 
 lain, (p. 80). That in Ceylon, where the Dutch had 
 once thirty-two Protestant churches, we had then but 
 two English clergymen in the whole island ! (p. 93). 
 That there were in it by computation 500,000 natives 
 professing Christianity; who, however, "had not one 
 complete copy of the Scriptures in the vernacular 
 tongue," and consequently, they were fast receding 
 into paganism, (p. 95). That the very English were 
 more notorious for their infidelity than for anything 
 else, and by their presence did infinite evil to the 
 natives. That, in that very year, when the governor 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY* 295 
 
 of Bombay announced to the supreme government at 
 Calcutta, his determination to attempt to extirpate 
 infanticide from Guzerat — a practice, be it remem- 
 bered, which in that province alone destroyed annually 
 3000 children f* — this cool commercial body warned 
 him, not " even for the speculative success of that be- 
 nevolent project, to hazard the essential interests of 
 the state !" (p. 52). That all the horrors of burning 
 widows were perpetrated to the amount of from seven 
 hundred to one thousand of such diabolical scenes 
 annually. That the disgusting and gory worship of 
 Juggernaut was not merely practised, but was actually 
 licensed and patronized by the English government. 
 That very year it had imposed a tax on all pilgrims 
 going to the temples in Orissa and Bengal, had ap- 
 pointed British officers, British gentlemen to superin- 
 tend the management of this hideous worship and the 
 receipt of its proceeds. That the internal rites of the 
 temple consisted in one loathsome scene of prostitu- 
 tion, hired bands of women being kept for the pur- 
 pose ; its outward rites the crushing of human victims 
 under the car of the idol. 
 
 Thus the Indian government had, in fact, instead of 
 discouraging such practices in the natives, taken up 
 the trade of public murderers, and keepers of houses 
 of ill fame, and that under the sacred name of religious 
 tolerance ! A more awful state of things it is impos- 
 sible to conceive; nor one which more forcibly demon- 
 strates what the whole of this history proclaims, that 
 there is no state of crime, corruption, or villany, which 
 by being familiarized to them, and coming to regard 
 
 * It is said that infanticide, spite of the legal prohibition, is still 
 privately perpetrated to a great extent in Cutch and Guzerat. 
 
296 COLONIZATION 
 
 them as customary, educated men, and men of origi- 
 nally good hearts and pure consciences, will not 
 eventually practise with composure, and even defend 
 as right. What defences have we not heard in Eng- 
 land of these very practices ? It was not till recently 
 that public opinion was able to put down the immola- 
 tion of widows,* nor till this very moment that the 
 Indian government has been shamed out of trading in 
 murder and prostitution in the temples of Juggernaut. 
 Thus, for more than thirty years has this infamous 
 trade at Juggernaut been persisted in, from the start- 
 ling exposure of it by Buchanan, and in the face of 
 all thfe abhorrence and remonstrances of England — for 
 more than a century and a half it has been tolerated. 
 The plea on which it has been defended is that of 
 delicacy towards the opinions of the natives. That 
 delicacy thus delicately extended where money was to 
 be made, has not in a single case been practised for a 
 single instant where our interest prompted a different 
 conduct. We have seized on the lands of the natives ; 
 on their revenues; degraded their persons by the lash, 
 or put them to death without any scruple. But this 
 plea has been so strongly rebutted by one well ac- 
 quainted with India, in the Oriental Herald, that 
 before quitting this subject it will be well to quote it 
 here. " The assumption that our empire is an empire 
 of opinion in India, and that it would be endangered 
 by restraining the bloody and abominable rites of the 
 natives, is as false as the inference is unwarranted. 
 Our empire is not an empire of opinion, it is not even 
 an empire of law : it has been acquired ; it is still 
 governed ; and can only be retained, unless the whole 
 system of its government is altered, by the direct in- 
 
 * Nominally, in 1829; but not actually till considerably later. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 297 
 
 fluence of force. No portion of the country has been 
 voluntarily ceded, from the love borne to us by the 
 original possessors. We were first permitted to land 
 on the sea coast to sell our wares, as humble and soli- 
 citous traders, till by degrees, sometimes by force and 
 sometimes by fraud, we have possessed ourselves of an 
 extent of territory containing nearly a hundred mil- 
 lions of human beings. We have put down the 
 ancient sovereigns of the land, we have stripped the 
 nobles of all their power; and by continual drains on 
 the industry and resources of the people, we take from 
 them all their surplus and disposable wealth. There 
 is not a single province of that country that we have 
 ever acquired but by the direct influence which our 
 strength and commanding influence could enforce, or 
 by the direct agency of warlike operations and supe- 
 rior skill in arms. There is not a spot throughout the 
 whole of this vast region whereon we rule by any 
 other medium than that by which we first gained our 
 footing there — simple force. There is not a district 
 in which the natives would not gladly see our places 
 as rulers supplied by men of their own nation, faith, 
 and manners, so that they might have a share in their 
 own affairs ; nor is there an individual, out of all the 
 millions subject to our rule in Asiaj whose opinion is 
 ever asked as to the policy or impolicy of any law or 
 regulation about to be made by our government, how- 
 ever it may press on the interests of those subject by 
 its operation. It is a delusion which can never be too 
 frequently exposed, to believe that our empire in India 
 is an empire of opinion, or to imagine that we have 
 any security for our possession of that country, except 
 the superiority of our means for maintaining the do- 
 minion of force." — vol. ii. p. 174. 
 
208 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 I^HE ENGLISH IN INDIA, — CONCLUDED. 
 
 The preceding chapter is an awful subject of con- 
 templation for a Christian nation. An empire over 
 one hundred millions acquired by force, and held by 
 force for the appropriation of their revenues ! Even 
 this dominion of force is a fragile tenure. We even 
 now watch the approaches of the gigantic power of 
 Russia towards these regions with jealousy and alarm ; 
 and it is evident that at once security to ourselves, 
 and atonement to the natives, are only to be found in 
 the amelioration of their condition : in educating and 
 Christianizing them, and in amalgamising them with 
 British interests and British blood as much as possible. 
 The throwing open of these vast regions, by the abo- 
 lition of the Company's charter of trade, to the enter- 
 prise and residence of our countrymen, now offers us 
 ample means of moral retribution ; and it is with pe- 
 culiar interest that we now turn to every symptom of 
 a better state of things. 
 
 A new impulse is given to both commerce and 
 agriculture. The march of improvement in the cul- 
 tivation and manufacture of various productions is 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 299 
 
 begun. The growth of wheat is encouraged, and 
 even large quantities of fine flour imported thence 
 I into England. The indigo trade has become amazing 
 by the improvement in the manipulation of that 
 article. Sugar, coffee, opium, cotton, spices, rice, 
 every product of this rich and varied region, will all 
 find a greater demand, and consequently a greater 
 perfection from culture, under these circumstances. 
 There is, in fact, no species of vegetable production 
 which, in this glorious country, offering in one part or 
 another the temperature of every known climate, may 
 not be introduced. Such is the fertility of the land 
 under good management, that the natives often now 
 make 2()L per acre of their produce. The potato is 
 becoming as much esteemed there as it has long been 
 in Europe and America. Tea is likely to become one 
 of its most important articles of native growth. Our 
 missionaries of various denominations — episcopalians, 
 catholics, baptists, methodists, moravians, etc., are 
 zealously labouring to spread knowledge and Chris- 
 tianity; and there is nothing, according to the Christian 
 brahmin, Rammohun Roy, which the Indian people 
 so much desire as an English education. Let that be 
 given, and the fetters of caste must be broken at once. 
 The press, since the great struggle in which Mr. 
 Buckingham was driven from India for attempting 
 its freedom, has acquired a great degree of freedom. 
 The natives are admitted to sit on petty juries; 
 slavery is abolished ; and last, and best, education is 
 now extensively and zealously promoted. The Com- 
 pany was bound by the terms of its charter in 1813 to 
 devote 10,000/. annually to educating natives in the 
 English language and English knowledge, which, ' 
 
300 COLONIZATION 
 
 though but a trifling sum compared with the vast 
 population, aided by various private schools, must have 
 produced very beneficial effects. Bishop Heber states 
 that on his arrival in Bengal he found that there were 
 fifty thousand scholars, chiefly under the care of Pro- 
 testant missionaries. These are the means which must 
 eventually make British rule that blessing which it 
 ought to have been long ago. These are the means 
 by which we may atone, and more than atone, for all 
 our crimes and our selfishness in India. But let us 
 remember that we are — after the despotism of two cen- 
 turies, after oceans of blood shed by us, and oceans of 
 wealth drained by us from India, and after that blind 
 and callous system of exaction and European exclusion 
 which has perpetuated all the ignorance and all the 
 atrocities of Hindu superstition, and laid the burthen 
 of them on our own shoulders — but at this moment on 
 the mere threshold of this better career. Let us re- 
 member that still, at this hour, Indostan is, in fact, 
 the Ireland of the East ! It is a country pouring 
 out wealth upon us, while it is swarming with a popu- 
 lation of one hundred millions in the lowest state of 
 poverty and wretchedness. It swarms with robbers 
 and assassins of the most dreadful description : and it 
 is impossible that it should be otherwise. It is said to 
 be happy and contented under our rule ; but such a 
 happiness as its boldest advocates occasionally give us a 
 glimpse of, may God soon remove from that oppressed 
 country. Indeed, such are the features of it, even as 
 drawn by its eulogists, as make us wonder that such 
 wretchedness should exist under English sway. Our 
 travellers describe the mass of the labouring people 
 as stunted in stature, especially the women ; as half 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 301 
 
 famished, and with hardly a rag to their backs. Mr. 
 Tucker, himself a Director, and Deputy-Chairman of 
 the Court of Directors, asks, " Whether it be possi- 
 ble for them to believe that a government, which 
 seems disposed to appropriate a vast territory as uni- 
 versal landlord, and to collect, not revenue, but rent, can 
 have any other view than to extract from the people 
 the utmost portion which they can pay ?" and adds, 
 that " if the deadly hand of the tax-gatherer perpetu- 
 ally hover over the land, and threaten to grasp that 
 which is not yet called into existence, its benumbing 
 influence must be fatal, and the fruits of the earth 
 will be stifled in the very germ." 
 
 Yet this is the constant system ; and the poor 
 ryots who cultivate farms of from six to twenty-four 
 acres, but generally of the smaller kind, requiring 
 only one plough, which, with other implements and a 
 team of oxen, costs about 6/., are compelled to farm not 
 such as they chose, but such as are allotted to them ; 
 to pay from one-half to two-thirds of their gross pro- 
 duce. If they attempt to run away from it, they are 
 brought back and flogged, and forced to work. If 
 after all, they cannot pay their quota. Sir Thomas 
 Munro tells you, "zV must he assessed upon the restJ' 
 That where a crop even is less than the seed, the pea- 
 santry should always be made to pay the full rent where 
 they can. And that all complaints on the part of the 
 ryot, " should be listened to with very great caution." 
 Is it any wonder that Indostan is, and always has 
 been full of robbers? Is this system not enough to 
 make men run ofl^, and do anything but work thus 
 without hope ? But it is not merely the work : look 
 at the task-masters set over them. " A very large 
 
302 COLONIZATION 
 
 proportion of the talliars," says Sir Thomas Munro, 
 "are themselves thieves; all the kawilgars are them- 
 selves robbers exempting them ; and though they 
 are now afraid to act openly, there is no doubt that 
 many of them still secretly follow their former prac- 
 tices. Many potails and curnums also harbour thieves ; 
 so that no traveller can pass through the ceded dis- 
 tricts without being robbed, who does not employ his 
 own servants or those of the village to watch at night; 
 and even this precaution is often ineffectual. Many 
 oiFenders are taken, but great numbers also escape, for 
 connivance must also be expected among the kaw- 
 ilgars and the talliars, who are themselves thieves ; 
 and the inhabitants are often backward in giving in- 
 formation from the fear of assassination,** Colonel 
 Stewart in 1825, asserted in his " Considerations on 
 the Policy of the Government of India," that "if we 
 look for absolute and bodily injury produced by our 
 misgovernment, he did not believe that all the cruel- 
 ties practised in the lifetime of the worst tyrant that 
 ever sat upon a throne, even amounted to the quantity 
 of human suffering inflicted by the Decoits in one year 
 in Bengal." The prevalence of Thugs and Pha- 
 singars does not augur much improvement in this 
 respect yet ; nor do recent travellers induce us to 
 believe that the picture of popular misery given us 
 about half a dozen years ago by the author of " Re- 
 flections on the Present state of British India," is yet 
 become untrue. 
 
 " Hitherto the poverty of the cultivating classes, 
 men who have both property and employment, has 
 been alone considered; but the extreme misery to 
 which the immense mass of the unemployed popula- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 303 
 
 tion are reduced, would defy the most able pen 
 adequately to describe, or the most fertile imagination 
 
 to conceive On many occasions of ceremony 
 
 in families of wealthy individuals, it is customary to 
 distribute alms to the poor; sometimes four annas, 
 about three-pence, and rarely more than eight annas 
 each. When such an occurrence is made known, the 
 poor assemble in astonishing numbers, and the roads 
 are covered with them from twenty to fifty miles in 
 every direction. On their approaching the place of 
 gift, no notice is taken of them, though half famished, 
 and almost unable to stand, till towards the evening, 
 when they are called into an inclosed space, and 
 huddled together for the night, in such crowds, that 
 notwithstanding their being in the open air, it is 
 surprising how they escape suffocation. When the 
 individual who makes the donation perceives that all 
 the applicants are in the inclosure, (by which process 
 he guards against the possibility of any poor wretch 
 receiving his bounty twice), he begins to dispense 
 his alms, either in the night, or on the following 
 morning, by taking the poor people, one by one, 
 from the place of their confinement, and driving them 
 off as soon as they have received their pittance. The 
 number of people thus accumulated, generally amounts 
 to from twenty to fifty thousand ; and from the dis- 
 tance they travel, and the hardships they endure for 
 so inconsiderable a bounty, some idea may be formed 
 of their destitute condition. 
 
 " In the interior of Bengal there is a class of inhabi- 
 tants who live by catching fish in the ditches and 
 rivulets; the men employing themselves during the 
 whole day, and the women travelling to the nearest 
 
304 COLONIZATION 
 
 city, often a distance of fifteen miles, to sell the pro- 
 duce. The rate at which these poor creatures per- 
 form their daily journey is almost incredible, and the 
 sum realized is so small as scarcely to aiFord them the 
 necessaries of life. In short, throughout the whole 
 of the provinces the crowds of poor wretches who are 
 destitute of the means of subsistence are beyond relief. 
 On passing through the country, they are seen to pick 
 the undigested grains of food from the dung of ele- 
 phants, horses, and camels; and if they can procure 
 a little salt, large parties of them sally into the fields 
 at night, and devour the green blades of corn or rice 
 the instant they are seen to shoot above the surface. 
 Such, indeed, is their wretchedness that they envy the 
 lot of the convicts working in chains upon the roads, 
 and have been known to incur the danger of criminal 
 prosecution, in order to secure themselves from starv- 
 ing by the allowance made to those who are condemned 
 to hard labour." 
 
 Such is the condition of these native millions, from 
 whose country our countrymen, flocking over there, 
 according to the celebrated simile of Burke, " like 
 birds of prey and of passage, to collect wealth, have 
 returned with most splendid fortunes to England." 
 What is the avowed slavery of some half million of 
 negroes in the West Indies, who have excited so much 
 interest amongst us, to the virtual slavery of these 
 hundred millions of Hindus in their own land ? It is 
 declared that these poor creatures are happy under 
 our government, — but it should be recollected that so 
 it has been, and is, said of the negroes ; and it should 
 be also recollected what Sir John Malcolm said, in 
 1824, in a debate at the India-house — himself a 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 30^ 
 
 governor and a laudator of our system, that " even 
 the instructed classes of natives have a hostile feeling 
 towards us, which was not likely to decrease from the 
 necessity they were under of concealing it. My at- 
 tention," he said, " has been during the last five-and- 
 twenty years particularly directed to this dangerous 
 species of secret war carried on against our authority, 
 which is always carried on by numerous though un- 
 seen hands. The spirit is kept up by letters, by 
 exaggerated reports, and by pretended prophecies. 
 When the time appears favourable from the occurrence 
 of misfortune to our arms, from rebellion in our pro- 
 vinces, or from mutiny in our troops, circular letters 
 and proclamations are dispersed over the country with 
 a celerity that is incredible. Such documents are read 
 with avidity. Their contents are in most cases the 
 same. The English are depicted as usiirpers of low 
 caste, and as tyrants, who have sought India only to 
 degrade them, to rob them of their wealth, and sub- 
 vert their usages and religion. The native soldiers are 
 always appealed to, and the advice to them is in all 
 instances I have met with, the same, — ' your European 
 tyrants are few in number — murder them / ' " 
 
 How far are these evils diminished since the last 
 great political change in India — since the abolition of 
 the Company's charter, and they became, not the 
 commercial monopolists, but the governors of India? 
 Dr. Spry, of the Bengal Medical Staff, can answer 
 that in his " Modern India," published in 1837. 
 The worthy doctor describes himself as a short time 
 ago (1833) being on an expedition to reduce some 
 insurrectionary Coles in the provinces of Benares and 
 Dinapore. " Next morning," he says, " Feb. 9th, 
 
♦306 COLONIZATION 
 
 we went out in three parties to burn and destroy 
 villages! Good fun, burning villages ! " The mode 
 of expression would lead one to suppose that the 
 doctor extremely enjoyed " the good fun of burning 
 villages;" but the general spirit of his work being 
 sensible and humane, we are bound to suppose that 
 his expressions and his notes of admiration are ironi- 
 cal, and meant to indicate the abhorrence such acts 
 deserves; for he immediately tells us that these Coles 
 seemed very inoffensive sort of people, and laid down 
 their arms in large numbers the moment they were 
 invited to do so. 
 
 Dr. Spry tells us that the Anglo-Indian govern- 
 ment, in 1836, had come to the admirable resolution 
 to make the English language the vernacular tongue 
 throughout Indostan. That would be, in effect, to 
 make it entirely an English land — to leaven it rapidly, 
 and for ever, with the spirit, the laws, the literature, 
 and the religion of England. It is impossible to 
 make the English language the vernacular tongue, 
 without at the same time producing the most asto- 
 nishing moral revolution which ever yet was witnessed 
 on the earth. English ideas, English tastes, English 
 literature and religion, must follow as a matter of 
 course. It is curious, indeed, already to hear of the 
 instructed natives of Indostan holding literary and 
 philosophical meetings in English forms, debating 
 questions of morals and polite letters, and adducing 
 the opinions of Milton, Shakspeare, Newton, Locke, 
 etc. Dr. Spry states that the Committee of Public 
 Instruction are about to establish schools for educating 
 the natives in English, at Patnah, Dacca, Hazeeri- 
 bagh, Gohawati, and other places ; and that the native 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 807 
 
 princes in Nepaul, Manipur, Rajpootanah, the Pun- 
 jaub, etc. were receiving instruction in English, and 
 desirous to promote it in their territories. This is 
 most encouraging; but Dr. Spry gives us other facts 
 of a less agreeable nature. From these we learn that 
 the ancient canker of India, excessive and unremitting 
 exaction, is at this moment eating into the very vitals 
 of the country as actively as ever. He says that " it 
 is in the territories of the independent native chiefs 
 and princes that great and useful works are found, 
 and maintained. In our territories, the canals, bridges, 
 reservoirs, wells, groves, temples, and caravansaries, 
 the works of our predecessors, from revenues expressly 
 appropriated to such undertakings, are going fast to 
 decay, together with the feelings which originated 
 them ; and unless a new and more enlightened policy 
 shall be followed, of which the dawn may, perhaps, be 
 distinguished, will soon leave not a trace behind. A 
 persistance for a short time longer in our selfish admi- 
 nistration will level the face of the country, as it has 
 levelled the ranks of society, and leave a plain surface 
 for wiser statesmen to act on. 
 
 "At present, the aspect of society presents no middle 
 class, and the aspect of the country is losing all those 
 great works of ornament and utility with which we 
 found it adorned. Great families are levelled, and 
 lost in the crowd ; and great cities have dwindled into 
 farm villages. The work of destruction is still going 
 on ; and unless we act on new principles will proceed 
 with desolating rapidity. How many thousand links 
 by which the affections of the people are united to 
 the soil, and to their government, are every year 
 broken and destroyed by our selfishness and ignorance ; 
 
308 COLONIZATION 
 
 and yet, if our views in the country extended beyond 
 the returns of a single harvest, beyond the march of a 
 single detachment, or the journey of a single day, we 
 could not be so blind to their utility and advantage." 
 He adds: "By our revenue management we have 
 shaken the entire confidence of the rural population, 
 who now no longer lay out their little capital in vil- 
 lage improvement, lest our revenue officers, at the 
 expiration of their leases, should take advantage of 
 
 their labours, and impose an additional rent 
 
 With regard to Hindustan, those natives who are 
 unfriendly to us might loith justice declare our conduct 
 to he more allied to Vandalism than to civilization. . . . 
 Burke's severe rebuke still holds good, — that if the 
 English were driven from India, they would leave 
 behind them no memorial worthy of a great and en- 
 lightened nation; no monument of art, science, or 
 beneficence; no vestige of their having occupied and 
 ruled over the country, except such traces as the 
 vulture and the tiger leave behind them.*' — pp. 10-18. 
 He tells us that a municipal tax was imposed under 
 pretence of improving and beautifying the towns, but 
 that the improvements very soon stopped, while the 
 tax is still industriously collected. In the appendix 
 to his first volume, we find detailed all the miseries of 
 the ryots as we have just reviewed them; and he tells 
 us that of this outraged class are eleven- twelfths of the 
 population! and quotes the following sentence from 
 " The Friend of India." " A proposal was some time 
 since made, or rather a wish expressed, to domesticate 
 the art of caricaturing in India. Here is a fine sub- 
 ject. The artist should first draw the lean and ema- 
 ciated ryot, scratching the earth at the tail of a plough 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 309 
 
 drawn by two half-starved, bare-ribbed bullocks. Upon 
 his back he would place the more robust Seeputneedar, 
 and upon his shoulders the Durputneedar; he, again, 
 should sustain the well-fed Putneedar; and, seated 
 upon his shoulders should be represented, to crown the 
 scene, the big zemindar, that compound of milk, sugar, 
 and clarified butter. . . .The poor ryot pays for all ! 
 He is drained by these middle-men ; he is cheated by 
 his banker out of twenty-four per cent, at least; and 
 his condition is beyond description or imagination." 
 
 Dr. Spry attests the present continuance of those 
 scenes of destitution and abject wretchedness which I 
 have but a few pages back alluded to. He has seen 
 the miserable creatures picking up the grains of corn 
 from the soil of the roads. " I have seen," says he, 
 " hundreds of famishing poor, traversing the jungles 
 of Bundlecund, searching for wild berries to satisfy 
 the cravings of hunger. Many, worn down by ex- 
 haustion or disease, die by the road-side, while mothers, 
 to preserve their offspring from starvation, sell or 
 give them to any rich man they can meet!" He 
 himself, in 1834, was offered by such a mother her 
 daughter of six years old for fourteen shillings ! — 
 vol. i. *297. 
 
 These are the scenes and transactions in our great 
 Indian empire — that splendid empire which has poured 
 out such floods of wealth into this country; in which 
 such princely presents of diamonds and gold have been 
 heaped on our adventurers; from the gleanings of 
 which so many happy families in England* "live at 
 
 * Even so recently as 1<827 we find some tolerably regal in- 
 stances of regal gifts to our Indian representatives. Lord and 
 Lady Amherst on a tour in the provinces arrived at Agra. Lady 
 
310 COLONIZATION 
 
 home at ease," and in the enjoyment of every earthly 
 luxury and refinement. For every palace built by 
 returned Indian nabobs in England ; for every invest- 
 ment by fortunate adventurers in India stock ; for 
 every cup of wine and delicious viand tasted by the 
 families of Indian growth amongst us, how many of 
 these Indians themselves are now picking berries in 
 the wild jungles, sweltering at the thankless plough 
 only to suffer fresh extortions, or snatching with the 
 bony fingers of famine, the bloated grains from the 
 manure of the high- ways of their native country ! 
 
 I wonder whether the happy and fortunate — made 
 happy and fortunate by the wealth of India, ever think 
 of these things ? — whether the idea ever comes across 
 them in the luxurious carriage, or at the table crowd- 
 ed with the luxuries of all climates ? — whether they 
 
 Amherst received a visit from the wife of Hindoo Row and her ladies. 
 They proceeded to invest Lady Amherst with the presents sent for 
 her by the Byza Bliye. They put on her a turban richly adorned 
 with the most costly diamonds, a superb diamond necklace, ear-rings, 
 anklets, bracelets, and amulets of the same, valued at 30,000^. sterling. 
 A complete set of gold ornaments, and another of silver, was then 
 presented. ^ Miss Amherst was next presented with a pearl necklace, 
 valued at 5,000/., and other ornaments of equal beauty and costliness. 
 Other ladies had splendid presents — the whole value of the gifts 
 amounting to 50,000/. sterling ! 
 
 In the evening came Lord Amherst's turn. On visiting the Row, 
 his hat was carried out and brought back on a tray covered. The 
 Row uncovered it, and placed it on his lordship's head, overlaid with 
 the most splendid diamonds. His lordship was then invested with 
 other jewels to the reputed amount of 20,000/. sterling. Presents 
 followed to the members of his suite. Lady Amherst took this oppor- 
 tunity of retiring to the tents of the Hindu ladies, where presents were 
 again given; and a bag of 1000 rupees to her ladyship's female 
 servants, and 500 rupees to her interpretess. 
 
 Oriental Herald, vol. xiv. p. 444. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 311 
 
 glance in a sudden imagination from the silken splen- 
 dour of their own abodes, to the hot highways and 
 the pestilential jungles of India, and see those naked, 
 squalid, famishing, and neglected creatures, thronging 
 from vast distances to the rich man's dole, or feeding 
 on the more loathsome dole of the roads? It is im- 
 possible that a more strange antithesis can be pointed 
 out in human affairs. We turn from it with even a 
 convulsive joy, to grasp at the prospects of education 
 in that singular country. Let the people be educated, 
 and they will soon cease to permit oppression. Let 
 the English engage themselves in educating them, and 
 they will soon feel all the sympathies of nature awaken 
 in their hearts towards these unhappy natives. In the 
 meantime these are all the features of a country suffer- 
 ing under the evils of a long and grievous thraldom. 
 They are the growth of ages, and are not to be re- 
 moved but by a zealous and unwearying course of 
 atoning justice. Spite of all flattering representations 
 to the contrary, the British public should keep its eye 
 fixed steadily on India, assuring itself that a debt of 
 vast retribution is there due from us ; and that we 
 have only to meet the desire now anxiously manifested 
 by the natives for education, to enable us to expiate 
 towards the children all the wrongs and degradations 
 heaped for centuries on the fathers; and to fix our 
 name, our laws, our language and religion, as widely 
 and beneficently there as in the New World ! 
 
 Mm4^" 
 
312 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XX.. 
 
 THE FRENCH IN THEIftj COLONIES. 
 
 We may dismiss the French in a few pages, merely 
 because they are only so much like their neighbours. 
 It would have been a glorious circumstance to have 
 been able to present them as an exception ; but while 
 they have shown as little regard to the rights or feel- 
 ings of the people whose lands they have invaded for 
 the purpose of colonization, they seem to have been 
 on the whole more commonplace in their cruelties. In 
 Guiana they drove back the Indians as the Dutch and 
 the Portuguese did in their adjoining settlements. In 
 the West Indies, they exterminated or enslaved the 
 natives very much as other Europeans did. They 
 were as assiduous as any people in massacring the 
 Charaibs, and they suffered perhaps more than any 
 other nation from the Charaibs in return. Their his- 
 torian, Du Tertre, describes them as returning from a 
 slaughtering expedition in St. Christopher's ^^hienjoy- 
 €ux;^' so that it would appear as though they executed 
 the customary murders of the time, with their accus- 
 tomed gaiety. In the Mauritius they found nobody to 
 kill. In Madagascar, they alternately massacred and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 313 
 
 wer^ massacred themselves, and finally driven out of 
 of the country by the exasperated natives for their 
 cruelties. If they made themselves masters of coun- 
 tries of equal importance with the Spaniards, Portu- 
 guese, English, or even the Dutch, they had not the art 
 to make them so, for if we include Louisiana, Canada, 
 Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, Madagas- 
 car, Mauritius, Guiana, various West Indian islands 
 and settlements on the Indian and African coasts, the 
 amount of territory i& vast. The value of it to them, 
 however, at no time, was ever proportionate in the 
 least degree to the extent ; and no European nation 
 has been so unfortunate in the loss of colonies. Their 
 attempt to possess themselves of Florida was abortive, 
 but it was attended by a circumstance which deserves 
 recording. 
 
 The Spaniards hearing that some Frenchmen had 
 made a settlement in Florida about 1566, a fleet sailed 
 thither, and discovered them at Fort Carolina. They 
 attacked them, massacred the majority, and hanged the 
 rest upon a tree, with this inscription, — " Not as 
 Frenchmen, but as heretics.*' They were Huguenots. 
 Dominic de Gourgues, a Gascon of the same faith, a 
 skilful and intrepid seaman, an enemy to the Spaniards, 
 from whom he had received personal injuries, passion- 
 ately fond of his country, of hazardous expeditions, 
 and of glory, sold his estate, built some ships, and 
 with a select band of his own stamp, embarked for 
 Florida. He found, attacked, and defeated the Spa- 
 niards. All that he could catch he hung upon trees, 
 with this inscription, — " Not as Spaniards, but as assas- 
 sins ;" — a sentence which, had it been executed with 
 equal justice on all who deserved it in that day, would 
 p 
 
314 COLONIZATION 
 
 have half depopulated Europe ; for almost every man 
 who went abroad was an assassin ; and the rest who 
 stayed at home applauded, and therefore abetted. 
 Having thus satisfied his indignant sense of justice, 
 de Gourgues returned home, and the French aban- 
 doned the country. 
 
 The French seemed to take the firmest hold on 
 Canada ; but their powerful neighbours, the English, 
 took even that from them, as they had done their 
 Acadia (Nova Scotia), Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland, 
 Cape Breton, and the Island of St. John. 
 
 In all these settlements, they treated the Indians 
 just as creatures that might be spared or destroyed, — 
 driven out or not, as it best suited themselves. Francis 
 I. invaded the papal charter to Spain and Portugal of 
 all the New World, with an expression very charac- 
 teristic of him. " JVhat ! shall the kings of Spain and 
 Portugal quietly divide all America between them^ with- 
 out suffering me to take a share as their brother ? I 
 would fain see the article of Adam's will that bequeaths 
 that vast inheritance to themT' But he did not seem 
 to suspect for a moment, that if Adam's will could 
 be found, the most conspicuous clause in it would 
 have been that the earth should be fairly divided 
 amongst his children ; and that one family should not 
 covet the heritage of another, much less that Cain 
 should be always murdering Abel. Accordingly, 
 Samuel de Champlain, whose name has been given to 
 Lake Champlain, had scarcely laid the foundations of 
 Quebec, the future capital of Canada, than the sub- 
 jects of Francis began to violate every clause which 
 could possibly have been in Adam's will. Champlain 
 found the Indians divided amongst themselves, and he 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 315 
 
 adopted the policy since employed by the English in 
 the East with so much greater success, not exactly that 
 recommended by the apostle, to live in peace with 
 all men, as far as in you lies, but to set your neigh- 
 bours by the ears, so that you may take the advantage 
 of their quarrels and disasters. 
 
 One of the greatest curses which befel the North 
 American Indians on the invasion of the Europeans, 
 was, that several of tl^ese refined and Christian nations 
 came and took possession of neighbouring regions. 
 Being indeed so refined and Christian, one might 
 naturally have supposed that this would prove a happy 
 circumstance for the savages. One would have sup- 
 posed that thus surrounded on all sides, as it were, by 
 the light of civilization and the virtue of Christianity, 
 nothing could possibly prevent the savages from be- 
 coming civilized and Christian too. One would have 
 supposed that such miserable, cruel, and dishonest 
 savages, seeing whichever way they turned, nothing 
 but images of peace, wisdom, integrity, self-denial, 
 generosity, and domestic happiness, would have be- 
 come speedily and heartily ashamed of themselves. 
 That they would have been fairly overwhelmed with 
 the flood of radiance covering those nations which had 
 been for so many ages in the possession of Christianity. 
 That they would have been penetrated through and 
 through with the benevolence and goodness, the sub- 
 lime graces, and winning sweetness of so favoured 
 and regenerated a race ! Nothing of the sort, how- 
 ever, took place. The savages looked about them, 
 and saw people more powerful, indeed, but in spirit 
 and practice ten times more savage than themselves. 
 What a precious crew of hypocrites must they have 
 
316 COLONIZATION 
 
 regarded these white invaders when they heard them 
 begin to talk of their superior virtue, and to call them 
 barbarians ! There were the French in Canada, 
 Nova Scotia, and other settlements; there were the 
 Dutch in their Nova Belgia, and the English in Mas- 
 sachusets, all regarding each other with the most 
 deadly hatred, and all rampant to wrest, either from 
 the Indians, or from one another, the very ground 
 that each other stood upon. 
 
 The people brought with them from Europe, 
 crimes and abominations that the Indians never knew. 
 The Indians never fought for conquest, but to defend 
 their hunting grounds — lands which their ancestors 
 had inhabited for generations, and which they firmly 
 believed were given to them by the Great Spirit ; but 
 these white invaders had a boundless and quenchless 
 thirst for every region that they could set their eyes 
 upon. They claimed it by pretences, of which the 
 simple Indians could neither make head nor tail — 
 they talked of popes and kings on the other side of 
 the water as having given them the Indians' countries, 
 and the Indians could not conceive what business 
 these kings and popes had with them. But the 
 whites had arguments which they could not withstand 
 — gunpowder and rum ! They forced a footing in the 
 Indian countries, and then they gave them rum to 
 take away their brains, that they might take away 
 first their peltries, and then more land. There is 
 nothing in history more horrible than the conduct to 
 which the Dutch, French and English resorted in their 
 rivalries in the north-east of America. Each party 
 subdued the tribes of Indians in their own imme- 
 diate neighbourhood, by force and fraud, and then em- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 317 
 
 ployed them against the Indians who were in alliance 
 with their rivals. Instead of mutually, as Christians 
 should, inculcating upon them the beauty and the 
 duty, and the advantages of peace, they instigated 
 them, by every possible means, and by . the most 
 devilish arguments, to betray and exterminate one 
 another, and not only one another, but to betray and 
 exterminate, if possible, their white rivals. They 
 made them furious with rum, and put fire-arms into 
 their hands, and hounded them on one another with a 
 demoniac glee. They took credit to themselves for 
 inducing the Indians to scalp one another ! They 
 gave them a premium upon these horrible outrages, 
 and we shall see that even the Puritans of New 
 England gave at length so much as lOOOZ. for every 
 Indian scalp that could be brought to them ! They 
 excited these poor Indians by the most diabolical 
 means, and by taking advantage of their weak side, the 
 proneness to vengeance, to acts of the most atrocious 
 nature, and then they branded them, when it was 
 convenient, as most fearful and bloody savages, and 
 on that plea drove them out of their rightful posses- 
 sions, or butchered them upon them. 
 
 I am not talking of imaginary horrors — I am speak- 
 ing with all the soberness which the contemplation of 
 such things will permit — of a deliberate system of 
 policy pursued by the French, Dutch, and English, in 
 these regions for a full century, and which eventually 
 terminated in the destruction of the greater part of 
 these Indian nations, and in the expulsion of the 
 remainder. We shall see that even the English 
 urged their allies — the Five Nations — continually to 
 attack and murder the French and their Indian allies ; 
 
318 COLONIZATION 
 
 and in all their wars with the French in Canada, 
 hired, or bribed, or compelled these savages to accom- 
 pany them, and commit the very devastations for 
 which they afterwards upbraided them, and which they 
 made a plea for their extirpation. But of that anon ; 
 my present business is with the French ; and though 
 the facts which I have now to relate regard their 
 conduct rather in ^ur colonies than their own, yet 
 they cannot be properly introduced anywhere else; 
 and they could not have been introduced impartially 
 here without these few preliminary observations. 
 
 The French were soon stripped of their other 
 settlements in this quarter by the English. It was 
 from Canada that they continued to annoy their rivals 
 of New York and New England, till finally driven 
 thence by the victory of Wolfe at Quebec; and it 
 was principally on the northern side of the St. Law- 
 rence that their territory lay. On that side, the great 
 tribe of the Adirondacks, or, as they termed them, 
 the Algonquins, lay, and became their allies; with 
 tribes of inferior note. On the south side lay the 
 great nation of the Iroquois, so termed by them ; or 
 " The Five Nations of United Indians,'' as they were 
 called by the English. These were very warlike 
 nations — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayu- 
 gas, and Senekas —whose territories extended along 
 the south-eastern side of the St. Lawrence, into the pre- 
 sent States of Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, 
 Massachusets, Maine, and New Hampshire — a country 
 eighty leagues in length, and more than forty broad. 
 
 To drive out these nations, so as to deprive them 
 of any share in the profitable fur trade which the 
 Algonquins carried on for them, and to get possession 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 319 
 
 of SO fine a country, Champlain readily accompanied 
 the Algonquins in an expedition of extermination 
 against them. The Algonquins knew all the intri- 
 cacies of the woods, and all the modes and stratagems 
 of Indian warfare; and, aided by the arms and ammu- 
 nition of the French, they would soon have accom- 
 plished Champlain's desire of exterminating the Iro- 
 quois, had not the Dutch, then the possessors of New 
 York, furnished the Iroquois also with arms and am- 
 munition, for it was not to their interest that these five 
 nations, who brought their furs to them, should be 
 reduced. 
 
 In 1664 the English dispossessed the Dutch of their 
 Nova Belgia, and turned it into New York ; and 
 began to trade actively with the Indian nations for 
 their furs. The French, who had hoped to monopolise 
 this trade, which they had found very profitable, by 
 exterminating the Iroquois, and throwing the whole 
 hunting business into the hands of tribes in their 
 alliance, now saw the impolicy of having vainly 
 attacked so powerful a race as that of the Iroquois, 
 or Five Nations. They now used every means to 
 reconcile them, and win them over. They sent 
 Jesuit missionaries, who lived in the simplest man- 
 ner amongst them, and with their powers of in- 
 sinuation and persuasion laboured to give them 
 favourable ideas of their nation. But the English 
 were as zealous in their endeavours, and, as might 
 naturally be expected, succeeded in engrossing all the 
 fur trade with the Iroquois, who had received so many 
 injuries from the French.* Irritated by this circum- 
 
 • How clearly these shrewd Indians saw through the designs of 
 their enemies, and how happily they could ridicule them, is shewn by 
 
320 COLONIZATION 
 
 Stance, the French again determined on the ferocious 
 scheme of exterminating the Iroquois. Nursing this 
 horrible resolve, they waited their opportunity, and 
 put upon themselves a desperate restraint, till they 
 should have collected a force in the colony equal to 
 the entire annihilation of the Iroquois people. This 
 time seemed to have arrived in 1687, when, under 
 Denonville, they had a population of 11,249 persons, 
 one third of whom were capable of bearing arms. 
 Having a disposable force of near 4,000 people, they 
 were secure in their own mind of the accomplishment 
 of their object; but, to make assurance doubly sure, 
 
 the speech of Garangula, one of their chiefs, when M. de la Barre, 
 the governor in 1684, was proposing one of these hollow alliances. 
 All the time that de la Barre spoke, Garangula kept his eyes fixed 
 on the end of his pipe. As soon as the governor had done, he rose 
 up, and said most significantly, " Yonondio ! " (the name they always 
 gave to the governor of Canada), "you must have believed, when you 
 left Quebec, that the sun had burnt up all the forests which render 
 our country inaccessible to the French ; or that the lakes had so far 
 overflowed their banks that they had surrounded our castles, and that 
 we could not get out of them. Yes, Yonondio, surely you must have 
 dreamt so, and the curiosity of seeing so great a wonder has brought 
 you so far. Now you are undeceived, since I and the warriors here 
 present, are come to assure you that the Senekas, Cayugas, Onon- 
 dagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, are yet alive ! I thank you, in their 
 name, for bringing back into their country the CalurmU which your 
 predecessor received from their hands. It was happy for you that 
 you left under ground that murdering hatchet that has been so often 
 dyed in the blood of the French. Hear, Yonondio ! I do not sleep ; 
 I have my eyes open ; and the sun which enlightens me, shews lue a 
 great captain at the head of a company of soldiers, who speaks as if 
 he were dreaming. He says that he came to the lake to smoke on 
 the great Calumut with the Onondagas ; but Garangula says that he 
 sees to the contrary — it was to knock them on the head, if sickness 
 had not weakened the arms of the French." 
 
 ColderCs Hist, of the Five Nations, vol. i. p. 70. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 321 
 
 they hit upon one of those schemes that have been so 
 much applauded through all Christian Europe, under 
 the name of " happy devices," — " profound strokes of 
 policy," — "chefs d'oeuvres of statesmanship," — that 
 is, in plain terms, plans of the most wretched deceit, 
 generally for the compassing of some piece of diabo- 
 lical butchery or oppression. The "happy device,'* 
 in this instance, was to profess a desire for peace and 
 alliance, in order to get the most able Indian chiefs into 
 their power before they struck the decisive blow. There 
 was a Jesuit missionary residing amongst the Iroquois 
 — the worthy Lamberville. This good man, like 
 his brethen in the South, whose glorious labours and 
 melancholy fate we have already traced, had won the 
 confidence of the Iroquois by his unaffected piety, 
 his constant kindness, and his skill in healing their 
 differences and their bodily ailments. They looked 
 upon him as a father and a friend. The French, on 
 their part, regarded this as a fortunate circumstance, — 
 not as one might have imagined, because it gave them 
 a powerful means of reconciliation and alliance with 
 this people, but because it gave them: a means of 
 effecting their murderous scheme. They assured Lam- 
 berville that they were anxious to effect a lasting peace 
 with the Iroquois, for which purpose they begged him 
 to prevail on them to send their principal chiefs to meet 
 them in conference. He found no difficulty in doing 
 this, such was their faith in him. The chiefs appeared, 
 and were immediately clapped in irons, embarked at 
 Quebec, and sent to the galleys ! 
 
 I suppose there are yet men calling themselves 
 Christians, and priding themselves on the depth of 
 their policy, that will exclaim — " Oh, capital ! — what 
 p 2 
 
322 COLONIZATION 
 
 a happy device !" But who that has a head or a heart 
 worthy of a man will not mark with admiration the 
 conduct of the Iroquois on this occasion. As soon as 
 the news of this abominable treachery reached the 
 nation, it rose as one man, to revenge the insult and 
 to prevent the success of that scheme which now be- 
 came too apparent. In the first place they sent for 
 Lamberville, who had been the instrument of their 
 betrayal, and — put him to death ! No, they did not 
 put him to death. That was what the Christians 
 would have done, without any inquiry or any listen- 
 ing to his defence. The savage Iroquois thus ad- 
 dressed him — " We are authorised by every motive 
 to treat you as an enemy ; but we cannot resolve to 
 do it. Your heart has had no share in the insult that 
 has been put upon us ; and it would be unjust to 
 punish you for a crime you detest still more than our- 
 selves. But you must leave us. Our rash young 
 men might consider you in the light of a traitor, who 
 delivered up the chiefs of our nation to shameful 
 slavery." These savages, whom Europeans have 
 always termed Barbarians, gave the Missionary 
 guides, who conducted him to a place of safety, and 
 then flew to arms.* 
 
 The wretched Denonville and his politic people 
 soon found themselves in a situation which they richly 
 merited. They had a numerous and warlike nation 
 thus driven to the highest pitch of irritation, surround- 
 ing them in the woods. On the borders of the lakes, 
 or in the open country, the French could and did 
 carry devastation amongst the Iroquois ; but on the 
 other hand the Indians, continually sallying from the 
 forests, laid waste the French settlements, destroyed 
 
 • Rayual. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 323 
 
 the crops of the planters, and drove them from their 
 fields. The French became heartily sick of the war 
 they had thus wickedly raised, and were on the 
 point of putting an end to it when one of their own 
 Indian allies, a Huron, called by the English authors 
 Adario, but by the French Le Rat, one of the bravest 
 and most intelligent chiefs that ever ranged the 
 wilds of America, prevented it by a stratagem as 
 cunning, and more successful, than their own. He de- 
 livered an Iroquois prisoner with some story of an 
 aggravated nature to the French commandant of the 
 fort of Machillimakinac, who, not aware of Denonville 
 being in treaty with the Iroquois, put him to death, 
 and thus roused again all the ancient flame. 
 
 In this war, such were the barbarities of the French 
 and their Indian allies, that they roused a spirit of 
 revenge that soon brought the most cruel evils upon 
 themselves. They laid waste the villages of the Five 
 Nations with fire. Near Cadarakui Fort, they sur- 
 prised and put to death the inhabitants of two villages 
 who had settled there at their own invitation, and on 
 their faith, but whom they now feared might act as 
 spies against them. Many of these people were given 
 up to a body of the Canadian Indians, called Pray- 
 ing or Christian Indians, to be tormented at the 
 stake. In another village finding only two old men, 
 they were cut to pieces, and put into the war kettle 
 for the Praying Indians to feast on.* To revenge 
 these unheard of abominations, the Five Nations 
 carried a war of retaliation into Canada. They came 
 suddenly in July of the next year, 1688, upon Mon- 
 treal, 1 200 strong, while Denonville and his lady were 
 * Colden, i. 81. 
 
324 COLONIZATION 
 
 there ; burnt and laid waste all the plantations round 
 it, and made a terrible massacre of men, women, and 
 children. Above a thousand French are said to have 
 been killed on this occasion, and twenty- six taken, 
 most of whom were burnt alive. In the autumn they 
 returned, and carried fire and tomahawk through the 
 island ; and had they known how to take fortified 
 places would have driven the French entirely out of 
 Canada. As it was, they reduced them to the most 
 frightful state of distress. 
 
 To such a pitch of fury did the French rise against 
 the Five Nations through the sufferings which they 
 received at their hands, that they now seemed to have 
 lost the very natures of men. It is to the eternal 
 disgrace of both French and English that they insti- 
 gated and bribed the Indians to massacre and scalp 
 their enemies — but it seems to be the peculiar infamy 
 of the French to have imitated the Indians in their 
 most barbarous customs, and have even prided them- 
 selves on displaying a higher refinement in cruelty 
 than the savages themselves. The New Englanders, 
 indeed, are distinctly stated by Douglass, to have 
 handed over their Indian prisoners to be tormented by 
 their Naraganset allies, but with the French this savage 
 practice seems to have been frequent. I have just 
 noticed a few instances of such inhuman conduct ; but 
 the old governor, Frontenac, stands pre-eminent above 
 all his nation for such deeds. From 1691 to 1695, 
 nothing was more common than for his Indian pri- 
 soners to be given up to his Indian allies to be tor- 
 mented. One of the most horrible of these scenes on 
 record was perpetrated under his own eye at Montreal 
 in 1691. The intendanfs lady, the Jesuits, and many 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 325 
 
 influential people used all possible intreaties to save 
 the prisoner from such a death, but in vain. He was 
 given up to the Christian Indians of Loretto, and tor- 
 mented in such a manner as none but a fiend could 
 tolerate.* There was only one step beyond this, and 
 that w^as for the French to enact the torturers them- 
 selves. That step was reached in 1695, at Machili- 
 makinak Fort ; and whoever has not strong nerves had 
 better pass the following relation, which yet seems 
 requisite to be given if we are to understand the full 
 extent of the inflictions the American Indians have 
 received from Europeans. 
 
 The successes of the Iroquois had driven the 
 French to madness — and the prisoner was an Iroquois. 
 " The prisoner being made fast to a stake, so as to 
 have room to move round it, a Frenchman began the 
 horrid tragedy by broiling the flesh of the prisoner's 
 legs, from his toes to his knees, with the red-hot 
 barrel of a gun. His example was followed by an 
 Utawawa, and they relieved one another as they grew 
 tired. The prisoner all this while continued his 
 death-song, till they clapped a red- hot frying-pan on 
 his buttocks, when he cried out ' Fire is strong, and 
 too powerful.' Then all their Indians mocked him 
 as wanting courage and resolution. • You,' they said, 
 « a soldier and a captain, as you say, and afraid of fire: 
 — you are not a man.* " 
 
 They continued their torments for two hours with- 
 out ceasing. An Utawawa, being desirous to outdo 
 the French in their refined cruelty, split a furrow from 
 the prisoner's shoulder to his garter, and, filling it with 
 gunpowder, set fire to it. This gave him exquisite 
 
 * Golden, i. 441. 
 
326 COLONIZATION 
 
 pain, and raised excessive laughter in his tormentors. 
 When they found his throat so much parched that he 
 was no longer able to gratify their ears with his howl- 
 ing, they gave him water to enable him to continue 
 their pleasure longer. But, at last, his strength 
 failing, an Utawawa flayed oJ0f his scalp, and threw 
 burning coals on his skull. Then they untied him, 
 and bid him run for his life. He began to run, 
 tumbling like a drunken man. They shut up the way 
 to the east; and made him run westward, the way, as 
 they think, to the country of miserable souls. He had 
 still force left to throw stones, till they put an end to 
 his misery by knocking him on the head with one. 
 After this, every one cut a slice from his body, to 
 conclude the tragedy with a feast.* 
 
 Such is the condition to which the practice of in- 
 justice and cruelty can reduce men calling themselves 
 civilized. We need not pursue further the history of 
 the French in Canada, which consists only in bicker- 
 ings with the English and butchery of the Indians. 
 Having, therefore, given this specimen of their treat- 
 ment of the natives in their colonies, or in the vicinity 
 of them, we will dismiss them with an incident illus- 
 trative of their policy, which occurred in Louisiana. 
 
 When the French settled themselves in that country, 
 they found, amongst the neighbouring tribes, the Nat- 
 chez the most conspicuous. Their country extended 
 from the Mississippi to the Appalachian mountains. It 
 had a delightful climate, and was a beautiful region, 
 well watered, most agreeably enlivened with hills, 
 fine woods, and rich open prairies. Numbers of the 
 French flocked over into this delicious country, and it 
 
 • Colden's Hist, of « The Five Nations," i. 195. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 327 
 
 was believed that it would form the centre of the great 
 colony they hoped to found in that part of America. 
 If the Natchez were such a people as Chateaubriand 
 has pictured them^ they must have been a noble race 
 indeed. They were, like the Peruvians, worshippers 
 of the sun, and had vast temples erected to their god. 
 They received the French as the natives of most dis- 
 covered countries have received the Europeans, with 
 the utmost kindness. They even assisted them in 
 forming their new plantations amongst them, and the 
 most cordial and advantageous friendship appeared to 
 have grown between the two nations. Such friend- 
 ship, however, could not possibly exist between the 
 common run of Europeans and Indians. The Euro- 
 peans did not go so far from home for friendship; they 
 went for dominion. Accordingly, the French soon 
 threw off the mask of friendship, and treated their 
 hosts as slaves. They seized on whatever they 
 pleased, dictated their will to the Natchez, as their 
 masters, and drove them from their cultivated fields, 
 and inhabited them themselves. The deceived and 
 indignant people did all in their power to stop these 
 aggressions. They reasoned, implored, and entreated, 
 but in vain. Finding this utterly useless, they entered 
 into a scheme to rid themselves of their oppressors, 
 and engaged all the neighbouring nations to aid in the 
 design. A secret and universal league was established 
 amongst the Indian nations wherever the French had 
 any settlements. They were all to be massacred on 
 a certain day. To apprise all the different nations 
 of the exact day, the Natchez sent to every one of 
 them a little bundle of bits of wood, each. containing 
 the same number, and that number being the number 
 
328 COLONIZATION 
 
 of the days that were to precede the day of general 
 doom. The Indians were instructed to burn in each 
 town one of these pieces of wood every day, and on 
 the day that they burnt the last they were simul- 
 taneously to fall on the French, and leave not one 
 alive. As usual, the success of the conspiracy was 
 defeated by the compassion of an individual. The 
 wife, or mother, of the great chief of the Natchez had 
 a son by a Frenchman, and from this son she learned 
 the secret of the plot. She warned the French com- 
 mandant of the circumstance, but he treated her 
 warning with indifference. Finding, therefore, that 
 she could not succeed in putting the French on their 
 guard against a people they had now come to despise, 
 she resolved that, if she could not avert the fate of the 
 whole, she would at least afford a chance of safety to 
 a part. The bits of wood were deposited in the 
 temple of the sun, and her rank gave her access to the 
 temple. She abstracted a number of the bits of wood, 
 and thus precipitated the day of rising in that province. 
 The Natchez, on the burning of the last piece, fell on 
 the French, and, out of two hundred and twenty-two 
 French, massacred two hundred, — men, women, and 
 children, The remainder were women, whom they 
 retained as prisoners. 
 
 The Natchez, having accomplished this destruction, 
 were astonished to find that not one of their allies had 
 stirred ; and the allies were equally astonished at the 
 rising of the Natchez, whilst they had yet several 
 pieces of wood remaining. The French, however, in 
 the other parts of the country, were saved ; fresh rein- 
 forcements arrived from Europe, and the unfortunate 
 Natchez felt all the fury of their vengeance. Part 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 329 
 
 were put to the sword; great numbers were caught 
 and sent to St. Domingo, as slaves ; the rest fled for 
 safety into the country of the Chickasaws. The 
 Chickasaws were called upon to give them up ; but 
 they had more sense of honour and humanity than 
 Europeans, — they indignantly refused ; and, when the 
 French marched into their territories, to compel them 
 by force, bravely attacked and repelled them, with 
 repeated loss. As in Canada, Madagascar, India, and 
 other places, the French reaped no permanent ad- 
 vantage from their treachery and cruelties, as the 
 other European nations did. Louisiana was eventually 
 ceded, in 1762, to the Spaniards, just as the French 
 families, from Nova Scotia, Canada, St. Vincent, 
 Granada, and other colonies won by the English, were 
 flocking into it as a place of refuge. They had all the 
 odium and the crime of aboriginal oppression, and left 
 the earth so basely obtained, to the enjoyment of 
 others no better than themselves. 
 
330 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA. 
 
 The man who finds an unknown country out, 
 By giving it a name, acquires, no doubt, 
 A gospel title, though the people there 
 The pious Christian thinks not worth his care. 
 Bar this pretence, and into air is hurled, 
 The claim of Europe to the Western World. 
 
 Churchill. 
 
 We shall now have to deal entirely with our own 
 nation, or with those principally derived from it. We 
 shall now have to observe the conduct entirely of 
 Protestants towards the aborigines of their settlements : 
 and the Catholic may ask with triumphant scorn, 
 " Where is the mighty difference between the ancient 
 professors of our faith, and the professors of that faith 
 which you proudly style the reformed ! You accuse the 
 papal church of having corrupted and debased national 
 morality in this respect, — in what does the morality 
 of the Protestants differ?" I am sorry to say in 
 nothing. The Protestants have only too well imitated 
 the conduct and clung to the doctrine of the Catholics 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 331 
 
 as it regards the rights of humanity. It is to the dis- 
 grace of the papal church that it did not inculcate a 
 more Christian morality ; it is to the far deeper dis- 
 grace of Protestants, that, pretending to abandon the 
 corruptions and cruelties of the papists, they did not 
 abandon their wretched pretences for seizing upon the 
 possessions of the weak and the unsuspecting. So far, 
 however, from the behaviour of the Protestants form- 
 ing a palliation for that of the Catholics, it becomes an 
 aggravation of it; for it is but the ripened fruit of 
 that tree of false and mischievous doctrine which they 
 had planted. They had set the example, and boldly 
 preached the right, and pleaded the divine sanction 
 for invasion, oppression, and extermination — such ex- 
 ample and exhortation are only too readily adopted — 
 and the Protestant conduct was but the continuation 
 of papal heresy. The 
 
 New Presbyter was but old Priest writ large. 
 
 While we see, then, to the present hour the perpetu- 
 ated consequences of the long inculcation of papal 
 delusions, we must, however, confess that for the Pro- 
 testants there was, and is, less excuse than for the 
 Catholic laity. They had given up the Bible into 
 the hands of their priests, and as a matter of propriety 
 received the faith which they held from their dictation : 
 the Protestants professed that "the Bible and the 
 Bible alone, was the religion of the Protestants." 
 The Catholics having once persuaded themselves that 
 the Pope was the infallible vicegerent of God on earth, 
 might, in their blind zeal, honestly take all that he 
 proclaimed to them as gospel truth ; but the Protes- 
 tants disavowed and renounced his authority and in- 
 fallibility. They declared him to be the very anti- 
 
332 COLONIZATION 
 
 Christ, and his church the great sorceress that made 
 drunk the nations with the cup of her enchantments. 
 What business then had they with the papal doctrine, 
 that the heathen were given to the believers as a pos- 
 session ? The Pope declared that, as the representa- 
 tive of the Deity on earth, he claimed the world, and 
 disposed of it as he pleased. But the Protestants 
 protested against any such assumption, and appealed 
 to the Bible ; and where did they find any such doc- 
 trine in the Bible? Yet Elizabeth of England, 
 granted charters to her subjects to take possession of 
 all countries not yet seized on by Christian nations, 
 with as much implicit authority as the Pope himself. 
 .It is curious to hear her proclaiming her intimate 
 acquaintance with the Scripture, and yet so blindly 
 and unceremoniously setting at defiance all its most 
 sacred precepts. " I am supposed," said she, in her 
 speech on proroguing parliament in 1585, "to have 
 many studies, but most philosophical. I must yield 
 this to be true, that I suppose few that are not pro- 
 fessors, have read more ; land I need not tell you that 
 I am not so simple that I understand not, nor so for- 
 getful that I remember not; and yet, amidst my 
 many volumes, I hope God's book hath not been my 
 seldomest lectures, in which we find that which by 
 reason all ought to believe." 
 
 It had been well if she had made good her boasting 
 by proving practically that she had understood, and 
 had not forgotten the real doctrines of the Christian 
 code. But Elizabeth, as well as her father, was, in 
 every respect, except that of admitting the Pope's 
 supremacy, as thorough a Catholic as the best of 
 them; and we see her granting to Sir Humphrey 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 333 
 
 Gilbert, of Compton in Devonshire, in 1578, a char- 
 ter as ample in its endowments as that which the king 
 of Spain himself gave to Columbus, on the authority 
 of the Pope's bull, and securing to herself exactly the 
 same ratio of benefit: the Spanish commission was, in 
 fact, her model. She conferred on Sir Humphrey all 
 lands and countries that he might discover, that were 
 not already taken possession of by some Christian 
 prince. He was to hold them of England, with full 
 power of willing them to his heirs for ever, or dispos- 
 ing of them in sale, on the simple condition of reserving 
 one-fifth of all the gold and silver found to the crown. 
 She afterwards gave a similar charter to Sir Walter 
 Raleigh: and her successor, James I., still further 
 imitated the Pope by dividing the continent of North 
 America, under the name of North and South Virginia, 
 between two trading companies, as the Pope had di- 
 vided the world between Spain and Portugal. 
 
 It is really lamentable to see how utterly empty 
 was the pretence of reformation in tlie government of 
 England at that time. How utterly ignorant or re- 
 gardless Protestant England was of the most sacred and 
 unmistakeable truths of the New Testament, while it 
 professed to model itself upon them. The worst prin- 
 ciples of the papal church were clung to, because 
 they favoured the selfishness of despotism. The rights 
 of nations were as infamously and recklessly violated ; 
 and from that time to this, Protestant England and 
 Protestant America continue to spurn every great prin- 
 ciple of Christian justice in their treatment of native 
 tribes : they have substituted power for conscience, 
 gunpowder and brandy for truth and mercy, and ex- 
 pulsion from their lands and houses for charity, " that 
 suflfereth long and is kind.'* 
 
334 COLONIZATION 
 
 The shameless impudence and hypocrisy by which 
 nations calling^ themselves Christians have ever per^ 
 sisted, and still persist, in this sweeping and wholesale 
 public robbery and violence, was happily ridiculed by 
 Churchill. 
 
 Cast by a tempest on a savage coast. 
 
 Some roving buccaneer set up a post ; 
 
 A beam, in proper form, transversely laid, 
 
 Of his Redeemer's cross the figure made, — 
 
 Of that Redeemer, with whose laws his life, 
 
 From first to last, had been one scene of strife ; 
 
 His royal master's name thereon engraved, 
 
 Without more process the whole race enslaved ; 
 
 Cut off that charter they from Nature drew. 
 
 And made them slaves to men they never knew ! 
 
 Search ancient histories, consult records, 
 
 Under this title the most Christian Lords, 
 
 Hold, — thanks to conscience — more than half the ball ; — 
 
 O'erthrow this title, they have none at all. 
 
 But the national cupidity that was proof to the 
 caustic ridicule of Churchill, has been proof to the still 
 more powerful assault of public execration, under the 
 growth of Christian knowledge. The Bible is now in 
 almost every man's hand; its burning and shining 
 light blazes full on the grand precept, " Do as thou 
 would'st be done by ;" and are the tribes of India, 
 or Africa, or America, or Oceanica, the better for it? 
 Are they not still our slaves and our Gibeonites, and 
 driven before our arms like the wild beasts of the 
 desert? We need not therefore stay to express our 
 abhorrence of Spanish cruelty, or describe at great 
 length the deeds of own countrymen in any quarter 
 of the globe, — it is enough to say that English and 
 American treatment of the aborigines of their colonies 
 is but Spanish cruelty repeated. With one or two 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 336 
 
 beautiful exceptions, which we shall have the greatest 
 pleasure in pointing out, no moVe regard has been 
 paid to the rights or the feelings of the North Ameri- 
 can Indians by the English and their descendants, 
 than was paid to the South Americans by the Spanish 
 and Portuguese. 
 
 Every reader of history is aware of the melancholy 
 and disastrous commencement of most of our Ame- 
 rican colonies. The great cause was that they were 
 founded in injustice. Adventurers, with charters from 
 the English monarch in their pockets, as the Spaniards 
 and Portuguese had the Pope's bull in theirs, landed 
 on the coast of America and claimed it for their own, 
 reckoning the native inhabitants of no more account 
 than the bears and fallow-deer of the woods. They had 
 got a grant of the country from their own king ; but 
 whence had he got his grant ? That is not quite so 
 clear. The Pope's claim is intelligible enough : he 
 was, in his own opinion, God's viceroy and steward, 
 and disposed of his world in that character ; but the 
 Bible was the English monarch's law, and where did 
 the Bible appoint Elizabeth or James God's steward ? 
 Where did it appoint either of them '* a judge and a 
 ruler over " the Indians ? Truly Elizabeth, with all her 
 vaunting, had read her Bible to little purpose, as we 
 fear most monarchs and their ministers to the present 
 hour have done. We must say of the greater part of 
 North America, as Erskine said of India — " it is a 
 country which God never gave us, and acquired by 
 means that he will never justify." 
 
 The misery attending the first planting of our colo- 
 nies in America was equal to the badness of our princi- 
 ples. The very first thing which the colonists in the 
 
^ "K**^*^ 
 
 d 
 
 336 COLONIZATION 
 
 majority of cases seem to have done, was to insult and 
 maltreat the natives, thus making them their mortal 
 enemies, and thus cutting off all chance of the suc- 
 cours they needed from the land, and the security 
 essential to their very existence. For about a century, 
 nothing but wretchedness, failure, famine, massacres 
 by the Indians, were the news from the American 
 colonies. The more northern ones, as Nova Scotia, 
 Canada, and New York, we took from the French 
 and the Dutch ; the more southern, as Florida and 
 Louisian a^ were obtained at a later day from the Spa- 
 i*<CX, niards. We shall here therefore confine our brief 
 JU^ notice chiefly to the manner of settling the central 
 eastern states, particularly Virginia, New England, 
 and Pennsylvania. 
 
 For eighty-two years from the granting of the 
 charter by Elizabeth to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, to the 
 abandonment of the country by Sir Walter Raleigh 
 for his El Dorado visions, the colony of Virginia suf- 
 fered nothing but miseries, and was become, at that 
 period, a total failure. The first settlers were, like 
 the Spaniards, all on fire in quest of gold. They got 
 into squabbles with the Indians, and the remnant of 
 them was only saved by Sir Francis Drake happening 
 to touch there on his way home from a cruise in the 
 West Indies. A second set of adventurers were 
 massacred by the Indians, not without sufficient pro- 
 vocation; and a third perished by the same means, 
 or by famine induced by their unprincipled and impo- 
 litic treatment of the natives. The first successful 
 settlement which was formed was that of James-Town, 
 on James River, in Chesapeak Bay, in 1607. But 
 even here scarcely had they located themselves, when 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 337 
 
 their abuse of the Indians involved them in a savage 
 warfare with them. They took possession of their 
 hunting-grounds without ceremony ; and they cheated 
 them in every possible way in their transactions with 
 them, especially in the purchases of their furs. That 
 they might on the easiest terms have lived amicably 
 with the Indians, the history of the celebrated Captain 
 John Smith of that time sufficiently testifies. He had 
 been put out of his rank, and treated with every con- 
 tumely by his fellow colonists, till they found them- 
 selves on the verge of destruction from the enraged 
 natives. They then meanly implored him to save 
 them, and he soon effected their safety by that obvious 
 policy which, if men were not blinded by their own 
 wickedness, would universally best answer their pur- 
 pose. He began to conciliate the offended tribes; to 
 offer them presents and promises of kindness ; and the 
 consequence was, they soon flocked into the settlement 
 again in the most friendly manner, and with plenty of 
 provisions. But even Smith was not sufficiently 
 aware of the power of friendship ; he chose rather to 
 attack some of the Indians than to treat with them, 
 and the consequence was that he fell into their hands, 
 and was condemned to die the death of torture. 
 
 But here again, the better nature of the Indians 
 saved him : and that incident occurred which is one 
 of the most romantic in American history. He was 
 saved from execution at the last moment, by the 
 Indian beauty Pocahontas, the daughter of the great 
 Sachem Powhatan. This young Indian woman, who 
 is celebrated by the colonists and writers of the time, 
 as of a remarkably fine person, afterwards married a 
 Mr. Rolfe, an English gentleman of the colony. She 
 
338 COLONIZATION 
 
 was brought over by him to see England, and pre- 
 sented at court, where she was received in a dis- 
 tinguished manner by James and his queen. This 
 marriage, which makes a great figure in the early 
 history of the colony, was a most auspicious event 
 for it. It warmly - disposed the Indians towards the 
 English. They were anxious that the colonists should 
 make other alliances with them of the same nature, 
 and which might have been attended with the happiest 
 consequences to both nations; but though some of the 
 best families of Virginia now boast of their descent 
 from this connexion, the rest of the colonists of the 
 period held aloof from Indian marriages as beneath 
 them. They looked on the Indians rather as creatures 
 to be driven to the woods — for, unlike the negroes, they 
 could not be compelled to become slaves — than to be 
 raised and civilized ; and therefore, spite of the better 
 principles which the short government of that ex- 
 cellent man Lord Delaware had introduced, they were 
 soon again involved in hostilities with them. The 
 Indians felt deeply the insult of the refusal of alliance 
 through marriage with them ; they felt the daily irri- 
 tation of attempts to overreach them in their bargains, 
 and they saw the measures they were taking to seize 
 on their whole country. They saw that there was 
 to be no common bond of interest or sympathy be- 
 tween them ; that there was to be a usurping and a 
 suffering party only ; and they resolved to cut off the 
 grasping and haughty invaders at a blow. A wide 
 conspiracy was set on foot; and had it not been in 
 this case, as in many others, that the compassionate 
 feelings of one of the Indians partially revealed the 
 plot at the very moment of its execution, not an 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 339 
 
 Englishman would have been left alive. As it was, 
 a dreadful massacre ensued ; and more than a fourth 
 of the colonists perished. The English, in their turn, 
 fell on the Indians, and a bloody war of extermination 
 followed. When the colonists could no longer reach 
 them in the depths of their woods, they offered them 
 a deceitful peace. The Indians, accustomed in their 
 own wars to enter sincerely into their treaties of 
 peace when inclined to bury th"e tomahawk — were 
 duped by the more artful Europeans. They came 
 forth from their woods, planted their corn, and re- 
 sumed their peaceful hunting. Just as the harvest 
 was ripe, the English rushed suddenly upon them, 
 trampled down their crops, set fire to their wigwams, 
 and chased them again to the woods with such 
 slaughter, that some of the tribes were totally ex- 
 terminated ! 
 
 Such was the mode of settling Virginia. What 
 trust or cordiality could there afterwards be between 
 such parties? Accordingly we find, from time to 
 time, in the history of this colony, fresh plots of the 
 natives to rid themselves of the whites, and fresh ex- 
 peditions of the whites to clear the country of what 
 they termed the wily and perfidious Indians. These 
 dreadful transactions, which continued for the most 
 part while the English government continued in that 
 country, gave occasion to that memorable speech of 
 Logan, the chief of the Shawanees, to Lord Dunmore 
 the governor : a speech which will remain while the 
 English language shall remain, to perpetuate the 
 memory of English atrocity, and Indian pathos. — " I 
 now ask of every white man, whether he hath ever 
 entered the cottage of Logan when hungry, and been 
 
340 COLONIZATION 
 
 refused food ? Whether coming naked, and perishing 
 with cold, and Logan has not clothed him ? During the 
 last war, so long and so bloody, Logan has remained 
 quietly upon his mat, wishing to be the advocate of 
 peace. Yes, such is my attachment to white men, that 
 even those of my nation, when they pass by me, pointed 
 at me, saying — ' Logan is the friend of white men ! ' I 
 had even thought of living among you ; but that was 
 before the injury I received from one of you. Last 
 summer. Colonel Cressup massacred in cold blood, and 
 without any provocation, all the relations of Logan. 
 He spared neither his wife ilor his children. There is 
 not now one drop of my blood in the veins of any living 
 creature I This is what has excited my revenge. I have 
 sought it. I have killed several of your people, and my 
 hatred is appeased. For my country I rejoice at the 
 beams of peace ; but imagine not that my joy is insti- 
 gated by my fear. Logan knows not what fear is. He 
 will never turn his back in order to save his life. But 
 alas ! no one remains to mourn for Logan when he shall 
 be no more !*^ 
 
 The conduct of the English towards the natives ^n 
 THE Carolinas may be summed up in a single pas- 
 sage of the Abbe Raynal : " Two wars were carried 
 on against the natives of the most extravagant de- 
 scription. All the wandering or fixed nations between 
 the ocean and Appalachian mountains, were attacked 
 and massacred without any interest or motive. Those 
 who escaped being put to the sword, either submitted 
 or were dispersed." The remnant of the tribe of the 
 Tuscaroras fled into the state of New York. 
 
 Maryland, in its early history, also exhibits its 
 quota of Indian bloodshed; but much of this is chargable 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 341 
 
 to the account of the colonists of Virginia. Lord Balti- 
 more, who first colonised this province in the reign of 
 Charles I., was a Catholic, who sought an asylum for 
 his persecuted brethren of the same faith. Since the 
 change of religion in England, the Catholics had ex- 
 perienced the bitterness of that persecution of which 
 they, while in power, had been so liberal. This 
 seems to have had an excellent effect upon some of 
 them. Lord Baltimore and the colonists who went 
 out with him, being most of them of good Catholic 
 families, determined to allow liberty of conscience, 
 and admitted people of -all sorts. This gave great 
 offence to their royalist neighbours in Virginia, who, 
 not permitting any liberty of religious sentiment, 
 found those whom they drove away by their severities 
 flocking into Maryland, and being there well received, 
 strengthening it at their expense. They therefore 
 circulated all kinds of calumnies amongst the Indians 
 against the Maryland Catholics, especially telling them 
 that they were Spaniards — a name of horror to Indian 
 ears. Alarmed by this representation, they fell on 
 the colonists whom they had at first received with 
 their usual kindness, laid waste their fields, massacred 
 without mercy all that they could meet ; and were 
 not undeceived till after a long course of patient 
 endurance and friendly representation. 
 
 The settlement of New England presents some 
 new features. It was not merely a settlement of 
 English Protestants, but of the Protestants of Protes- 
 tants — the Puritans. A class of persons having thus 
 made two removes from Popery; having not only pro- 
 tested against the errors of Rome, but against those of 
 the very church which had seceded from Rome, and 
 
342 COLONIZATION 
 
 professed to purify itself from its corruptions; having, 
 moreover, suffered severely for their religious faith, 
 might be supposed to have acquired far clearer views 
 of the rights of humanity from their better acquaint- 
 ance with the Bible, and might be expected to respect 
 the persons and the property of the natives in whose 
 lands they went to settle, more than any that went 
 before them. They went as men who had been driven 
 out of their own country, and from amongst their own 
 kindred, for the maintenance of the dearest privileges 
 and the most sacred claims of men ; and they might 
 be supposed to address the* natives as they reached 
 their coast in terms like these : " Ancient possessors 
 of a free country, give us a place of refuge amongst 
 you. You are termed savages, but you cannot be 
 more savage than the people of our own land, who 
 have inflicted dreadful cruelties and mutilations on us 
 and our friends for the faith we have in God. We 
 fly from savages who pretend to be civilized, but have 
 learned no one principle of civilization, to savages who 
 pretend to no civilization, but yet have, on a thousand 
 occasions, received white men to their shores with 
 benevolence and tears of joy. What the savages of 
 Europe are, a hundred regions drenched in the blood 
 of their native children can tell ; that we deem you 
 less savage than them, the very act of our coming to 
 you testifies. Give us space amongst you, and let us 
 live as brethren." 
 
 For a time, indeed, they acted as men who might 
 be supposed thus to speak. The going out and land- 
 ing in this new country of this band of religious 
 adventurers, have been and continue to be celebrated 
 as the setting forth and landing of " The Pilgrim 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 343 
 
 Fathers." It is in itself an interesting event: the 
 pilgrimage of a little host of voluntary exiles, for the 
 sake of their religion, from their native country, to 
 establish a new country in the wilderness of the New 
 World. It is more interesting from the fact, that 
 their associates and descendants have grown into one 
 of the most intelligent and powerful portions of the 
 freest, and, perhaps, happiest nation on the globe. 
 Their landing on the coast of Massachusets was 
 effected under circumstances of peculiar hardship. It 
 took place at a spot to which they gave the name of 
 New Plymouth, on the Uth of November, 1620. 
 The weather was extremely severe; and they were 
 but badly prepared to contend with it. During the 
 winter one half of their number perished through 
 famine, and diseases brought on by their hardships. 
 The natives, too, came down to oppose their- settle- 
 ment,* and it is difficult now to imagine how such 
 religious people could reconcile to their consciences 
 an entrance by force on the territories of a race on 
 whom they had no claim. They had, indeed, pur- 
 chased a tract of land of one of the chartered com- 
 panies in England ; but one is at a loss to conceive 
 how any J^nglish company could sell a country in 
 
 * The natives of this coast had some years before been carried off 
 in considerable numbers by a British kidnapper, one Captain Hunt, 
 who sold them in the Mediterranean to the Spaniards as Moors oif 
 Barbary. The indignation of the Indians on the discovery of this 
 base transaction and their warlike character, put a stop to this trade, 
 which might otherwise have become as regular a department of com- 
 merce as the African slave-trade ; but it naturally threw the most 
 formidable obstacles in the way of settling colonies here, and brought 
 all the miseries of mutual outrage and revenge on both settlers and 
 natives. — Douglasses Summary of the First Planting of North America, 
 vol. i. p. 364. 
 
344 COLONIZATION 
 
 another hemisphere already inhabited, and to which 
 they had not the slightest title to show, except " the 
 Bucanier's Post." As well might a company of In- 
 dians sell some of their countrymen a slice of territory 
 on the coast of Kent ; and just as good a title would 
 the Indians have to land, if they could, in spite of our 
 Kentish yeomen, and establish themselves on the spot. 
 Moreover, these Pilgrim Fathers had wandered from 
 their original destination, and had not purchased this 
 land at all of anybody at that time. No doubt the 
 Fathers thought that they had a right to settle in a 
 wild country ; and simply fell in with the customs and 
 doctrines of the times. We might, however, have 
 expected clearer notions of natural right from their 
 acquaintance with the Bible ; for we shall presently 
 see that there were men of their own country, and in 
 their Own circumstances, that would not have been 
 easy to have taken such possession in such a manner. 
 We may safely believe that the Fathers did according 
 to their knowledge ; but the precedent is dangerous, 
 and could not in these times be admitted : the Fathers 
 did not, in fact, obtain any grant from the English 
 till four years afterwards (1624). When they had once 
 got a firm footing, Massasoit, the father of the famous 
 Philip of Pokanoket, whom these same settlers pur- 
 sued to the death with all his tribe, except such as they 
 sold for slaves to Bermudas, granted them a certain ex- 
 tent of lands. Subsequently purchases from the Indians 
 began to be considered more necessary to a good title. 
 Eight years afterwards another company of the 
 same people, under John Endicott, formed a settlement 
 in Massachusets Bay, and founded the town of Salem. 
 In the following year a third company, of not less than 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 345 
 
 three hundred in number, joined them. These in the 
 course of time seeking fresh settlements, founded at 
 diflferent periods, Boston, Charlestown, Dorchester, 
 Roxborough, and other towns ; great numbers now, 
 allured by the flourishing state of the colony, flocked 
 over, and amongst them Harry Vane, the celebrated 
 Sir Harry Vane of the revolutionary parliament, and 
 Hugh Peters, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell. Some 
 difi'erence of opinion amongst them occasioned a con- 
 siderable body of them to settle in Providence and 
 Rhode Island. These were under the guidance of 
 their venerable pastor Roger Williams, a man who 
 deserves to be remembered while Christianity continues 
 to shed its blessings on mankind. Mr. Williams had 
 penetrated through the mists of his age, to the light 
 of divine truth, and had risen superior to the selfish- 
 ness of his countrymen. He maintained the freedom 
 of conscience, the right of private judgment, the free- 
 dom of religious opinion from the touch of the magis- 
 trate. The spirit of true Christianity had imbued his 
 own spirit with its love. Above all — for it was the most 
 novel doctrine, and as we have, seen by the practice of 
 the whole Christian world, the hardest to adopt — he 
 maintained the sacred right of the natives to their own 
 soil ; and refused to settle upon it without their con- 
 sent. He and his followers purchased of the Indians the 
 whole territory which they took possession of! This is a 
 fact which we cannot record without a feeling of in- 
 tense delight, for it is the first instance of such a tri- 
 umph of Christian knowledge and principle, over the 
 corrupt morality of Europe. We nowhere read till 
 now, through all this bloody and revolting history of 
 European aggressions, of any single man treating with 
 22 
 
346 COLONIZATION 
 
 the savage natives as with men who had the same in- 
 alienable rights as themselves.* It is the first bright 
 dawn of Christian day from the darkness of ages ; the 
 first boundary mark put down between the possessions 
 of the unlettered savage, and the lawless desires of the 
 schooled but uncivilized European ; the first recogni- 
 tion of that law of property in the possessors of the 
 soil of every country of the earth, until the complete 
 establishment of which, blood must flow, the weak 
 must be trodden down by the strong, and civilization 
 and Christianity must pause in their course. Honour 
 to Roger Williams and his flock in Narraganset Bay ! 
 The Puritan settlements still continued to spread. 
 Connecticut, and New Hampshire, and Maine were 
 planted by diff'erent bodies frouL Massachusets Bay ; 
 and the Indians, who found that the whites diff'used 
 themselves farther and farther over their territories, 
 and soon ceased to purchase as Roger Williams had 
 done, or even to ask permission; began to remon- 
 strate. Remonstrances however produced little effect. 
 The Indians saw that if they did not make a stand 
 against these encroachments they must soon be driven 
 out of their ancestral lands, and exterminated by those 
 tribes on which they must be forced. They resolved 
 therefore to exterminate the invaders that would hear 
 no reason. The Pequods, who lay near the colony of 
 Connecticut, called upon the Narragansets in 1637, 
 to join them in their scheme. The Narragansets re- 
 vealed it to the English, and both parties were speedily 
 
 * Purchases were, indeed, made by others; but it was seize first, and 
 bargain afterwards, when the soil was already defended by muskets, 
 and the only question with the natives was, " Shall we take a trifle for 
 our lands, or be knocked on the head for them ? " 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 347 
 
 in arms against each other. The different colonies of 
 New England had entered into an association for com- 
 mon defence. The people of Connecticut called on 
 those of Massachusets Bay for help, which was ac- 
 corded ; but before its arrival the soldiers of Connec- 
 ticut, who seemed on all occasions eager to shed Indian 
 blood, had attacked the Pequods where they had posted 
 themselves, in a sort of rude camp in a swamp, de- 
 fended with stakes and boughs of trees. The Pequods 
 were supposed to be a thousand strong, besides hav- 
 ing all their women and children with them ; but their 
 simple fortification was soon forced, and set fire to ; 
 and men, women, children perished in the flames, or 
 were cut down on rushing out, or seized and bound. 
 The Massachusets forces soon after joined them, and 
 then the Indians were hunted from place to place with 
 unrelenting fury. They determined to treat them, 
 not as brave men fighting for their invaded territories, 
 for their families and posterity, but as wild beasts. 
 They massacred some in cold blood, others they handed 
 over to the Narragansets to be tortured to death ; and 
 great numbers were sold into Bermudas as slaves. In 
 less than three months, the great and ancient tribe of 
 the Pequods had ceased to exist. What did Roger 
 Williams say to this butchery by a Christian people ? 
 But the spirit of resentment against the Indians grew 
 to such a pitch in those states that nothing but the 
 language of Cotton Mather, (the historian of New 
 England,) can express it. He calls them devils incar- 
 nate, and declares that unless he had " a pen made of a 
 porcupine's quill and dipped in aquafortis he could not 
 describe all their cruelties/' Could they be possibly 
 greater than those of the Puritan settlers, who were at 
 
,348 COLONIZATION 
 
 once the^aggressors, and bore the name of Christian P 
 So deadly, indeed, became the vengeance of these 
 colonists, that they granted a public reward to any 
 one who should kill an Indian. The Assembly, says 
 Douglass, in 1703, voted 40Z. premium for each Indian 
 scalp or captive. In the former war the premium was 
 12Z. In 1706, he says, "about this time premiums 
 for Indian scalps and captives were advanced by act of 
 Assembly; viz: per piece to impressed men 10/., to 
 volunteers in pay 20/., to volunteers serving without 
 pay 50/., with the benefit of the captives and plunder. 
 Col. Hilton, with 220 men, ranges the eastern fron- 
 tiers, and kills many Indians. In 1722 the premium for 
 scalps was 100/. In 1744 it had risen to 400/. old 
 tenor ; for the years 1745, 6, and 7, it stood at the 
 enormous sum of 1000/. per head to volunteers, scalp 
 or captive (!) and 400/. per head to impressed men, 
 wages and subsistence money to be deducted.* In 
 1744 the Cape-Sables, and St. John's Indians being at 
 war with the colonies, Massachusets-Bay declared them 
 rebels; forbad the Pasamaquody, Penobscot, Noridg- 
 woag, Pigwocket, and all other Indians west of St. 
 John's to hold any communication with them, and 
 offered for their scalps, — males 12 years old, and up- 
 wards, 100/. new tenor; for such, as captives, 105/. 
 For women and children 50/., scalps ! — 55/., captives ! 
 The Assembly soon after, hearing that the Penobscot 
 and Noridgwoag Indians had joined the French, ex- 
 tended premiums for scalps and captives to all places 
 west of Nova Scotia, and advanced them to 250/. new 
 tenor, to volunteers; and 100/. new tenor to troops in 
 pay.f 
 
 In 1722, a Captain Harman, with 200 men, sur- 
 
 * Douglass' Summary, i. 556-65. f Ibid, i, 321. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 349 
 
 prised the Indians at Noridgwoag, and brought off 
 twenty-six scalps, and that of Father Balle, a French 
 Jesuit.* The savage atrocities here committed by the 
 New Englanders were frightful. They massacred men, 
 women, and children ; pillaged the village, robbed and 
 set fire to the church, and mangled the corpse of Father 
 Ralle most brutally.f For these twenty-six scalps, at 
 the then premium, the good people of Massachusets 
 paid 2600Z. A Captain Lovel, also, seems to have 
 been an active scalper. " He collected," says Raynal, 
 "a band of settlers as ferocious as himself, and set 
 out to hunt savages. One day he discovered ten of 
 them quietly sleeping round a large fire. He mur- 
 dered them, carried their scalps to Boston, and secured 
 the promised reward, of course lOOOZ. ! Who could 
 suppose that the land of the Pilgrim Fathers, the 
 land of the noble Roger Williams, could have become 
 polluted with horrors like these !" 
 
 And why were the Indians now so sharply pursued 
 — why such sums given as tempted these Harmans 
 and Lovels ? Why the scalp of Father Ralle to be 
 stripped away from him ? — Because Father Ralle had 
 proclaimed a very certain, but very disagreeable truth. 
 He preached to the Indians, " That their lands were 
 given to them and their children unalienably and for 
 ever, according to the Christian sacred oracles." What 
 is so inconvenient as to preach Bible truth in coun- 
 tries flagrant with injustice ? The Indians began to 
 murmur ; gave the English formal warning to leave 
 the lands within a set time, and as they did not 
 move, began to drive off their cattle. This was de- 
 clared rebellion, the soldiery were set on them, and 
 lOOZ. a head proclaimed for their scalps. 
 
 • Douglass' Summary, i. 199. t Drake's Book of the Indians. 
 
350 COLONIZATION 
 
 This is called Governor Dummer's war; but the 
 most celebrated war was that of Philip of Pokanoket, 
 which occurred between this war and that of the de- 
 struction of the Pequods. The cause of Philip's war, 
 which broke out in 1675, and lasted upwards of a 
 year, was exactly that of this subsequent one, and in- 
 deed of every war of New England with the Indians — 
 the dissatisfaction of the Indians with the usurpation 
 of the whites. The New England people, religious 
 people though they were, seem to have been more 
 irritable, more jealous, more regardless of the rights 
 of the Indians, and more quick and deadly in their 
 vengeance on any shew of spirit in the natives, than 
 any other of the North American colonies. The 
 monstrous, and were it not for the testimony of un- 
 impeachable history, incredible sums offered for scalps 
 by these states, testify to the malignant spirit of 
 revenge which animated them. Even towards the 
 Narragansets, their firmest and most constant friends, 
 who lived amongst them, they shewed an irritability 
 and a savage relentlessness that are to us amazing. 
 On the faintest murmur of any dissatisfaction of this 
 tribe on account of their lands, or of any other tribe 
 making overtures of alliance to it, they were up in 
 arms, and ready to exterminate it. So early as 1642, 
 they charged Miantinomo, the great sachem of the 
 Narragansets, with conspiring to raise the Indians 
 against them. The people of Connecticut immediately 
 proposed, without further proof or examination, to fall 
 on the Indians and kill them. This bloody haste was, 
 however, withstood by Massachusets.* They sum- 
 moned Miantinomo before the court. He came, and 
 
 * Hutchinson — Gov. Winthrop's Journal. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 351 
 
 it is impossible not to admire his sedate and dignified 
 bearing there. He demanded that his accusers should 
 be brought face to face, and that if they could prove 
 him guilty of conspiracy against the colony, he was 
 ready to suffer death ; but if they could not, they should 
 suffer the same puriishment. " His behaviour," says 
 Hutchinson, " was grave, and he gave his answers 
 with great deliberation and seeming ingenuity. He 
 would never speak hut in the presence of two of his coun- 
 sellors, that they might be witnesses of everything 
 which passed. (No doubt he had seen enough of 
 'that pen and ink work,' of which the Indians so 
 often complained). Two days were spent in treaty. 
 He denied all that he was charged with, and pretended 
 that the reports to his disadvantage were raised by 
 Uncas, the sachem of the Mohegins, or some of his 
 people. He was willing to renew his former engage- 
 ments; that if any of the Indians, even the Niantics, 
 \vho, he said, were as his own flesh and blood, should 
 do any wrong to the English, so as neither he nor 
 they could satisfy without blood, he would deliver 
 them up, and leave them to mercy. The people of 
 Connecticut put little confidence in him, and could hardly 
 he kept from falling upon him, but were at last prevail- 
 ed upon by the Massachusets to desist for the present."* 
 Poor Miantinomo did not long escape. Two years 
 afterwards, in a war with his eiiemy, Uncas, he was 
 taken prisoner, and the colonists were only too glad 
 to have an opportunity of getting rid of a man of 
 mind and influence, who felt their aggressions and 
 feared for his race — they outdid the savage captor in 
 their resentment against him. Instead of interceding 
 
 * Hutchinson's Massachusets Bay, p. 113. 
 
352 COLONIZATION 
 
 on his behalf and recommending mercy, by which 
 they might, at once, have set a Christian example, 
 and have made a fast friend, they procured his death. 
 Uncas, with a generosity worthy of the highest charac- 
 ter, instead of killing his captive, as he was entitled 
 by the rules of Indian war, delivered him into the 
 hands of the New-Englanders, and the New-Eng- 
 landers again returned him to Uncas, desiring him to 
 kill him, but without the usual tortures. It is wonder- 
 ful that they did not purchase his scalp, or that they 
 excused the torture; but a number of the English 
 inhabitants went out and gratified themselves with 
 witnessing his death.* 
 
 It was not to be marvelled at that such general 
 treatment, and such a crowning deed exasperated the 
 Narragansets to a dangerous degree. They nourished 
 a rooted revenge, which shewed itself on the breaking 
 out of Philip of Pokanoket's war. They engaged to 
 bring to his aid 4000 Indians. 
 
 Philip was one of the noblest specimens of the North 
 American Indian. He was of a fine and active per- 
 son ; accomplished in all exercises of his nation, in 
 war and hunting. He had that quick sense of injuries, 
 and that sense of the honour and rights of his people 
 which characterise the patriot ; qualities which, though 
 in the most cultivated and enlightened mind they may 
 hurry their possessor on occasionally to sharp and 
 vindictive acts, are the very essentials of that lofty 
 and noble disposition without which no great deed is 
 ever done. Had Philip contended for his country 
 against its invaders on anything like equal terms, he 
 would have been its saviour, — the naked Indians 
 
 * Hutchinson, p. 138. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 353 
 
 against the powers and resources of the English ! It 
 was hopeless, — he could only become the Caractacus, 
 or the Cassibelaunus of his nation. 
 
 Philip has been painted by his enemies as a dread- 
 ful, perfidious, and cruel wretch ; — but had Philip been 
 the survivor how would he have painted them ? With 
 their shameless encroachments, their destruction of 
 Indians, their blood-money, and their scalps, pur- 
 chased at lOOOZ. each ! Philip had the deepest causes 
 of resentment. His father, Massasoit, had received 
 the strangers and sold them land. They speedily 
 compelled him to sign a deed, in which by " that pen 
 and ink work" which the Indians did not understand, 
 but which they soon learned to know worked them the 
 most cruel wrongs, they had made him to acknowledge 
 himself and his subjects the subjects of King James. 
 Philip denied that his father had any idea of the 
 meaning of such a treaty, — any idea of surrendering 
 to the English more than the land he sold them; or if 
 he had done so, that he had any right to give away 
 the liberties of his nation and posterity ; the govern- 
 ment amongst the Indians not being hereditary, but 
 elective. Philip, however, was compelled to retract 
 and renounce such doctrines in another public docu- 
 ment. But the moment he became at liberty, he held 
 himself, and very justly, free from the stipulations of 
 a compulsory deed. 
 
 But these were not all Philip's grievances. His 
 only and elder brother, Wamsutta, or Alexander, for 
 the entertainment of similar patriotic sentiments, had 
 been seized in his own house by ten armed men sent 
 by Governor Winslow, and carried before him as a 
 caitiff, though he was at that time the powerful sachem 
 
354 COLONIZATION 
 
 of the Narragansets, his father being dead. The out- 
 rage and insult had such an effect upon the high- 
 spirited youth, that they threw him into a fever, which 
 speedily proved fatal.* 
 
 They were these and the like injuries that drove 
 Philip to concert that union of the Indians which, in 
 1675, alarmed New England. We need not follow the 
 particulars of the war. It was hastened by a prema- 
 ture disclosure ; and Philip has been always taxed as 
 a murderer for putting to death John Sausaman, a 
 renegade Indian who betrayed the plot to the English. 
 The man was a confessed and undoubted traitor, and 
 his death was exactly what the English would have 
 inflicted, and was justified, not merely by the summary 
 proceeding in such cases of the Indians, but by the 
 laws of civilized war, if such an odd contradiction of 
 terms may pass. Philip, after a stout resistance, and 
 after performing prodigies of valour, was chased from 
 swamp to swamp, and at length shot by another 
 traitor Indian, who cut off his hand and head, and 
 brought them to the English. His head was exposed 
 on a gibbet at Plymouth for twenty years ; his hand, 
 known by a particular scar, was exhibited in savage 
 triumph, and his mangled body refused burial. His 
 only son, a mere boy, was sold into slavery. 
 
 It was during this war that the settlers lived in 
 such a state of continual alarm from the Indians, and 
 such adventures and passages of thrilling interest took 
 place, as will for ever furnish topics of conversation in 
 that country. It was then that the congregation was 
 alarmed while in church at Hadley, in Massachusets, 
 
 * Hutchinson's Hist, of Massachusets Bay. Also Douglass, Hub- 
 bard, Gorge, and other historians of the titne^ 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 355 
 
 on a fast-day by the Indians, and were compelled to 
 leave their devotions to defend tliemselves, when they 
 were surprised by seeing a grave and commanding per- 
 sonage, whom they had not before noticed, assume the 
 command, lead them to victory, and as suddenly again 
 disappear. This person was afterwards found to be 
 Goffe, one of the English regicide judges, then hiding 
 in that neighbourhood. These facts Mr. Cooper has 
 made good use of in his story of " The Borderers." 
 
 But the facts of more importance to our history 
 are, that in this war 3000 Indians were said to be de- 
 stroyed. The Narragansets alone, were reduced from 
 2000 to about 100 men. After the peace was re- 
 stored 400 Indians were ordered to assemble at Major 
 Walker's, at Catchecho, 200 of whom were culled as 
 most notorious, some of them put to death, and the 
 rest sent abroad and sold as slaves. Yet all these 
 severities and disasters to the Indians did not extin- 
 guish their desire to resist the aggressions of the 
 whites. On all sides, the Tarrateens, the Penobscots, 
 the Five Nations, and various other tribes, continued 
 to harass them ; filling them with perpetual fears, and 
 inflicting awful cruelties and devastations on the 
 solitary borderers. These were the necessary fruits of 
 that rancorous spirit with which the harshness and in- 
 justice of the settlers had inspired them. Randolph, 
 writing to William Penn from New England in 1688, 
 says — "This barbarous people, the Indians, were 
 now evilly treated by this government, who made 
 it their business to encroach upon their lands, and by 
 degrees to drive them out of all. That was the 
 grounds and the beginning of the last war." And 
 that was the ground of all the wars waged in the 
 country against this unhappy people. 
 
356 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA SETTLEMENT OF 
 
 PENNSYLVANIA. 
 
 But it may be said, it is one thing to sit at home in 
 our study and write of Christian principles, and another 
 to go out into new settlements amongst wild tribes, 
 and maintain them; that it is easy to condemn the 
 conduct of others, but might not be so easy to govern 
 our own temper, when assailed on all sides with 
 signal dangers, and irritated with cruelties ; that the 
 Indians would not listen to persuasion; that they 
 were faithless, vindictive beyond measure, and fonder 
 of blood than of peace; that there was no possible 
 mode of dealing with them but driving them out, or 
 exterminating them. — Arise, William Penn, and give 
 answer ! These are the very things that in his day he 
 heard on all hands. On all hands he was pointed to 
 arms, by which the colonies were defended: he was 
 told that nothing but force could secure the colonists 
 against the red men : he was told that there was no 
 faith in them, and therefore no faith could be kept 
 with them. He believed in the power of Christianity, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 357 
 
 and therefore he did not believe these assertions. He 
 believed the Indians to be men, and that they were, 
 therefore, accessible to the language and motives of 
 humanity. He believed in the omnipotence of jus- 
 tice and good faith, and disbelieved all the sophistry 
 by which wars and violence are maintained by an inter- 
 ested generation. He resolved to try the experiment 
 of kindness and peace : it was a grand and a momentous 
 trial : it was no other than to put the truth of Chris- 
 tianity to the test, and to learn whether the World's 
 philosophy or that of the Bible were the best. It was 
 attempted to alarm him by all kinds of bloody bug- 
 bears : he was ridiculed as an enthusiast, but he calmly 
 cast himself on his conviction of the literal truth of 
 the Gospel, and the result was the most splendid 
 triumph in history. He demonstrated, in the face of 
 the world, and all its arguments and all its practice, 
 that peace may be maintained when men will it; and 
 that there is no need, and therefore no excuse, for 
 the bloodshed and the violence that are perpetually 
 marking the expanding boundaries of what is oddly 
 enough termed civilization. 
 
 William Penn received a grant of the province to 
 which he gave the name of Pennsylvania, as payment 
 for money owing to his father. Admiral Penn, from 
 the government. He accepted this grant, because it 
 secured him against any other claimant from Europe. 
 It gave him a title in the eyes of the Christian world ; 
 but he did not believe that it gave him any other 
 title. He knew in his conscience that the country 
 was already in the occupation of tribes of Indians, who 
 inherited it from their ancestors by a term of posses- 
 sion, which probably was unequalled by anything 
 
358 COLONIZATION 
 
 which the inhabitants of Europe had to shew for their 
 territories. I cannot better state Penn's proceedings 
 on this occasion than in the words of the Edinburgh 
 Review, when noticing Clarkson's Life of this Chris- 
 tian statesman. 
 
 " The country assigned to him by the royal charter 
 was yet full of its original inhabitants; and the prin- 
 ciples of William Penn did not allow him to look 
 upon that gift as a warrant to dispossess the first inha- 
 bitants of the land. He had accordingly appointed his 
 commissioners the preceding year to treat with them 
 for the fair purchase of part of their lands, and for 
 their joint possession of the remainder; and the terms 
 of the settlement being now nearly agreed upon, he 
 proceeded very soon after his arrival to conclude the 
 settlement, and solemnly to pledge his faith, and to 
 ratify and confirm the treaty, in right both of the In- 
 dians and the planters. For this purpose a grand 
 convocation of the tribes had been appointed near the 
 spot where Philadelphia now stands ; and it was agreed 
 that he and the presiding Sachems should meet and 
 exchange faith under the spreading branches of a pro- 
 digious elm-tree that grew on the banks of the river. 
 On the day appointed, accordingly, an innumerable 
 company of the Indians assembled in that neighbour- 
 hood, and were seen, with their dark faces and bran- 
 dished arms, moving in vast swarms in the depth of 
 the woods that then overshaded that now cultivated 
 region. On the other hand, William Penn, with a 
 moderate attendance of friends, advanced to meet 
 them. He came, of course, unarmed — in his usual 
 plain dress — without banners, or mace, or guard, or 
 carriages, and only distinguished from his companions 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 359 
 
 by wearing a blue sash of silk network (which, it 
 seems, is still preserved by Mr. Kett, of Seething Hall, 
 near Norwich), and by having in his hand a roll of 
 parchment, on which was engrossed the confirmation 
 of the treaty of purchase and amity. As soon as he 
 drew near the spot where the Sachems were assembled, 
 the whole multitude of the Indians threw down their 
 weapons, and seated themselves on the ground in 
 groups, each under his own chieftain, and the pre- 
 siding chief intimated to William Penn that the na- 
 tives were ready to hear him. 
 
 " Having been thus called upon he began : — « The 
 Great Spirit,' he said, ' who made him and them, who 
 ruled the heaven and the earth, and who knew the 
 innermost thoughts of man, knew that he and his 
 friends had a hearty desire to live in peace and friend- 
 ship with them, and to serve them to the uttermost of 
 their power. It was not their custom to use hostile 
 weapons against their fellow-creatures, for which 
 reason they had come unarmed. Their object was 
 not to do injury, and thus provoke the Great Spirit, 
 but to do good. They were then met on the broad 
 pathway of goodfaith and goodwill, so that no advan- 
 tage was to be taken on either side, but all was to be 
 openness, brotherhood, and love.' After these and 
 other words, he unrolled the parchment, and, by means 
 of the same intrepreter, conveyed to them, article by 
 article, the conditions of the purchase, and the words 
 of the compact then made for their eternal union. 
 Among other things, they were not to be molested, 
 even in the territory they had alienated, for it was 
 to be common to them and the English. They were 
 to have the same liberty to do all things therein re- 
 
360 COLONIZATION 
 
 lating to the improvement of their grounds and pro- 
 viding sustenance for their families, which the English 
 had. If disputes should arise between the two, they 
 should be settled by twelve persons, half of whom 
 should be English, and half Indians. He then paid 
 them for the land, and made them many presents 
 besides from the merchandise which had been open 
 before tli^m. Having done this, he laid the roll of 
 parchment on the ground, observing again that the 
 ground should be common to both people. He then 
 added that he would not do as the Marylanders did, 
 that is, call them children, or brothers only : for often 
 parents were apt to whip their children too severely, 
 and brothers sometimes would differ ; neither would he 
 compare the friendship between him and them to a chain, 
 for the rain might sometimes rust it, or a tree might 
 fall and break it; but he should consider them as the 
 same flesh and blood as the Christians, and the same as 
 if one man's body was to be divided into two parts. He 
 then took up the parchment, and presented it to the 
 Sachem who wore the horn in the chaplet, and desired 
 him and the other Sachems to preserve it carefully 
 for three generations, that their children might know 
 what had passed between them, just as if he himself 
 had remained with them to repeat it. 
 J. 5' The Indians in return, made long and stately 
 harangues, of which, however, no more seems to have 
 been remembered, but that ' they pledged themselves 
 to live in love with. William Penn and his children as 
 long as the sun and moon shall endure.' Thus ended 
 this famous treaty, of which Voltaire has remarked 
 with so much truth and severity, * That it was the only 
 one ever concluded which was not ratified by an oath, 
 and the only one that never was broken.' 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 361 
 
 " Such indeed was the spirit in which the negotia- 
 tion was entered into, and the corresponding settle- 
 ment concluded, that for the space of more than 
 seventy years, and so long indeed as the Quakers re- 
 tained the chief power in the government, the peace 
 and amity were never violated ; and a large and most 
 striking, though solitary, example afforded of the 
 facility with which they who are really sincere and 
 friendly in their own views, may live in harmony with 
 those who are supposed to be peculiarly fierce and 
 faithless. We cannot bring ourselves to wish that 
 there were nothing but Quakers in the world, because 
 we fear it would be insupportably dull ; but when we 
 consider what tremendous evils daily arise from the 
 petulance and profligacy, and ambition and irritability 
 of sovereigns and ministers, we cannot help thinking 
 it would be the most efficacious of all reforms to choose 
 all those ruling personages out of that plain, pacific, 
 and sober-minded sect." 
 
 There is no doubt that Penn may be declared the 
 most perfect Christian statesman that ever lived. He 
 had the sagacity to see that men, to be made trust- 
 worthy, need only to be treated as men ; — that the 
 doctrines of the New Testament were to be taken 
 literally and fully; and he had the courage and 
 honesty, in the face of all the world's practice and ' 
 maxims, to confide in Christian truth. It fully justi- ^ 
 
 fied him. What are the cunning and the so-called \^, 
 
 profound policy of the most subtle statesmen to this ? 
 This confidence, at which the statesmen of our own 
 day would laugh as folly and simplicity, proved to be 
 a reach of wisdom for beyond their narrow vision. 
 But it is to be feared that the selfishness of govern- . 
 
362 COLONIZATION 
 
 ments is as much concerned as their short-sightedness 
 in the clumsy and ruinous manner in which affairs be- 
 tween nations are managed ; for what would become 
 of armies and navies, places and pensions, if honest 
 treatment should take place of the blow first and the 
 word after, and of all that false logic by which aggres- 
 sion is made to appear necessary ? 
 
 The results of this treaty were most extraordinary. 
 While the Friends retained the government of Penn- 
 sylvania it was governed without an army, and was 
 never assailed by a single enemy. The Indians re- 
 tained their firm attachment to them ; and, more than 
 a century afterwards, and after the government of the 
 state had long been resumed by England, and its old 
 martial system introduced there, when civil war broke 
 out between the colonies and the mother country, and 
 the Indians were instigated by the mother to use the 
 tomahawk and the scalping-knife against the chil- 
 dren, using, — according to her own language, which so 
 roused the indignation of Lord Chatham, — "every 
 means which God and Nature had put into her 
 power,'* to destroy or subdue them, — these Indians, 
 who laid waste the settlements of the colonists with 
 fire, and drenched them in blood, remembered the 
 treaty with the sons of Onas, and kept it inviolate ! 
 They had no scruple to make war on the other 
 colonists, for they had not been scrupulous in their 
 treatment of them, and they had many an old score to 
 clear off; but they had always found the Friends the 
 same, — their friends and the friends of peace, — and 
 they reverenced in them the 'sacred principles of faith 
 and amity. Month after month the Friends saw the 
 destruction of their neighbours' houses and lands ; yet 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 363 
 
 they lived in peace in the midst of this desolation. 
 They heard at night the shrieks of the victims of the 
 red men's wrath, and they saw in the morning where 
 slaughter had reached neighbouring hearths, and 
 where the bloody scalp had been torn away; but 
 their houses remained untouched. Every evening the 
 Indians came from their hidden lairs in the woods, and 
 lifted the latches of their doors, to see if they re- 
 mained in full reliance on their faith, and then they 
 passed on. Where a house was secured with lock 
 or bolt, they knew that suspicion had entered, and 
 they grew suspicious too. But, through all that 
 bloody and disgraceful war, only two Friends were 
 killed by the Indians ; and it was under these circum- 
 stances : — A young man, a tanner, had gone from the 
 village where he lived to his tan-yard, at some dis- 
 tance, through all this period of outrage. He went 
 and came daily, without any arms, with his usual air 
 of confidence, and therefore in full security. The 
 Indians from the thickets beheld him, but they never 
 molested him. Unfortunately, one day he went as 
 usual to his business, but carried a gun on his arm. 
 He had not proceeded far into the country when a 
 shot from the bush laid him dead. When the Indians 
 afterwards learned that he was merely carrying the 
 gun to kill birds that were injuring his corn, " Foolish 
 young man," they said ; " we saw him carrying arms, 
 and we inferred that he had changed his principles." 
 
 The other case was that of a woman. She had 
 lived in a village which had been laid waste, and most 
 of the inhabitants killed, by the Indians. The soldiers, 
 from a fort not far off, came, and repeatedly entreated 
 her to go into the fort, before she experienced the 
 
364 COLONIZATION 
 
 same fate as her neighbours. For a long time she 
 refused, but at length fear entered her mind, and she 
 went with them. In the fort, however, she became 
 wretched. She considered that she had abandoned 
 the principles of peace by putting herself under the 
 protection of arms. She felt that she had cast a 
 slander on the hitherto inviolate faith of the Indians, 
 which might bring most dissistrous consequences on 
 other Friends who yet lived in the open country 
 on the faith of the Indian integrity. She therefore 
 determined to go out again, and return to her own 
 house. She went forth, but had scarcely reached the 
 first thicket when she was shot by the Indians, who 
 now looked upon her as an enemy, or at least as a 
 spy. 
 
 These are the only exceptions to the perfect secu- 
 rity of Friends through all the Indian devastations in 
 America ; for wherever there were Friends, any tribe 
 of Indians felt bound to recognize the sons of Father 
 Onas : they would have been ashamed to injure an 
 unarmed man, who was unarmed because he preserved 
 peace as the command of the Great Spirit. It was 
 during this war that the very treaty made with Penn 
 was shewn by the Indians to some British officers, 
 being preserved by them with the most sacred care, as 
 a monument of a transaction without a parallel, and 
 equally honourable to themselves as to the Friends. 
 
 What a noble testimony is this to the divine nature 
 and perfect adaptation of Christianity to all human 
 purposes; and yet when has it been imitated? and 
 how little is heard of it ! From that day to the pre- 
 sent both Americans and English have gone on out- 
 raging and expelling the natives from their lands; 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 365 
 
 and it was but the other day that the English officers 
 at the Cape were astonished that a similar conduct 
 towards the CafFres produced a similar result. How 
 lost are the most splendid deeds of the Christian phi- 
 losopher on the ordinary statesman ! But the Friends 
 are a peaceable people, and " doing good they blush to 
 find it fame." If they would make more noise in the 
 world, and din their good deeds in its ears, they 
 would be never the worse citizens. The landing of 
 the Pilgrim Fathers in America is annually celebrated 
 in New England with great ceremony and eclat. It 
 has been everywhere extolled by those holding simi- 
 lar religious views, and has been eulogised in poetry 
 and prose. The landing of the Friends in Pennsyl- 
 vania was a landing of the Pilgrim Fathers not less 
 important : they went there under similar circum- 
 stances : they fled from persecution at home — a bit- 
 terer and more savage persecution even than befel 
 the Puritans — to seek a home in the wilderness. 
 They equalled the good Roger Williams in their jus- 
 tice to the Indians — they bought their lands of them — 
 and they far exceeded him and his followers in their 
 conception of the power of Christianity, and their 
 practical demonstration of it. They are the only 
 people in the history of the world that have gone into 
 the midst of a fierce and armed race, and a race irri- 
 tated with rigour too, without arms;* established a 
 
 * Missionaries, especially the Jesuits, and the English in the South 
 Sea Islands, form the only exceptions, and these partially. The Je- 
 suits, though they did not commonly bear arms, taught the use of 
 them, and led, in fact, the most effective troops to battle in Paraguay. 
 The South Sea missionaries form the strongest exceptions : they are, 
 indeed, but guests, and not the governors ; bu^, their conduct is admir- 
 able, and we may believe will not alter with power. 
 
S66 COLONIZATION 
 
 State on the simple basis of justice, and to the last 
 hour of their government maintained it triumphantly 
 on the same. Their conduct to the Indians never 
 altered for the worse ; Pennsylvania, while under their 
 administration, never became, as New England, a 
 slaughter-house of the Indians. The world cannot 
 charge them with the extinction of a single tribe — no, 
 nor with that of a single man ! 
 
 It is delightful to close this chapter of American 
 settlements with so glorious a spectacle of Christian 
 virtue ; — would to God that it were but more imi- 
 tated !* 
 
 • Mr. Bannister, in an excellent little work (British Colonization 
 and the Coloured Tribes), just published, and which ought to be 
 read by every one for its right-mindedness and sound and most im- 
 portant views, has regretted that William Penn did not take a guarantee 
 from the British crown, in his charter, for the protection of the In- 
 dians from other states, and from his own successors. It is to be 
 regretted ; nor is it meant here to assert that the provisions of, his 
 government were as complete as they were pure in principle. Em- 
 barrassments of various kinds prevented him from perfecting what he 
 had so nobly begun ; yet the feeling with which his political system is 
 regarded, must be that of the following passage : — 
 
 " Virtue had never perhaps inspired a legislation better calculated 
 to promote the felicity of mankind. The opinions, the sentiments, 
 and the morals, corrected whatever might be defective in it. Accord- 
 ingly the prosperity of Pennsylvania was very rapid. This republic, 
 without either wars, conquests, struggles, or any of those revolutions 
 which attract the eyes of the vulgar, soon excited the admiration of 
 the whole universe. Its neighbours, notwithstanding their savage 
 state, were softened by the sweetness of its manners ; and distant na- 
 tions, notwithstanding their corruption, paid homage to its virtues. 
 All delighted to see those heroic days of antiquity realized, which 
 European manners and laws had long taught every one to consider as 
 entirely fabulous." — Raynal, vol. vii. p. 292. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 367 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA TILL THE REVOLT OF 
 THE COLONIES. 
 
 In Carolina's palmy bowers. 
 
 Amid Kentucky's wastes of flowers, 
 
 Where even the way-side hedge displays 
 
 Its jasmines and magnolias; 
 
 O'er the monarda's vast expanse 
 
 Of scarlet, where the bee-birds glance 
 
 Their flickering wings, and breasts that gleam 
 
 Like living fires ; — that dart and scream — 
 
 A million little knights that run 
 
 Warring for wild- flowers in the sun ; — 
 
 His eye might rove through earth and sky, 
 
 His soul was in the days gone by. 
 
 We may pass rapidly over this space. The colonial 
 principles of action were established regarding the 
 Indians, and they went on destroying and demoralizing 
 them till the reduction of Canada by the English. 
 That removed one great source of Indian destruction ; 
 for while there was such an enemy to repulse, the 
 Indians were perpetually called upon and urged for- 
 ward in the business of slaughter and scalping. It 
 was the same, indeed, on every frontier where there 
 was an enemy, French or Spanish. We have the 
 
368 COLONIZATION 
 
 history of Adair, who was a resident in the south- 
 western states for above forty years. This gentleman, 
 who has given us a very minute account of the man- 
 ners, customs, and opinions of the Choctaws, Ghero- 
 kees, and Chickasaws, amongst whom he chiefly 
 resided in the Carolinas, and who is firmly convinced 
 that they are descended from the Ten Tribes of Israel, 
 and, moreover, gives us many proofs of the excel- 
 lence of their nature — yet, most inconsistently, is loud 
 in praise of the French policy of setting the different 
 Indian nations by the ears ; and condemnation of any- 
 thing like conciliation and forbearance. Speaking of 
 some such attempts in 1 736, he says — " Our rivals, 
 the French, never neglect so favourable an oppor- 
 tunity of securing and promoting their interests. We 
 have known more than one instance wherein their 
 wisdom has not only found out proper means to dis- 
 concert the most dangerous plans of disaffected savages, 
 hut likewise to foment^ and artfully to encourage, great 
 animosities between the heads of ambitious rival families, 
 till they fixed them in an implacable hatred against each 
 other, and all of their respective tribes,"* 
 
 That he was in earnest in his admiration of such a 
 policy, he goes on to relate to us, with the greatest 
 naivete and in the most circumstantial manner, how he 
 recommended to the Governor of South Carolina to 
 employ the Choctaws to scalp and extirpate the French 
 traders in Louisiana, who, no doubt, interfered with 
 his own gains. He lets us know that he got such 
 a commission; and informs us particularly of the 
 presents and flatteries with which he plied a great 
 Choctaw chief, called Red Shoes, to set him on this 
 
 * Adair's History of the American Indians, p. 249. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 369 
 
 work ; in which he was successful. " I supplied each 
 of them with arms, ammunition, and presents in 
 plenty; gave them a French scalping-knife, which 
 had been used against us, and even vermilion, to be 
 used in the flourishing way, with the dangerous 
 French snakes, when they killed and scalped them. 
 
 They soon went to work — they killed the 
 
 strolling French pedlars — turned out against the 
 Mississippi Indians and Mobillians, and the flame 
 raged very high. A Choctaw woman gave a French 
 pedlar warning : he mounted his horse, but Red Shoes 
 ran him down in about fifteen minutes, and had scalped 
 him before the rest came up. . . . Soon after a great 
 number of Red Shoes' women came to me with the 
 French scalps and other trophies of war." . . . "In the 
 next spring, 1747," he tell§ us "a large body of Mus- 
 kohges and Chickasaws embarked on the Mississippi, 
 and went down it to attack the French settlements. 
 Here they burned a large village, and their leader 
 being wounded, they in revenge killed all their pri- 
 soners ; and overspread the French settlements in their 
 fury like a dreadful whirlwind, destroying all before 
 them, to the astonishment and terror even of those 
 that were far remote from the skirts of the direful 
 storm." This candid writer tells us that the French 
 Louisianians were now in a lamentable state — but, 
 says he, " they had no reason to complain ; we were 
 only retaliating innocent blood which they had caused 
 to be shed by their red mercenaries !" He laments 
 that some treacherous traders put-a stop to his scheme, 
 or they would soon have driven all the French out of 
 Alabama.* 
 
 • Adair, p. 314—321. 
 R 2 
 
370 COLONIZATION 
 
 Who were the savages ? and how did the English 
 expect the Indians, under such a course of tuition, to 
 become civilized ? This was the state of things in the 
 south. In the north, not a war broke out between 
 England and France, but the same scenes were 
 acting between the English American settlements 
 and Canada. In 1692 we find Captain Ingoldsby 
 haranguing the chiefs of the Five Nations at Albany, 
 and exhorting them to " keep the enemy in perpetual 
 alarm by the incursions of parties into their country." 
 And the Indian orator shrewdly replying — " Brother 
 Corlear (their name for the governor of New York) is 
 it not to secure your frontiers ? Why, then, not one 
 word of your people that are to join us ? We will 
 carry the war into the heart of the enemy's country 
 — but, brother Corlear, how comes it that none of our 
 brethren, fastened in the same chain with us, offer 
 their hand in this general war ? Pray, Corlear, how 
 come Maryland, Delaware River, and New England 
 to be disengaged ? Do they draw their arms out of 
 the chain ? or has the great king commanded that the 
 few subjects he has in this place should make war 
 against the French alone ?"* 
 
 It was not always, however, that the Indians had to 
 complain that the English urged them into slaughter 
 of the French and did not accompany them. The 
 object of England in America now became that of 
 wresting Canada entirely from France. For this pur- 
 pose, knowing how essential it was to the success of 
 this enterprise that they should not only have the 
 Indians well affected, so as to prevent any incursions 
 of the French Indians into their own states while the 
 * Golden, i. 148. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 371 
 
 British forces were all concentrated on Canada, and 
 still more how absolutely necessary to have a large 
 body of Indians to pioneer the way for them through 
 the woods, without which their army would be sure to 
 be cut off by the French Indians — great endeavours 
 were now made to conclude treaties of peace and mutual 
 aid with all the great tribes in the British American 
 colonies. Such treaties had long existed with the Five 
 Nations, now called the Six Nations, by the addition 
 of the remainder of the Tuscarora Indians who had 
 escaped from our exterminating arms in North Caro- 
 lina, and fled to the Five Nations ; and also with the 
 Delaware and Susquehanna Indians, Conferences 
 were held with the chiefs of these tribes and British 
 Commissioners from Pennsylvania, Maryland, New 
 York and Virginia, and, ostensibly, a better spirit 
 was manifested towards the Indian people. • The most 
 celebrated of these conferences were held at Philadel- 
 phia in 1742; at Lancaster in Pennsylvania in 1744; 
 and at Albany, in the state of New York, in 1746. 
 The details of the conferences develope many curious 
 characteristics both of the white and the red men. 
 Canassateego, an Onondaga chief, was the principal 
 speaker for the Indians on all these occasions, and it 
 would be difficult to point to the man in any country, 
 however civilized and learned, who has conducted 
 national negotiations with more ability, eloquence, 
 and sounder perception of actual existing circum- 
 stances, amid all the sophistry employed on such 
 occEisions by European diplomatists — 
 
 That lead to bewilder, and dazzle to blind. — Beattie. 
 
 It had been originally agreed that a certain sum 
 should be given to the Indians, or rather its value in 
 
372 COLONIZATION 
 
 goods, to compensate them for their trouble and time in 
 coming to these conferences; that their expenses should 
 be paid during their stay; and that all their kettles, 
 guns, and hatchets should be mended for them; and 
 the speakers took good care to remind the colonists 
 of these claims, and to have them duly discharged. 
 As it may be interesting to many to see what sort of 
 goods were given on these occasions, we may take the 
 following as a specimen, which were delivered to them 
 at the conference of 1742, in part payment for the 
 cession of some territory. 
 
 >00 pounds of powder. 60 kettles. 
 
 600 pounds of lead. ^ 100 tobacco tongs. 
 
 45 guns. 100 scissars. 
 
 60 Stroud matchcoats. 500 awl blades. 
 
 100 blankets. 120 combs. 
 
 100 Duffil matchcoats. 2000 needles. 
 
 200 yards half-thick. 1000 flints. 
 
 100 shirts. 24 looking-glasses. 
 
 40 hats. 2 pounds of vermilion. 
 
 40 pairs shoes and buckles. 100 tin pots. 
 
 40 pairs stockings. 1000 tobacco pipes. 
 
 100 hatchets. 200 pounds of tobacco. 
 
 500 knives. 24 dozen of gartering. 
 
 100 hoes. 25 gallons of rum. 
 
 In another list we find no less than four dozens of 
 jew^s harps. Canassateego, on the delivery of the above 
 goods, made a speech which lets us into the real no- 
 tions and feelings of the Indians on what was going on 
 in that day. " We received from the proprietor," said 
 he, "yesterday, some goods in consideration of our 
 release of the lands on the west side of Susquehanna. 
 It is true, we have the full quantity according to 
 agreement; but, if the proprietor had been here in 
 person, we think, in regard to our numbers and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 373 
 
 poverty, he would have made an addition to them. If 
 the goods were only to be divided amongst the Indians 
 present, a single person would have but a small por~ 
 tion ; but if you consider what numbers are left be- 
 hind equally entitled with us to a share, there will be 
 extremely little. We therefore desire, if you have 
 the keys of the proprietor's chest, you will open it and 
 take out a little more for us. 
 
 " We know our lands are now become more valua- 
 ble. The white people think we don't know their value ; 
 hut we are sensible that the land is everlasting ^ and the 
 few goods we receive for it, are soon worn out and gone. 
 For the future we will sell no lands but when Brother 
 Onas is in the country; and we will know before- 
 hand the quantity of goods we are to receive. Be- 
 sides, we are not well used with respect to the lands 
 still unsold by us. Your people daily settle on our 
 lands, and spoil our hunting. We must insist on your 
 removing them, as you know they have no right to 
 settle to the north of the Kittochtinny Hills." 
 
 As it was necessary to conciliate them, more goods 
 were given and justice promised. On the other hand, 
 the English complaining of the Delawares having sold 
 some land without authority from the Six Nations, 
 on whom they were dependent, Canassateego pro- 
 nounced a very severe reprimand to the Delawares, 
 and ordered them to do so no more. 
 
 At the conference of 1744, the Indians gave one 
 of those shrewd turns for their own advantage to the 
 boastings of the whites, which shew the peculiar 
 humour that existed in the midst of their educational 
 gravity. The governor of Maryland vaunting of a 
 great sea-fight in which the English had beaten the 
 
374 COLONIZATION 
 
 French ; Caiiassateego immediately observed : " In 
 that great fight you must have taken a great quantity 
 of rum, the Indians will therefore thank you for a 
 glass. It was handed round to them in very small 
 glasses, called by the governor French glasses. The 
 Indians drank it, and at the breaking up of the coun- 
 cil that day, Canassateego said, " Having had the plea- 
 sure of drinking a French glass of the great quantity 
 of rum taken, the Indians would now, before separat- 
 ing be glad to drink an English glass, to make us 
 rejoice with you in the victory." It was impossible to 
 waive so ingenious a demand, and a large glass, to in- 
 dicate the superiority of English liberality, was now 
 handed round. 
 
 In this conference, the Indians again complained of 
 the daily encroachments upon them, and of the inade- 
 quate price given for the lands they sold. The 
 Governor of Maryland boldly told them that the land 
 was in fact acquired by the English by conquest, and 
 that they had besides a claim of possession of 100 
 years. To this injudicious speech the Indians replied 
 with indignation, " What is one hundred years in 
 comparison of the time since our claim began ? — since 
 we came out of this ground ? For we must tell you 
 that long before one hundred years our ancestors came 
 out of this very ground, and their children have re- 
 mained here ever since. " You came out of the ground 
 in a country that lies beyond the seas ; there you may 
 have a just claim; but here you must allow us to be 
 your elder brethren, and the lands to belong to us long 
 before you knew anything of them." They then re- 
 minded them of the manner in which they had received 
 them into the country. In figurative language they 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 375 
 
 observed, "When the Dutch came here, above a hun- 
 dred years ago, we were so well pleased with them 
 that we tied their ship to the bushes on the shore ; and 
 afterwards liking them better the longer they stayed 
 with us, and thinking the bushes too slender, we re- 
 moved the rope and tied it to the trees ; and as the 
 trees were liable to be blown down, or to decay of 
 themselves, we, from the affection that we bore them, 
 again removed the rope, and tied it to a strong and 
 high rock (here the interpreter said they mean the 
 Oneido country) ; and not content with this, for its 
 further security, we removed the rope to the big 
 mountain (here the interpreter said, they mean the 
 Onondaga country), and there we tied it very fast, and 
 rolled wampum about it, and to make it still more 
 secure, we stood upon the wampum, and sat down 
 upon it to defend it, and to prevent any hurt coming 
 to it, and did our best endeavours that it might remain 
 for ever. During all this time the Dutch acknowledged 
 our right to the lands, and solicited us from time to 
 time, to grant them parts of our country. When the 
 English governor came to Albany, and we were told 
 the Dutch and English were become one people, the 
 governor looked at the rope which tied the ship to the 
 big mountain, and seeing that it was only of wampum 
 and liable to rot, break, and perish in a course of jfears, 
 he gave us a silver chain^ which he told us would be 
 much stronger, and would last for ever. 
 
 "We had then," said they pathetically, "room 
 enough and plenty of deer, which was easily caught ; 
 and though we had not knives, hatchets, or guns, we 
 had knives of stone, and hatchets of stone, and bows 
 and arrows, which answered our purpose as well as 
 
376 COLONIZATION 
 
 the English ones do now, for we are now straitened ; 
 we are often in want of deer ; we have to go far to 
 seek it, and are besides liable to many other incon- 
 veniences, and particularly from that pen-and-ink work 
 that is going on at the table/** pointing to the secretary. 
 " You know," they continued, " when the white 
 people came here they were poor — they have got our 
 lands, and now theg are become rich, and we are poor. 
 What little we get for the land soon goes awag, but the 
 land lasts for ever f " 
 
 It was necessary to soothe them — the governor had 
 raised a spirit which told him startling truths. It 
 shewed that the Indians were not blind to the miserable 
 fee for which they were compelled to sell their coun- 
 try. " Your great king," said they, " might send you 
 over to conquer the Indians ; but it looks to us that 
 God did not send you — if he had, he would not have 
 placed the sea where he has, to keep you and us 
 asunder." The governor addressed them in flattering 
 terms, and added, " We have a chest of new goods, 
 and the key is in our pockets. You are our brethren : 
 the Great King is our common Father, and we will 
 live with you as children ought to do — in peace and 
 love." 
 
 The Indians were strenuously exhorted to use all 
 means to bring the western natives into the league. 
 At the Conference of 1746, held at Albany, it became 
 sufficiently evident for what object all this conciliation 
 and these endeavours to extend their alliance amongst 
 the Indians were used. A great and decisive attack 
 upon Canada was planning : and it is really awful to 
 read the language addressed to the assembled Indians, 
 to inflame them with the spirit of the most malignant 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 377 
 
 hatred and revenge against the French. Mr. Cad- 
 wallader Golden, one of His Majesty's Council and 
 Surveyor-general of New York, and the historian of 
 the Five Nations, on whose own authority these 
 facts are stated, addressed the Indians, owing to the 
 Governor's illness, in the speech prepared for the 
 occasion. He called upon them to remember all the 
 French had done to them ; what they did at Onondaga; 
 how they invaded the Senekas ; what mischiefs they 
 did to the Mohawks ; how many of their countrymen 
 suffered at the fire at Montreal ; how they had sent 
 priests amongst them to lull them to sleep, when they 
 intended to knock them on the head. " I hear," then 
 added he, *"• they are attempting to do the same now. 
 I need not remind you what revenge your fathers 
 took for these injuries, when they put all the isle of 
 Montreal, and a great part of Canada, to fire and 
 sword. Can you think the French forget this ? No ! 
 they are watching secretly to destroy you. But if 
 your fathers could now rise out of their graves, how 
 would their hearts leap with joy to see this day, when 
 so glorious an opportunity is put into your hands to 
 revenge all the injuries of your country, etc. etc." He 
 called on them to accompany the English, to win 
 glory, and promised them great reward. 
 
 But these horrible fire-brands of speech, — these 
 truly " burning words" were not all the means used. 
 English gentlemen were sent amongst the tribes to 
 arouse them by every conceivable means. The cele- 
 brated Mr. William Johnson of Mohawk, who had 
 dreamed himself into a vast estate in that country,* 
 
 • Mr. Johnson, who was originally a trader amongst the Moliawks, 
 indulged them in all their whims. They were continually dreaming 
 
378 COLONIZATION 
 
 and who afterwards, as Sir William Johnson, was so 
 distinguished as the leader of the Indians at the fall 
 of Quebec, and the conquest of Canada, now went 
 amongst the Motawks, dressed like a Mohawk chief. 
 He feasted them at his castle on the Mohawk riv^r ; 
 he gave them dances in their own country style, and 
 danced with them ; and led the Mohawk band to this 
 very conference. 
 
 This enterprise came to nothing ; but for the suc- 
 cessful one of 1759 the same stimulants were applied, 
 and the natives, to the very Twightwees and Chicka- 
 saws, brought into the league, either to march against 
 the French, or to secure quiet in the states during the 
 time of the invasion of Canada. And what was their 
 reward? Scarcely was Canada reduced, and the 
 services of the Indians no longer needed, when they 
 found themselves as much encroached upon and in- 
 sulted as ever. Some of the bloodiest and most deso- 
 lating wars which they ever waged against the English 
 settlements, took place between our conquest of Ca- 
 nada and our war against the American colonies them- 
 selves. It was the long course of injuries and insults 
 
 that he had given them this, that, and the other thing ; and no greater 
 insult can, according to their opinions, be offered to any man 
 than to call in question the spiritual authenticity of his dream. At 
 length the chief dreamed that Mr. Johnson had given him his uniform 
 of scarlet and gold. Mr. Johnson immediately made him a present 
 of it : but the next time he met him, he told him that he had now 
 begun to dream, and that he had dreamed that the Mohawks had 
 given him certain lands, describing one of the finest tracts in the 
 country, and of great extent. The Indians were struck with conster- 
 nation. They said: "He surely had not dreamed that, had he?" 
 He replied that he certainly had. They therefore held a council, and 
 came to inform him that they had confirmed his dream ; but begged 
 that he would not dream any xfiorc. He had no further occasion. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 379 
 
 which the Indians had suiFered from the settlers that 
 made them so ready to take up the tomahawk and 
 scalping-knife at the call, and induced by the blood- 
 money, of the mother-country against her American 
 children. The employment and instigation of the 
 Indians to tomahawk the settlers brings down British 
 treatment of the Indians to the very last moment of 
 our power in that country. What were our notions 
 of such enormities may be inferred from their being 
 called in the British Parliament " means which God 
 and nature have put into our hands" — and from Lord 
 Cornwallis, our general then employed against the 
 Americans, expressing, in 1780, his '^satisfaction that 
 the Indians had pursued and scalped many of the 
 enemy ! '* 
 
 This was our conduct towards the Indians to the 
 last hour of our dominion in their country. We 
 drove them out of their lands, or cheated them out of 
 them by making them drunk. We robbed them of 
 their furs in the same manner ; and on all occasions 
 we inflamed their passions against their own enemies 
 and ours. We made them ten times more cruel, per- 
 fidious, and depravedly savage than we found. them, 
 and then upbraided them as irreclaimable and merci- 
 less, and thereon founded our convenient plea that 
 they must be destroyed, or driven onward as perishing 
 shadows before the sun of civilization. 
 
 Before quitting the English in America, we need 
 only, to complete our view ,of their treatment of the 
 natives, to include in it a glance at that treatment in 
 those colonies which we yet retain there ; and that is 
 furnished by the following Parliamentary Report, 
 (1837.) 
 
380 COLONIZATION 
 
 NEWFOUNDLAND. 
 
 To take a review of our colonies, beginning with Newfoundland. 
 There, as in other part? of North America, it seems to have been, for 
 a length of time, accounted a " meritorious act " to kill an Indian.* 
 
 On our first visit to that country, the natives were seen in every part 
 of the coast. We occupied the stations where they used to hunt and 
 fish, thus reducing them to want, while we took no trouble to in- 
 demnify them, so that, doubtless, many of them perished by famine ; 
 we also treated them with hostility and cruelty, and "many were slain 
 by our own people, as well as by the Micmac Indians," who were 
 allowed to harass them. They must, however, have been recently 
 very numerous, since, in one place, Captain Buchan found they had 
 " run up fences to the extent of 30 miles," with a variety of ramifica- 
 tions, for the purpose of conducting the deer down to the water, a 
 work which would have required the labour of a multitude of hands. 
 
 It does not appear that any measures were taken to open a commu- 
 nication with them before the year 1810, when, by order of Sir. J. 
 Duckworth, an attempt was made by Captain Buchan, which proved 
 ineffectual. At that time he conceived that their numbers around 
 their chief place of resort, the Great Lake, were reduced to 400 or 500. 
 Under our treatment they continued rapidly to diminish; and it 
 appears probable that the last of the tribe left at large, a man and a 
 woman, were shot by two Englishmen in 1823. Three women had 
 been taken prisoners shortly before, and they died in captivity. In 
 the colony of Newfoundland, it may therefore be stated that we have 
 exterminated the natives.f 
 
 * Cotton Mather records that, amongst the early settlers, it was 
 considered a " religious act to kill Indians." 
 
 A similar sentiment prevailed amongst the Dutch boors in South 
 Africa, with regard to the natives of the country. Mr. Barrow 
 writes, " A farmer thinks he cannot proclaim a more meritorious 
 action than the murder of one of these people. A boor from Graaf 
 Reinet, being asked in the secretary's office, a few days before we left 
 town, if the savages were numerous or troublesome on the road, 
 replied, 'he had only shot four,' with as much composure and in- 
 difference as if he had been speaking of four partridges. I myself 
 have heard one of the humane colonists boast of having destroyed, 
 with his own hands, near 300 of these unfortunate wretches." 
 
 f See Evidence given by Capt. Buchan. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 381 
 
 CANADIAN INDIANS. 
 
 The general account of our intercourse with the North American 
 Indians, as distinct from missionary efforts, may be given in the words 
 of a converted Chippeway chief, in a letter to Lord Goderich : " We 
 were once very numerous, and owned all Upper Canada, and lived by 
 hunting and fishing ; but the white men who came to trade with us 
 taught our fathers to drink the fire-waters, which has made our people 
 poor and sick, and has killed many tribes, till we have become very 
 small."* 
 
 It is a curious fact, noticed in the evidence, that, some years ago, the 
 Indians practised agriculture, and were able to bring corn to our 
 settlements, then suffering from famine ; but we, by driving them 
 back and introducing the fur trade, have rendered them so completely 
 a wandering people, that they have very much lost any disposition 
 which they might once have felt to settle. All writers on the Indian 
 race have spoken of them, in their native barbarism, as a noble people ; 
 but those who live among civilised men, upon reservations in our own 
 territory, are now represented as " reduced to a state which resembles 
 that of gipsies in this country," Those who live in villages among 
 the whites ♦' are a very degraded race, and look more like dram- 
 drinkers than people it would be possible to get to do any work." 
 
 To enter, however, into a few more particulars. — The Indians of 
 New Brunswick are described by Sir H. Douglass, in 1825, as 
 *' dwindled in numbers," and in a " wretched condition." 
 
 Those of Nova Scotia, the Micmacs (by Sir J Kempt), as disin- 
 clined to settle, and in the habit of bartering their furs, "unhappily, 
 for rum."f 
 
 General Darling's statement as to the Indians of the Canadas, 
 drawn up in 1828, speaks of the interposition of the government 
 being urgently called for in behalf of the helpless individuals whose 
 landed possessions, where they have any assigned to them, are daily 
 plundered by their designing and more enlightened white brethren.^ 
 
 Of the Algonquins and Nipissings, General Darling writes, « Their 
 situation is becoming alarming, by the rapid settlement and improve- 
 ment of the lands on the banks of the Ottawa, on which they were 
 placed by the government in the year 1763, and which tract they have 
 naturally considered as their own. The result of the present state of 
 
 • Papers, Abor. Tribes, 1834, p. 135. 
 t Ibid. 147. t Ibid. 22. 
 
382 COLONIZATION 
 
 things is obvious, and such as can scarcely fail in time to be attended 
 with bloodshed and murder; for, driven from their own resources, 
 they will naturally trespass on those of other tribes, who are equally 
 jealous of the intrusion of their red brethren as of white men. Com- 
 plaints on this head are increasing daily, while the threats and admo- 
 nitions of the officers of the department have been insufficient to con- 
 trol the unruly spirit of the savage, who, driven by the calls of hunger 
 and the feelings of nature towards his offspring, will not be scrupulous 
 in invading the rights of his brethren, as a means of alleviating his 
 ifaisery, when he finds the example in the conduct of his white father's 
 children practised, as he conceives, towards himself." * 
 
 The general also speaks of the " degeneracy" of the Iroquois, and 
 of the degraded condition of most of the other tribes, with the excep- 
 tion of those only who had received Christian instruction. Later tes- 
 timony is to the same eflfect. The Rev. J. Beecham, secretary to the 
 Wesleyan Missionary Society, says he has conversed with the Chippe- 
 way chief above referred to, on the condition of the Indians on the 
 boundary of Upper Canada. That he stated most unequivocally that 
 previously to the introduction of Christianity they were rapidly 
 wasting away ; and he believed that if it had not been for the intro- 
 duction of Christianity they would speedily have become extinct. As 
 the causes of this waste of Indian life, he mentions the decrease of the 
 game, the habit of intoxication, and the European diseases. The 
 small-pox had made great ravages. He adds, " The information 
 which I have derived from this chief has been confirmed by our mis- 
 sionaries stationed in Upper Canada, and who are now employed 
 among the Indian tribes on the borders of that province. My in- 
 quiries have led me to believe, that where Christianity has not been 
 introduced among the aboriginal inhabitants of Upper Canada, they 
 are melting away before the advance of the white population. This re- 
 mark applies to the Six Nations, as they are called, on the Great River ; 
 the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Senacas, Cayugas, and Tuscaro- 
 ras, as well as to all the other tribes on the borders of the province." 
 Of the ulterior tribes, the account given by Mr. King, who accom- 
 panied Captain Back in his late Arctic expedition, is deplorable : 
 he gives it as his opinion, that the Northern Indians have decreased 
 greatly, and decidedly from contact with the Europeans." 
 
 Thus, the Cree Indians, once a powerful tribe, " have now degene- 
 rated into a few families, congregated about the European establish- 
 
 Papers, Abor. Tribes, p. 24. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 383 
 
 ments, while some fetv still retain their ancient rights, and have 
 become partly allies of a tribe of Indians that were once their slaves." 
 He supposes their numbers to have been reduced within thirty or 
 forty years from 8,000 or 10,000, to 200, or at most 300, and has no 
 doubt of the remnant being extirpated in a short time, if no measures 
 are taken to improve their morals and to cultivate habits of civiliza- 
 tion. It should be observed that this tribe had access to posts not 
 comprehended within the Hudson's Bay Company's prohibition, as to 
 the introduction of spirituous liquors, and that they miserably show 
 the effects of the privilege. 
 
 The Copper Indians also, through ill-management, intemperance, 
 and vice, are said to have decreased within the last five years to one- 
 half the number of what they were. 
 
 The early quarrels between the Hudson's Bay and the North West 
 Companies, in which the Indians were induced to take a bloody part, 
 furnished them with a ruinous example of the savageness of Chris- 
 tians.* 
 
 SOUTH AMERICA. 
 
 In South America, British Guiana occupies a large extent of coun- 
 try between the rivers Orinoco and Amazons, giving access to num- 
 bers of tribes of aborigines who wander over the vast regions of the 
 interior. The Indian population within the colony of Demerara and 
 Essequibo, is derived from four nations, the Caribs, Arawacks, War- 
 rows, and Accaways. 
 
 It is acknowledged that they have been diminishing ever since the 
 British came into possession of the colony. In 1831 they were com- 
 puted -at 5096 ; and it is stated "it is the opinion of old inhabitants of 
 the colony, and those most competent to judge, that a considerable 
 diminution has taken place in the aggregate number of the Indians of 
 late years, and that the dimunition, although gradual, has become 
 more sensibly apparent within the last eight or ten years." The 
 diminution is attributed, in some degree, to the increased use of rum 
 amongst them.t 
 
 There are in the colony six gentlemen bearing the title of " Pro- 
 tectors of Indians," whose ofl&ce it is to superintend the tribes ; and 
 
 * See Papers relating to Red River Settlement, 1815, 1819 : espe- 
 cially Mr. Coltman's Report, pp. 115, 125. 
 
 t Letter from Jas. Hackett, Esq., Civil Commissioner, to Sir B. 
 D'Urban. Papers, Abor. Tribes, 1834, pp. 194, 198. 
 
384 COLONIZATION 
 
 under them are placed post-holders, a principal part of whose business 
 it is to keep the negroes from resorting to the Indians, and also to 
 attend the distribution of the presents which are given to the latter by 
 the British government ; of which, as was noticed with reprehension 
 by Lord Goderich, rum formed a part. 
 
 It does not appear* that anything has been done by government for 
 their moral or religious improvement,, excepting the grant in 1831, 
 by Sir B. D'Urban, of a piece of land at Point Bartica, where a small 
 establishment was then founded by the Church Missionary Society. 
 The Moravian Mission on the Courantin was given up in 1817 ; and 
 it does not appear that any other Protestant Society has attended to 
 these Indians. 
 
 In 1831, Lord Goderich writes,f " I have not heard of any effort 
 to convert the Indians of British Guiana to Christianity, or to impart 
 to them the arts of social life." 
 
 It should be observed that no injunctions to communicate either 
 are given in the instructions for the " Protectors of Indians," or in 
 those for the post-holders ; and two of the articles of the latter, (Art. 
 14 and Art. 15,) tend directly to sanction and encourage immorality. 
 All reports agree in stating that these tribes have been almost wholly 
 neglected, are retrograding, and are without provision for their moral 
 or civil advancement ; and with due allowance for the extenuating 
 remarks on tlie poor account to which they turned their lands, when 
 they had them, and the gifts (baneful gifts some of them) which have 
 been distributed, and on the advantage of living under British laws, 
 we must still concur in the sentiment of Lord Goderich, as expressed 
 in the same letter, upon a reference as to sentence of death passed 
 upon a native Indian for the murder of another. " It is a serious con- 
 sideration that we have subjected these tribes to the penalties of a code 
 of which they unavoidably live in profound ignorance ; they have not 
 even that conjectural knowledge of its provisions which would be sug- 
 gested by the precepts of religion, if they had even received the most 
 elementary instruction in .the Christian faith. They are brought 
 into acquaintance with civilised life not to partake its blessings, but 
 only to feel the severity of its penal sanctions. 
 
 *< A debt is due to the aboriginal inhabitants of British Guiana 
 of a very different kind from that which the inhabitants of Christen- 
 dom may, in a certain sense, be said to owe in general to other bar- 
 barous tribes. The whole territory which has been occupied by 
 
 • Papers, Abor. Tribes, pp. 183, 193. f Papers, p. 182. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 385 
 
 Europeans, on the northern shores of the South American Continent, 
 has been acquired by no other right than that of superior power ; and 
 I fear that the natives whom we have dispossessed, have to this day 
 received no compensation for the loss of the lands on which they for- 
 merly subsisted. However urgent is the duty of economy in every 
 branch of the public service, it is impossible to withhold from the 
 natives of the country the inestimable benefit which they would derive 
 from appropriating to their religious and moral instruction some 
 moderate part of that income which results from the culture of the 
 soil to which they or their fathers had an indisputable title.* 
 
 CARIBS. 
 
 Of the Caribs, the native inhabitants of the West Indies, we need 
 not speak, as of them little more remains than the tradition that they 
 once existed. 
 
 • Papers, Abor. Tribes, pp. 181, 182. 
 
386 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS BY THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 " We were born on this spot; our fathers lie buried in it. Shall 
 we say to the bones of our fathers — * Arise and come with us into a 
 foreign land ? ' " — Speech of a Canadian Indian to the French invaders 
 
 It was to be hoped that that great republic, the 
 United States of North America, having given so 
 splendid an example of resistance to the injustice of 
 despotism, and of the achievement of freedom in a 
 struggle against a mighty nation, calculated to call 
 forth all the generous enthusiasm of brave men, 
 would have given a practical demonstration of true 
 liberty to the whole world: that they would have 
 shewn that it was possible for a republic to exist, 
 which was wise and noble enough to be entirely free : 
 that the sarcasm of Milton should not at least be 
 thrown at them — 
 
 License they mean when they cry liberty ! 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 387 
 
 Tlie world, however, was doomed to suffer another 
 disappointment in this instance, and the enemies of 
 freedom to enjoy another triumph. The Americans 
 left that highest place in human legislation, the adop- 
 tion of the divine precept of doing as they would be 
 done by, as the basis of their constitution, still unoc- 
 cupied.- We had the mortification of seeing the old 
 selfishness which had disgraced every ancient republic, 
 and had furnished such destructive arguments to the 
 foes of mankind, again unblushingly displayed. The 
 Americans proclaimed themselves not noble, not 
 generous, not high-minded enough to give that free- 
 dom to others which they had declared, by word and 
 by deed, of the same price as life to themselves. They 
 once more mixed up the old crumbling composition of 
 iron and clay, slavery and freedom, and moulded them 
 into an image of civil polity, which must inevitably 
 fall asunder. They published a new libel on man — 
 in the very moment of his most heroic and magna- 
 nimous enthusiasm — shewing him as'mean and sordid. 
 While he raised his hand to protest to admiring and 
 huzzaing millions, that there was no value in life 
 without liberty, the manacles prepared for the negroes 
 protruded themselves from his pocket, his impassioned 
 action at once took the air of theatrical rant, and -the 
 multitudes who were about to admire, laughed out, 
 or groaned, as they were more or less virtuous. The 
 pompous phrases of " Divine liberty ! Glorious liberty ! 
 Liberty the birthright of every man that breathes ! " 
 became the most bitter and humbling mockery, and 
 gave way to the merry sneer of Matthews — " What ! 
 d' ye call it liberty when a man may not larrup his 
 own nigger?" 
 
388 COLONIZATION 
 
 A more natural tone was assumed as regarded the 
 Indians, They were declared to be free and inde- 
 pendent nations; not citizens of the United States, 
 but the original proprietors of the soil, and therefore 
 as purely irresponsible to the laws of the United 
 States as any neighbouring nations. They were 
 treated with, as such, on every occasion ; their terri- 
 tories and right of self-government were acknow- 
 ledged by such treaties. " There is an abundance of 
 authorities," says Mr. Stuart, in his ' Three Years in 
 North America,' '* in opposition to the pretext, that 
 the Indians are not now entitled to live under their 
 own laws and constitutions ; but it would be sufficient 
 to refer to the treaties entered into, year after year, 
 between the United States and them as separate 
 nations." 
 
 " There are two or three authorities, independent 
 of state papers, which most unambiguously prove 
 that it was never supposed that the state governments 
 should have a right to impose their constitution or 
 code of laws upon any of the Indian nations. Thus 
 Mr. Jefferson, in an address to the Cherokees, says — 
 " I wish sincerely you may succeed in your laudable 
 endeavours to save the remnant of your nation by 
 adopting industrious occupations. In this you may 
 always rely on the counsel and assistance of the 
 United States." In the same way the American ne- 
 gotiators at Ghent, among whom were the most emi- 
 nent American statesmen, Mr. John Quincy Adams 
 and Mr. Henry Clay, in their note addressed to the 
 British Commissioners, dated September 9, 1814, use 
 the following language : — " The Indians residing 
 within the United States are so far independent that 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 389 
 
 they live under their own customs, and not under the 
 laws of the United States/' Chancellor Kent, of 
 New York state (the Lord Coke or Lord Stair of 
 the United States), has expressly laid it down, that 
 " it would seem idle to contend that the Indians 
 were citizens or subjects of the United States, and 
 not alien and sovereign tribes;" and the Supreme- 
 Court of the United States have expressly declared, 
 that " the person who purchases land from the Indians 
 within their territory incorporates himself with them ; 
 and, so far as respects the property purchased, holds 
 his title under their protection, subject to their laws : 
 if they annul the grant, we know of no tribunal which 
 can revise and set aside the proceeding." Mr. Clay's 
 language is quite decided: — *' The Indians residing 
 within the United States are so far independent that 
 they live under their own customs, and not under the 
 laws of the United States; that their rights, where 
 they inhabit or hunt, are secured to them by boun- 
 daries defined in amicable treaties between the United 
 States and themselves." Mr. Wirt, the late Attorney- 
 General of the United States, a man of great legal 
 authority, has stated it to be his opinion, " that the 
 territory of the Cherokees is not within the juris- 
 diction of the State of Georgia, but within the sole 
 and exclusive jurisdiction of the Cherokee nation; 
 and that, consequently, the State of Georgia has no 
 right to extend her laws over that territory." Gene- 
 ral Washington in 1790, in a speech to one of the 
 tribes of Indians, not only recognizes the same national 
 independence, but adds many solemn assurances on 
 behalf of the United States. " The general govern- 
 ment only has the power to treat with the Indian 
 
390 COLONIZATION 
 
 nations, and any treaty formed and held without its 
 authority will not be binding. 
 
 " Here, then, is the security for the remainder of 
 your lands. No state nor person can purchase your 
 lands, unless by some public treaty held under the 
 authority of the United States. The general govern- 
 ment will never consent to your being defrauded^ but it 
 will protect you in all your just rights, 
 
 " But your great object seems to be the security of 
 your remaining lands, and I have, therefore, upon this 
 point, meant to be sufficiently strong and clear .... 
 That, in future, you cannot be defrauded of your lands. 
 That you possess the right to sell, and the right of 
 refusing to sell your lands. . . . That, therefore, the 
 sale of your lands in future will depend entirely upon 
 yourselves. But that, when you find it for your 
 interest to sell any part of your lands, the United 
 States must be present, by their agent, and will be 
 your security that you shall not be defrauded in the 
 
 bargain you make The United States will be 
 
 true and faithful to their engagements.'* 
 
 These are plain and just declarations; and, had they 
 been faithfully maintained, would have conferred great 
 honour on the United States. How they have been 
 maintained, all the world knows. The American 
 republicans have followed faithfully, not their own 
 declarations, but the maxims and the practices of their 
 English progenitors. The Indians have been declared 
 savage and irreclaimable. They have been described 
 as inveterately attached to hunting and a roving life, 
 as a stumbling-block in the path of civilization. As 
 perfectly incapable of settling down to the pursuits of 
 agriculture, social arts, and domestic habits. It has 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 391. 
 
 been declared necessary, on tliese grounds, to push 
 them out of the settled territories, and every means 
 has been used to compel them to abandon the lands of 
 their ancestors, and to seek a fresh country in the 
 wilds beyond the Mississippi. Even so respectable an 
 author as Malte Brun has, in Europe, advanced a 
 doctrine in defence of this sweeping system of Indian 
 expatriation. " Even admitting that the use of ardent 
 spirits has deteriorated their habits and thinned their 
 numbers, we cannot suppose that the Indian popula- 
 tion was ever more than twice £is dense as at present, 
 or that it exceeded one person for each square mile 
 of surface. Now, in highly civilized countries, like 
 France and England, the population is at the rate of 
 150 or 200 persons to the square mile. It may safely 
 be affirmed, therefore, that the same extent of land 
 from which one Indian family derives a precarious and 
 wretched subsistence, would support 150 families of 
 civilized men, in plenty and comfort. But most of the 
 Indian tribes raise melons, beans, and maize ; and were 
 we to take the case of a people who lived entirely by 
 hunting, the disproportion would be still greater. If 
 God created the earth for the sustenance of mankind, this 
 single consideration decides the question as to the sacred- 
 ness of the Indians' title to the lands which they roam 
 over, but do not, in any reasonable sense, occupy." — 
 V. 224. 
 
 A more abominable doctrine surely never was 
 broached. It breathes the genuine spirit of the old 
 Spaniard ; and, if acted upon, would produce an ever- 
 lasting confusion. Every nation which is more densely 
 populated than another,, may, on this principle, say to 
 that less densely peopled state, you are not as thickly 
 
392 COLONIZATION 
 
 planted as God intended you to be ; you amount only 
 to 150 persons to the square mile, we are 200 to the 
 same space ; therefore, please to walk out, and give 
 place to us, who are your superiors, and who more 
 justly fulfil God's intentions by the law of density. 
 The Chinese might fairly lay claim to Europe on that 
 ground; and our own swarming poor to every large 
 park and thinly peopled district that they happened 
 to see. 
 
 " This single consideration,** indeed, is a very good 
 reason why the Indians should be advised to leave off 
 a desultory life, and take to agriculture and the arts ; 
 or it is a very sufficient reason why the Europeans 
 should ask leave to live amongst them, and thus more 
 fully occupy the country, in what the French geo- 
 grapher calls a reasonable sense. And it remained 
 for M. Malte Brun to show that they have ever refused 
 to do either the one or the other. They have, on all 
 occasions when the Europeans have gone amongst 
 them, "in a reasonable sense," received them with 
 kindness, and even joy. They have been willing to 
 listen to their instructions, and ready to sell them their 
 lands to live upon. But it has been the "unreason- 
 ableness" of the whites that has everywhere soon 
 turned the hearts, and made deaf the ears, of the 
 natives. We have seen the lawless violence with 
 which the early settlers seized on the Indians' terri- 
 tories, the lawless violence and cruelty with which 
 they rewarded them evil for good, and pursued them 
 to death, or instigated them to the commission of all 
 bloody and desperate deeds. These are the causes 
 why the Indians have remained uncivilized wanderers ; 
 why they have refused to listen to the precepts of 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 393 
 
 Christianity; and why they roam over, rather than 
 occupy, those lands on which they have been suffered 
 to remain. From the days of Elliot, Mayhew, 
 Brainard, and their zealous compeers, there have 
 never wanted missionaries to endeavour to civilize 
 and christianize; but they have found, for the most 
 part, their eflforts utterly defeated by the wicked and 
 unprincipled acts, the wicked and unprincipled cha- 
 racter of the Europeans. When the missionaries 
 have preached to the shrewd Indians the genuine 
 doctrines of Christianity, they have immediately been 
 struck with the total discrepancy between these doc- 
 trines and the lives and practices of their European 
 professors. " If these are the principles of your reli- 
 gion," they have continually said, "go and preach them 
 to your countrymen. If they have any efficacy in 
 them, let us see it shewn upon them. Make them 
 good, just, and full of this love you speak of. Let 
 them regard the rights and property of Indians. 
 You have also a people amongst you that you have 
 torn from their own country, and hold in slavery. Go 
 home and give them freedom; do as your book says, 
 — as you would be done by. When you have done 
 that, come again, and we will listen to you." 
 
 This is the language which the missionaries have 
 had everywhere in the American forests to contend 
 with.* When they have made by their truly kind and 
 
 • Mr. Mayhevr in his journal, writes, that the Indians told him, 
 that they could not observe the benefit of Christianity, because the 
 English cheated theni of their lands and goods ; and that the use of 
 books made them more cunning in cheating. In his Indian itineraries, 
 he desired of Ninicroft, sachem of the Narragansets, leave to preach 
 to his people. Ninicroft bid him go and make the English good first, 
 
 s 2 
 
394 COLONIZATION 
 
 christian spirit and lives some impression, the spirit 
 and lives of their countrymen have again destroyed 
 their labours. The fire-waters, gin, rum, and brandy, 
 have been introduced to intoxicate, and in intoxication 
 to swindle the Indians out of their furs and lands. 
 Numbers of claims to lands have been grounded on 
 drunken bargains, which in their soberness the Indians 
 would not recognize ; and the consequences have been 
 bloodshed and forcible expulsion. Before these causes 
 the Indians have steadily melted away, or retired 
 westwards before the advancing tide of white emigra- 
 tion. Malte Brun would have us believe that in the 
 United States there never were many more than 
 twice the present number. Let any one look at the 
 list of the different tribes, and their numbers in 1822, 
 quoted by himself from Dr. Morse, and then look at 
 the numbers of all the tribes which inhabited the old 
 States at the period of their settlement. 
 
 In New England 2,247 
 
 New York 5,184 
 
 Ohio - 2,407 
 
 Michigan and N. W. territories - - - 28,380 
 
 Illinois and Indiana ----- 17,006 
 
 Southern States east of Mississippi - - 65,122 
 
 "West of Mississippi and north of Missouri - 33,150 
 
 Between Missouri and Red River - - 101,070 
 
 Between Red River and Rio del Norte - 45,370 
 
 West of Rocky Mountains - - - 171,200 
 
 471,136 
 
 and desired Mr. Mayhew not to hinder him in his concerns. Some 
 Indians at Albany being asked to go into a meeting-house, declined, 
 saying, " the English went into those places to study how to cheat 
 poor Indians in the price of beaver, for they had often observed that 
 when they came back from those places they offered less money than 
 before they went in." 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 395 
 
 The slightest glance at this table shews instantly 
 the fact, that where the white settlers have been the 
 longest there the Indians have wofuUy decreased. 
 The farther you go into the Western wilderness the 
 greater the Indian population. Where are the popu- 
 lous tribes that once camped in the woods of New 
 York, New England, and Pennsylvania? In those 
 states there were twenty years ago about 8000 Indians ; 
 since then, a rapid diminution has taken place. In 
 the middle of the seventeenth century, and after se- 
 veral of the tribes were exterminated, and after all had 
 suffered severely, there could not be less, according 
 to the historians of the times, than forty or fifty thou- 
 sand Indians within the same limits. The traveller 
 occasionally meets with a feeble remnant of these 
 once numerous and powerful tribes, lingering amid 
 the now usurped lands of their country, in the old 
 settled states; but they have lost their ancient spirit 
 and dignity, and more resemble troops of gipsies than 
 the noble savages their ancestors were. A few of 
 the Tuscaroras live near Lewistown, and are agricul- 
 turists : and the last of the Narragansets, the tribe of 
 Miantinomo, are to be found at Charlestown, in 
 Rhode Island, under the notice of the Boston mis- 
 sionaries. Fragments of the Six Nations yet linger 
 in the State of New York. A few Oneidas live 
 near the lake of that name, now christianized and 
 habituated to the manners of the country. Some of 
 the Senecas and Cornplanters remain about Buffalo, 
 on the Niagara, and at the head- waters of the Alleg- 
 hany river. Amongst these Senecas, lived till 1830, 
 the famous orator Red- Jacket ; one of the most ex- 
 traordinary men which this singular race has produced. 
 
396 COLONIZATION 
 
 The effect of his eloquence may be imagined from 
 the following passage, to be found in "Buckingham's 
 Miscellanies selected from the Public Journals." 
 
 " More than thirty years (this was written about 
 1822) have rolled away since a treaty was held on 
 the beautiful acclivity that overlooks the Canandai- 
 gua Lake. Two days had passed away in negotiation 
 with the Indians for the cession of their lands. The 
 contract was supposed to be nearly completed, when 
 Red- Jacket arose. With the grace and dignity of a 
 Roman senator he drew his blanket around him, and 
 with a piercing eye surveyed the multitude. All was 
 hushed. Nothing interposed to break the silence, 
 save the gentle rustling of the tree-tops under whose 
 shade they were gathered. After a long and solemn, 
 but not unmeaning pause, he commenced his speech 
 in a low voice and sententious style. Rising gradually 
 with the subject, he depicted the primitive simplicity 
 and happiness of his nation, and the wrongs they had 
 sustained from the usurpations of white men, with 
 such a bold but faithful pencil, that every auditor was 
 soon roused to vengeance, or melted into tears. The 
 effect was inexpressible. But ere the emotions of 
 admiration and sympathy had subsided, the white 
 men became alarmed. They were in the heart of an 
 Indian country, surrounded by ten times their number, 
 who were inflamed by the remembrance of their in- 
 juries, and excited to indignation by the eloquence of 
 a favourite chief. Appalled and terrified, the white 
 men cast a cheerless gaze upon the hordes around 
 them. A nod from one of the chiefs might be the 
 onset of destruction, but at this portentous moment 
 Farmers-brother interposed. '* 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 397 
 
 In the year 1805 a council was held at Buffalo, by 
 the chiefs and warriors of the Senecas, at the request 
 of Mr. Cram from Massachusets. The missionary 
 first made a speech, in which he told the Indians that 
 he was sent by the Missionary Society of Boston, to 
 instruct them " how to worship the Great Spirit," and 
 not to get away their lands and money ; that there was 
 but one true religion, and they were living in dark- 
 ness, etc. After consultation, Red-Jacket returned, 
 on behalf of the Indians, the following speech, which 
 is deservedly famous, and not only displays the strong 
 intellect of the race, but how vain it was to expect to 
 christianize them, without clear and patient reason- 
 ing, and in the face of the crimes and corruptions of 
 the whites. 
 
 " Friend and brother, it was the will of the Great 
 Spirit that we should meet together this day. He 
 orders all things, and he has given us a fine day for 
 our council. He has taken his garment from before 
 the sun, and caused it to shine with brightness upon 
 us. Our eyes are opened that we see clearly ; our 
 ears are unstopped that we have been able to hear dis- 
 tinctly the words that you have spoken. For all these 
 favours we thank the Great Spirit and him only. 
 
 " Brother, this council-fire was kindled by you. It 
 was at your request that we came together at this 
 time. We have listened with great attention to what 
 you have said ; you requested us to speak our minds 
 freely: this gives us great joy, for we now consider 
 that we stand upright before you, and can speak what- 
 ever we think. All have heard your voice, and all 
 speak to you as one man ; our minds are agreed. 
 
 " Brother, you say you want an answer to your 
 
398 COLONIZATION 
 
 talk before you leave this place. It is right you 
 should have one, as you are at a great distance from 
 home, and we do not wish to detain you ; but we will 
 first look back a little, and tell you what our fathers 
 have told us, and what we have heard from the white 
 people. 
 
 " Brother, listen to what loe say. There was a time 
 when our forefathers owned this great island. Their 
 seats extended from the rising to the setting sun. 
 The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians. 
 He had created the buffalo, the deer, and other ani- 
 mals for food. He made the beaver and the bear, and 
 their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered 
 them over the country, and taught us how to take them. 
 He had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. 
 All this he had done for his red children, because he 
 loved them. If we had any disputes about hunting- 
 grounds, they were generally settled without the shed- 
 ding of much blood ; but an evil day came upon us : 
 your forefathers crossed the great waters, and landed 
 on this island. Their numbers were small; they found 
 friends, and not enemies ; they told us they had fled 
 from their own country for fear of wicked men, and 
 came here to enjoy their religion. They asked for a 
 a small seat. We took pity on them, granted their 
 request, and they sate down among us. We gave 
 them corn and meat, they gave us poison* in return. 
 The white people had now found out our country, 
 tidings were carried back, and more came amongst us; 
 yet we did not fear them, we took them to be friends: 
 they called us brothers, we believed them, and gave 
 them a larger seat. At length their numbers had 
 
 * Spirituous liquors. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 399 
 
 greatly increased, they wanted more land, — they 
 wanted our country ! Our eyes were opened, and our 
 minds became uneasy. Wars took place ; Indians 
 were hired to Jight against Indians, and many of our 
 people were destroyed. They also brought strong 
 liquors among us ; it was strong and powerful, and has 
 slain thousands. 
 
 ^'Brother, our seats were once large, and yours 
 were very small. You have now become a great 
 people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread 
 our blankets. You have got our country, but are not 
 satisfied ; — you want to force your religion upon us. 
 
 " Brother, continue to listen. You say that you are 
 sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit 
 agreeably to his mind, and if we do not take hold of 
 the religion which you white people teach, we shall 
 be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right, 
 and we are lost ; how do you know this ? We under- 
 stand that your religion is written in a book; if it 
 was intended for us as well as you, why has not the 
 Great Spirit given it to us, and not only to us, why 
 did he not give to our forefathers the knowledge of 
 that book, with the means of understanding it rightly ? 
 We only know what you tell ws about it; how shall 
 we know when to believe, being so often deceived by 
 the white people ? 
 
 " Brother, you say there is but one way to worship 
 and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one reli- 
 gion, why do you white people differ so much about 
 it ? why not all agree, as you can all read the book ? 
 
 " Brother, we do not understand these things. We 
 are told that your religion was given to your fore- 
 fathers, and has been handed down from father to son. 
 
400 COLONIZATION 
 
 We also have a religion which was given to our fore- 
 fathers, and has been handed down to us their children. 
 We worship that way. It teaches us to he thankful for 
 all the favours we receive ; to love each other ^ and to be 
 united ; — we never quarrel about religion, 
 
 " Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all; but 
 he has made a great difference between his white and 
 red children. He has given us a different complexion, 
 and different customs. To you he has given the arts ; 
 to these he has not opened our eyes. We know these 
 things to be true. Since he has made so great a dif- 
 ference between us in other things, why may we not 
 conclude that he has given us a different religion 
 according to our understanding? The Great Spirit 
 does right : he knows what is best for his children : 
 we are satisfied. 
 
 '^ Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion, 
 or take it from you ; we only want to enjoy our own* 
 
 " Brother, you say you have not come to get our 
 land or our money, but to enligliten our minds. I will 
 now tell you that 1 have been at your meetings, and 
 saw you collecting money from the meeting. I 
 cannot tell what this money was intended for, but 
 suppose it was your minister ; and, if we should con- 
 form to your way of thinking, perhaps you may want 
 some from us. 
 
 " Brother, we are told that you have been preaching 
 to the white people in this place. These people are 
 our neighbours; we are acquainted with them: we 
 will wait a little while, and see what effect your 
 preaching has upon them. If we find it does them 
 good, makes them honest and less disposed to cheat 
 Indians, we will then consider again what you have 
 said. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 401 
 
 " Brother, you have now heard our answer to your 
 talk; and this is all we have to say at present. As 
 we are going to part, we will come and take you 
 by the hand, and hope the Great Spirit will protect 
 you on your journey, and return you safe to your 
 friends." 
 
 The Missionary, hastily rising from his seat, refused 
 to shake hands with them, saying " there was no fellow- 
 ship between the religion of God and the works of the 
 devil." The Indians smiled and retired in a peaceable 
 manner.* Which of these parties best knew the real 
 nature of religion ? At all events the missionary was 
 awfully deficient in the spirit of his own, and in the 
 art of winning men to embrace it. 
 
 * Winterbottom's America. 
 
402 COLONIZATION 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 TREATMENT OF THE INDIANS BY THE UNITED 
 STATES, — CONTINUED. 
 
 The Friends have for many years had schools for 
 the education of the children in different States, and 
 persons employed to engage the Indians in agriculture 
 and manual arts, but they, as well as the missionaries, 
 complain that their efforts have been rendered abor- 
 tive by the continual removals of the red people by 
 the government. 
 
 Scarcely was the war over, and American indepen- 
 dence proclaimed, when a great strife began betwixt 
 the Republicans and the Indians, for the Indian lands 
 — a strife which extended from the Canadian lakes to 
 the gulph of Florida, and has continued more or less 
 to this moment. Under the British government, the 
 boundaries of the American states had never been well 
 defined. The Americans appointed commissioners to 
 determine them, and appear to have resolved that 
 all Indian claims within the boundaries of the St. 
 Lawrence, the great chain of lakes, and the Missis- 
 sippi, should be extinguished. They certainly em- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 403 
 
 braced a compact and most magnificent expanse of 
 territory. It was true that the Indians, the ancient 
 and rightful possessors of the soil, had yet large tracts 
 within these lines of demarcation ; but, then, what 
 was the power of the Indians to that of the United 
 States? They could be compelled to evacuate their 
 lands, and it was resolved that they should. It is 
 totally beyond the limits of my work to follow out 
 the progress of this most unequal and iniquitous strife ; 
 whoever wishes to see it fully and very fairly por- 
 trayed may do so in a work by an American — "Drake's 
 Book of the North American Indians." I can here 
 only simply state, that a more painful and interesting 
 struggle never went on between the overwhelming 
 numbers of the white men, armed with all the powers 
 of science, but unrestrained by the genuine sentiments 
 of religion, and the sons of the forest in their native 
 simplicity. The Americans tell us that this appa- 
 rently hard and arbitrary measure will eventually 
 prove the most merciful. That the Indians cannot 
 live by the side of white men ; they are always quar- 
 relling with and murdering them ; and that is but too 
 true ; and the Indians in strains of the most indignant 
 and pathetic eloquence, tell us the reason why. It is 
 because the white invaders are eternally encroaching 
 on their bounds, destroying their deer and their fish, 
 and murdering the Indians too without ceremony. It 
 is this recklessness of law and conscience, and the 
 ever-rolling tide of white population westward, which 
 raised up Tecumsch, and his companions, to combine 
 the northern tribes in resistance. Brant assured the 
 American commissioners, that unless they made the 
 Ohio and the Muskingum their boundaries, there 
 
404 COLONIZATION 
 
 could be no peace with the Indians. These are the 
 causes that called forth Black- Hauk from the Ouis- 
 consin, with the Winnebagoes, the Sacs, and Foxes ; 
 that roused the Little-Turtle, with his Miamies, and 
 many other chiefs and tribes, to inflict bloody retribu- 
 tion on their oppressors, but finally to be compelled 
 themselves only the sooner to yield up their native 
 lands. These are the causes that, operating to the 
 most southern point of the United States, armed the 
 great nations of the Seninoles, the Creeks, the Choc- 
 taws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees; and have made 
 famous the exterminating campaigns of General Jack- 
 son, the bloody spots of Fort Mimms, Autossee, Tip- 
 pecanoe, Talladega, Horse-shoe- bend, and other places 
 of wholesale carnage. At Horse- shoe-bend. General 
 Jackson says — " determined to exterminate them, I 
 detached General Coffee with the mounted and nearly 
 the whole of the Indian force, early in the morning 
 (March 27, 1814), to cross the river about two miles 
 below their encampment, and to surround the Bend, 
 so that none of them should escape by crossing the 
 river." 
 
 "At this place," says Drake, "the disconsolate 
 tribes of the South had made a last great stand ; and 
 had a tolerably fortified camp. It was said they were 
 1000 strong." They were attacked on all sides ; the 
 fighting was kept up five hours; Jive hundred andffty- 
 seven were left dead on the peninsula, and a great 
 number killed by the horsemen, in crossing the river. 
 It is believed that not more than twenty escaped ! " We 
 continued," says the brave GeneralJackson, "to destroy 
 many of them who had concealed themselves under the 
 banks of the river, until we were prevented by the 
 night ! " 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 405 
 
 And what had these unfortunate tribes done, that 
 they should be exterminated ? Simply this : — When 
 the United States remodelled the southern states, 
 reducing the Carolinas and Georgia, and creating the 
 new states of Alabama, Tenessee, and Mississippi, 
 they stipulated, in behalf of Georgia, to extinguish all 
 the Indian titles to lands in that State, '* as soon as it 
 could be done on peaceable terms." Georgia, im- 
 patient to Seize on these lands, immediately employed 
 all means to effect this object. When the Indians, in 
 national council, would not sell their lands, they 
 prevailed on a half-breed chief, M'Intosh, and a few 
 others, of no character, to sell them ; and, on this 
 mock title, proceeded to expel the Indians. The 
 Indians resisted; an alarm of rebellion was sounded 
 through the States, and General Jackson sent to put 
 it down. The Indians, as in all other quarters, were 
 compelled to give way before the irresistible American 
 power. We cannot go at length into this bloody 
 history of oppression ; but the character of the whole 
 may be seen in that of a part. 
 
 But the most singular feature of the 'treatment of 
 the Indians by the Americans is, that while they 
 assign their irreclaimable nature as the necessary 
 cause of their expelling or desiring to expel them 
 from all the states east of the Mississippi, their most 
 strenuous and most recent efforts have been directed 
 against those numerous tribes, that were not only 
 extensive but rapidly advancing in civilization. So 
 far from refusing to adopt settled, orderly habits, the 
 Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Cherokees, were 
 fast conforming both to the religion and the habits 
 of the Americans. The Creeks were numbered 
 
406 COLONIZATION 
 
 in 1814 at 20,000. The Choctaws had some years 
 ago 4041 warriors, and could not therefore be esti- 
 mated at less than four times that number in total 
 population, or 16,000. In ISIO, the Cherokees con- 
 sisted of 12,400 persons; in 1824 they had increased 
 to 15,000. The Chickasaws reckoned some years 
 ago 1000 warriors, making the tribe probably 4000. 
 
 The Creeks had twenty years ago cultivated lands, 
 flocks, cattle, gardens, and different kinds of domestic 
 manufactures. They were betaking themselves to 
 manual trades and farming. "The Choctaws," Mr. 
 Stuart says, " have both schools and churches. A 
 few books have been published in the Choctaw lan- 
 guage. In one part of their territory, wh6re the 
 population amounted to 5627 persons, there were above 
 11,000 cattle, about 4000 horses, 22,000 hogs, 530 
 spinning-wheels, 360 ploughs, etc." The missionaries 
 speak in the highest terms of their steadiness and 
 sobriety; and one of their chiefs had actually offered 
 himself as a candidate for Congress. All these tribes 
 are described as rapidly progressing in education and 
 civilization, but the Cherokees present a character which 
 cannot be contemplated without the liveliest admira- 
 tion. These were the tribes amongst whom Adair 
 spent so many years, about the middle of the last 
 century, and whose customs and ideas as delineated 
 by him, exhibited them as such fine material for culti- 
 vation. Since then the missionaries, and especially 
 the Moravians, have been labouring with the most 
 signal success. A school was opened in this tribe by 
 them in 1804, in which vast numbers of Cherokee 
 children have been educated. Such, indeed, have 
 been the effects of cultivation on this fine people, that 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 407 
 
 they have assumed all the habits and pursuits of 
 civilized life. Their progress may be noted by ob- 
 serving the amount of their possessions in 1810, and 
 again, fourteen years afterwards, in 1824. In the 
 former year they had 3 schools, in the latter 1 8 ; in the 
 former year 13 grist-mills, in the latter 36; in the 
 former year 3 saw -mills, in the latter 13; in the former 
 year 467 looms, in the latter 762; in the former 
 year 1,600 spinning-wheels, in the latter 2,486; in 
 the former year 30 wagons, in the latter 172; in the 
 former year 500 ploughs, in the latter 2,923 ; in the 
 former year 6,100 horses, in the latter 7,683; in 
 the former year 19,500 head of cattle, in the latter 
 22,531 ; in the former year 19,600 swine, in the 
 latter 46,732 ; in the former year 1,037 sheep, in the 
 latter 2,546, and 430 goats; in the former year 
 49 smiths, in the latter 62 smiths' shops. Here is a 
 steady and prosperous increase ; testifying to no ordi- 
 nary existence of industry, prudence, and good ma- 
 nagement amongst them, and bearing every promise 
 of their becoming a most valuable portion of the com- 
 munity. They have, Mr. Stuart tells us, several public 
 roads, fences, and turnpikes. The soil produces maize, 
 cotton, tobacco, wheat, oats, indigo, sweet and Irish 
 potatoes. The natives carry on a considerable trade 
 with the adjoining states, and some of them export 
 cotton to New Orleans. Apple and peach orchards 
 are common, and gardens well cultivated. Butter 
 and cheese are the produce of their dairies. There 
 are many houses of public entertainment kept by the 
 nativos. Numerous and flourishing villages are seen 
 in every section of the country. Cotton and woollen 
 cloths and blankets are everywhere. Almost every 
 
408 COLONIZATION 
 
 family in the nation produces cotton for its own con- 
 sumption. Nearly all the nation are native Cherokees, 
 
 " A printing-press has been established for several 
 years ; and a newspaper, written partly in English, 
 and partly in Cherokee, has been successfully carried 
 on. This paper, called the Cherokee Phoenix, is 
 written entirely by a Cherokee, a young man under 
 thirty. It had been surmised that he was acssisted by 
 a white man, on which he put the following notice in 
 the paper : — ** No white has anything to do with the 
 management of our paper. No other person, whether 
 white or red, besides the ostensible editor, has writ- 
 ten, from the commencement of the Phoenix, half a 
 column of matter which has appeared under the edi- 
 torial head."* 
 
 The starting of this Indian newspaper by an Indian, 
 is one of the most interesting facts in the history of 
 civilization. In this language nothing had been writ- 
 ten or printed. It had no written alphabet. This 
 young Indian, already instructed by the missionaries 
 in English literature, is inspired with a desire to open 
 the world of knowledge to his countrymen in their 
 vernacular tongue. There is no written character, no 
 types. Those words familiar to all native ears, have 
 no corresponding representation to the eye. These 
 are gigantic difficulties to the young Indian, and as 
 the Christian would " call him, savage aspirant and 
 patriot. But he determines to conquer them all. He 
 travels into the eastern states. He invents letters 
 which shall best express the sounds of his native 
 tongue ; he has types cut, and commences a news- 
 paper. There is nothing like it in the history of 
 
 * Stuart's Three Years in North America, ii. 177. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY^ 409 
 
 nations in their first awakening from the long fixed- 
 ness of wild life. This mighty engine, the press, 
 once put in motion by native genius in the western 
 wilderness, books are printed suitable to the nascent in- 
 telligence of the country. The Gospel of St. Matthew 
 is translated into Cherokee, and printed at the native 
 pre§s. Hymns are also translated and printed. Chris- 
 tianity makes rapid strides. The pupils in the schools 
 advance with admirable rapidity. There is a new and 
 wonderful spirit abroad. Not only do the Indians 
 throng to the churches to listen to the truths of life 
 and immortality, but Indians themselves become di- 
 ligent ministers, and open places of worship in the 
 more remote and wild parts of the country. Even 
 temperance societies are formed. Political principles 
 develope themselves far in philosophical advance of 
 our proud and learned England. The constitution of 
 the native state contains admirable stamina; trial by 
 jury prevails; and universal suifrage — a right, to 
 this moment distrustfully withheld from the English 
 people, is there freely granted, and judiciously exer- 
 cised ; every male citizen of eighteen years old having 
 a vote in all public elections. 
 
 The whole growth and being, however, of this 
 young Indian civilization is one of the most delightful 
 and animating subjects of contemplation that ever 
 came before the eye of the lover of his race. Here 
 were these Indian savages, who had been two hundred 
 years termed irreclaimable; whom it had been the 
 custom only to use as the demons of carnage, as crea- 
 tures fit only to carry the tomahawk and the bloody 
 scalping- knife through Cherry- Valley, Gnadenhuet- 
 ten, or Wyoming ; and whom, that work done, it was 
 
410 COLONIZATION 
 
 declared, must be cast out from the face of civilized 
 man, as the reproach of the past and the incubus of 
 the future, — here were they gloriously vindicating 
 themselves from those calumnies and vi^rongs, and 
 assuming in the social system a most beautiful and 
 novel position. It was a spectacle on which one 
 would have thought the United States would hang 
 with a proud delight, and point to as one of the 
 most noble features of their vast and noble coun- 
 try. What did they do ? They chose rather to 
 give the lie to all their assertions, that they drove out 
 the Indians because they were irreclaimable and un- 
 amalgamable, and to shew to the world that they ex- 
 pelled them solely and simply because they scorned 
 that one spot of the copper hue of the aborigines 
 should mar the whiteness of their population. They 
 compel us to exclaim with the indignant Abbe Raynal, 
 "And are these the men whom both French and 
 English have been conspiring to extirpate for a cen- 
 tury past ?" and suggest to us his identical answer, — 
 " But perhaps they would be ashamed to live amongst 
 such models of heroism and magnanimity !" 
 
 However, everything which irritation, contempt, 
 political chicanery, and political power can eiFect, 
 have been long zealously at work to drive these fine 
 Nations out of their delightful country, and beyond 
 the Mississippi ; the boundary which American cupi- 
 dity at present sets between itself and Indian extir- 
 pation. Spite of all those solemn declarations, by 
 the venerable Washington and other great statesmen 
 already quoted ; spite of the most grave treaties, and 
 especially one of July 2d, 1791, which says, "The 
 United States solemnly guarantee to the Cherokee 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 411 
 
 nation all their lands not hereby ceded," by a juggle 
 betwixt the State of Georgia and Congress, the Che- 
 rokees have been virtually dispossessed of their coun- 
 try. From the period of the American independence 
 to 1802, there had been a continual pressure on the 
 Cherokees for their lands, and they had been induced 
 by one means or another to cede to the States more 
 than two hundred millions of acres. How reluctantly 
 may be imagined, by the decided stand made by them 
 in 1819, when they peremptorily protested that they 
 would not sell another foot. That they needed all 
 they had, for that they were becoming more and more 
 agricultural, and progressing in civilization. One 
 would have thought this not only a sufficient but a 
 most satisfactory plea to a great nation by its people ; 
 but no, Georgia ceded to Congress territories for the 
 formation of two new states, Alabama and Mississippi, 
 and Georgia in part of payment receives the much 
 desired lands of the Cherokees. Georgia, therefore, 
 assumes the avowed language of despotism, and de- 
 crees by its senate, in the very face of the clear 
 recognitions of Indian independence already quoted, 
 that the right of discovery and conquest was the title of 
 the Europeans; that every foot of land in the United 
 States was held by that title ; that the right of the Indians 
 was merely temporary ; that they were tenants at will, 
 removable at any moment, either by negotiation or force, 
 " It may be contended," says the Report of 1827, 
 "with much plausibility, that there is in these claims 
 more of force than of justice ; but they are claims which 
 have been recognized and admitted by the whole civilized 
 
 world, AND IT IS UNQUESTIONABLY TRUE, THAT, 
 
 UNDER SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES, FORCE bccOmeS RIGHT !*'* 
 
 * Stuart, ii. 173. 
 
412 COLONIZATION 
 
 This language once adopted there needed no further 
 argument about right or justice. Georgia took its 
 stand upon Rob Roy's law, 
 
 That he shall lake who has the power, 
 And he shall keep who can ; 
 
 and it forthwith proceeded to act upon it. It decreed 
 in 1828, that the territories of the Cherokees should 
 be divided amongst the different counties of Georgia ; 
 that after June 1st, 1830, the Cherokees should be- 
 come the subjects of Georgia; that all Cherokee laws 
 should be abolished, and all Cherokees should be cut 
 off from any benefit of the laws of the State — that is, 
 that no Indian, or descendent of one, should be capable 
 to act as a witness, or to be a party in any suit against 
 a white man. The Cherokees refusing to abandon' 
 their hereditary soil without violence, an act was 
 passed prohibiting any white man from residing in the 
 Cherokee country without a permit from the governor, 
 and on the authority of this, soldiers were marched 
 into it, and the missionaries carried off on a Sunday. 
 An attempt was made to crush that interesting news- 
 paper press, by forcing away every white man assisting 
 in the office. Forcible possession was taken of the 
 Indian gold mines by Georgian laws, and the penal 
 statutes exercised against the Indians who did not 
 recognize their authority. The Cherokees, on these 
 outrages, vehemently appealed to Congress. They 
 said — "how far we have contributed to keep bright 
 the chain of friendship which binds us to these United 
 States, is within the reach of your knowledge ; it is 
 ours to maintain it, until, perhaps, the plaintive voice 
 of an Indian from the south shall no more be heard 
 within your walls of legislation. Our nation and our 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 413 
 
 people may cease to exist, before another revolving 
 year reassembles this august assembly of great men. 
 We implore that our people may not be denounced 
 as savages, unfit for the good neighbourhood guaran- 
 teed to them by treaty. We cannot better express 
 the rights of our nation, than they are developed 
 on the face of the document we herewith submit; and 
 the desires of our nation, than to pray a faithful fulfil- 
 ment of the promises made by its illustrious author 
 through his secretary. Between the compulsive 
 measures of Georgia and our destruction, we ask the 
 interposition of your authority, and remembrance of 
 the bond of perpetual peace pledged for our safety — 
 the safety of the last fragments of some mighty nations, 
 that have grazed for a while upon your civilization and 
 prosperity, but which are now tottering on the brink 
 of angry billows, whose waters have covered in ob- 
 livion other nations that were once happy, but are 
 now no more. 
 
 " The schools where our children learn to read the 
 Word of God ; the churches where our people now 
 sing to his praise, and where they are taught * that of 
 one blood he created all the nations of the earth ;' the 
 fields they have cleared, and the orchards they have 
 planted ; the houses they have built, — are dear to the 
 Cherokees ; and there they expect to live and to die, 
 on the lands inherited from their fathers, as the firm 
 friends of the people of these United States." 
 
 This is the very language which the simple people 
 of all the new regions whither Europeans have pene- 
 trated, have been passionately and imploringly addres- 
 sing for three hundred years, but in vain. We seem 
 again to hear the supplicating voice of the people of 
 
414 COLONIZATipN 
 
 the Seven Reductions of Paraguay, addressed to the 
 expelling Spaniards and Portuguese. In each case it 
 was alike unavailing. The Congress returned them 
 a cool answer, advising the Cherokees to go over the 
 Mississippi, where " the soil should be theirs while 
 the trees grow, or the streams run." But they had 
 heard that language before, and they knew its value. 
 The State of Georgia had avowed the doctrine of 
 conquest, which silences all contracts and annuls all 
 promises. It is to the honour of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States that, on appeal to it, it annulled 
 the proceedings of Georgia, and recognised the right- 
 ful possession of the country by the Cherokees. But 
 what power shall restrain all those engines of irritation 
 and oppression, which white men know how to employ 
 against coloured ones, when they want their persons 
 or their lands. Nothing will be able to prevent the 
 final expatriation of these southern tribes : they must 
 pass the Mississippi till the white population is swelled 
 sufficiently to require them to cross the Missouri ; 
 there will then remain but two barriers between them 
 and annihilation — the rocky mountains and the Pacific 
 Ocean. Whenever we hear now of those tribes, it is 
 of some fresh act of aggression against them — some 
 fresh expulsion of a portion of them — and of melan- 
 choly Indians moving off towards the western wilds. 
 
 Such is the condition to which the British and their 
 descendants have reduced the aboriginal inhabitants 
 of the vast regions of North America, — the finest race 
 of men that we have ever designated by the name 
 of savage. 
 
 What term we savage ? The untutored heart 
 Of Nature's child is but a slumbering fire; 
 
 Prompt at a breath, or passing touch to start 
 Into quick flame, as quickly to retire ; 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 415 
 
 Ready alike its pleasance to impart, 
 
 Or scorch the hand which rudely wakes its ire : 
 Demon or child, as impulse may impel. 
 Warm in its love, but in its vengeance fell. 
 
 And these Columbian warriors to their strand 
 
 Had welcomed Europe's sons, and rued it sore : — 
 
 Men with smooth tongues, but rudely armed hand j 
 Fabling of peace, when meditating gore ; 
 
 Who their foul deeds to veil, ceased not to brand 
 The Indian name on every Christian shore. 
 
 What wonder, on such heads, their fury's flame 
 
 Burst, till its terrors gloomed their fairer &me ? 
 
 For they were not a brutish race, unknowing 
 Evil from good j their fervid souls embraced 
 
 With virtue's proudest homage, to o'erflowing, 
 The mind's inviolate majesty. The past 
 
 To them was not a darkness ; but was glowing 
 With splendour which all time had not o'ercast ; 
 
 Streaming unbroken from creation's birth, / 
 
 When God communed and walked with men on earth. 
 
 Stupid idolatry had never dimmed 
 
 The Almighty image in their lucid thought. 
 
 To Him alone their zealous praise was hymned ; 
 And hoar Tradition from her treasury brought 
 
 Glimpses of far-off times, in which were limned, 
 His awful glory ; — and their prophets taught 
 
 Precepts sublime, — a solemn ritual given, 
 
 In clouds and thunder, to their sires from heaven.* 
 
 And in the boundless solitude which fills, 
 
 Even as a mighty heart, their wild domains ; 
 
 In caves and glens of the unpeopled hills ; 
 And the deep shadow that for ever reigns 
 
 Spirit-like, in their woods ; where, roaring, spills 
 The giant cataract to the astounded plains, — 
 
 Nature, in her sublimest moods, had given 
 
 Not man's weak lore, — but a quick flash from heaven. 
 
 * See Adair's History of the American Indians. 
 
416 COLONIZATION 
 
 Roaming in their free lives, by lake and stream ; 
 
 Beneath the splendour of their gorgeous sky ; 
 Encamping, while shot down night's starry gleam. 
 
 In piny glades, where their forefathers lie ; 
 Voices would come, and breathing whispers seem 
 
 To rouse within, the life which may not die ; 
 Begetting valorous deeds, and thoughts intense. 
 And a wild gush of burning eloquence. 
 
 Such appeared to me ten years ago, when writing 
 these stanzas, the character of the North American 
 Indians ; such it appears to me now. What an eter- 
 nal disgrace to both British and Americans if this race 
 of " mighty hunters before the Lord " shall, at the 
 very moment when they shew themselves ready to lay 
 down the bow and throw all the energies of their high 
 temperament into civilized life, still be repelled and 
 driven into the waste, or to annihilation. Their names 
 and deeds and peculiar character are already become 
 part of the literature of America ; they will hereafter 
 present to the imagination of posterity, one of the 
 most singular and interesting features of history. 
 Their government, the only known government of 
 pure intellect; their grave councils; their singular 
 eloquence ; their stern fortitude ; their wild figures in 
 the war-dance; their "fleet foot" in the ancient forest; 
 and all those customs, and quick keen thoughts which 
 belong to them, and them alone, will for ever come 
 before the poetic mind of every civilized people. 
 Shall they remain, to look back to the days in which 
 the very strength of their intellects and feelings made 
 them repel the form of civilization, while they triumph 
 in the universal diffusion of knowledge and Christian 
 hope ? or shall it continue to be said, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 417 
 
 The vast, the ebbless, the engulphing tide 
 
 Of the white population still rolls on ! 
 And quailed has their romantic heart of pride, — 
 
 The kingly spirit of the woods is gone. 
 Farther and farther do they wend to hide 
 
 Their wasting strength ; to mourn their glory fiown ; 
 And sigh to think how soon shall crowds pursue 
 Down the lone stream where glides the still canoe. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN SOUTH AFRICA. 
 
 Having now quitted North America, let us sail south- 
 ward. There we may direct our course east or west, 
 we may pass Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope, 
 and enter the Pacific or the Indian Ocean, secure that 
 on whatever shore we may touch, whether on continent 
 or island, we shall find the Europeans oppressing the 
 natives on their own soil, or having exterminated 
 them, occupying their place. We shall find our 
 own countrymen more than all others widely diffused 
 and actively employed in the work of expulsion, moral 
 corruption, and destruction of the aboriginal tribes. 
 We talk of the atrocities of the Spaniards, of the 
 deeds of Cortez and Pizarro, as though they were 
 things of an ancient date, things gone by, things of 
 the dark old days ; and seem never for a moment to 
 suspect that these dark old days were not a whit more 
 t2 
 
418 COLONIZATION 
 
 shocking than our own, or that our countrymen, pro- 
 testant Englishmen of 1838, can be compared for a 
 moment to the Red- Cross Knights of Mexican and 
 Peruvian butcheries. If they cannot be compared, I 
 blush to say that it is because our infamy and crimes 
 are even more wholesale and inhuman than theirs. 
 Do the good people of England, who " sit at home at 
 ease," who build so many churches and chapels, and 
 flock to them in such numbers, — who spend about 
 170,000/. annually on Bibles, and more than half a 
 million annually in missions and other modes of civil- 
 izing and christianizing the heathen, and therefore 
 naturally flatter themselves that they are rapidly 
 bringing all the world to the true faith ; do they or 
 can they know that at this very moment, wherever 
 their Bibles go, and wherever their missionaries are 
 labouring, their own .government and their own coun- 
 trymen are as industriously labouring also, to scatter 
 the most awful corruption of morals and principles 
 amongst the simple natives of all, to us, new countries ? 
 that they are introducing diseases more pestilent than 
 the plague, more loathsome than the charnel-house 
 itself, and more deadly than the simoom of the tropical 
 deserts, that levels all before it? Do they know, 
 that even where their missionaries, like the prophets 
 of old, have gone before the armies of God, putting 
 the terrors of heathenism to flight, making a safe path 
 through the heart of the most dreadful deserts ; divid- 
 ing the very waters, and levelling the old mountains 
 of separation and of difficulty — 
 
 By Faith supported and by Freedom led, 
 
 A fruitful field amid the desert making, 
 
 And dwell secure where kings and priests were quaking, 
 
 And taught the waste to yield them wine and bread. — Pringle. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 419 
 
 Do they know, that when these holy and victorious 
 men have thus conquered all the difficulties they cal- 
 culated upon, and seen, by God's blessing, the savage 
 reclaimed, the idolater convinced, the wilderness 
 turned into a garden, and arts, commerce, and refined 
 life rising around them, a more terrible enemy has 
 appeared in the shape of European, and chiefly Eng- 
 lish corruption? That out of that England — whence 
 they had carried such beneficent gifts, such magnificent 
 powers of good — have come pouring swarms of lawless 
 vagabonds worse than the Spaniards, and worse than 
 the Buccaneers of old, and have threatened all their 
 works with destruction ? Do they know that in 
 South Africa, where Smidt, Vanderkemp, Philip, Read, 
 Kay and others, have done such wonders, and raised 
 the Hottentot, once pronounced the lowest of the 
 human species, and the Caffre, not long since styled 
 the most savage, into the most faithful Christians and 
 most respectable men ; and in those beautiful islands 
 that Ellis and Williams have described in such para- 
 disiacal colours, that roving crews of white men are 
 carrying everywhere the most horrible demoralization, 
 that every shape of European crime is by them exhi- 
 bited to the astonished people — murder, debauchery, 
 the most lawless violence in person and proper tyj and 
 that the liquid fire which, from many a gin-shop in 
 our own great towns, burns out the industry, the pro- 
 vidence, the moral sense, and the life of thousands of 
 our own people, is there poured abroad by these mon- 
 sters with the same fatal effect ? Whoever does not 
 know this, is ignorant of one of the most fearful and 
 gigantic evils which beset the course of human im- 
 provement, and render abortive a vast amount of the 
 
420 COLONIZATION 
 
 funds so liberally supplied, and the labours so nobly 
 undergone, in the cause of Christianity. Whoever 
 does not know this, should moreover refer to the Par- 
 liamentary Report of 1 837, on the Aboriginal Tribes. 
 
 The limits which I have devoted to a brief history 
 of the treatment of these tribes by the European 
 nations have been heavily pressed upon by the im- 
 mense mass of our crimes and cruelties, and I must 
 now necessarily make a hasty march across the scenes 
 here alluded to; but enough will be seen to arouse 
 astonishment, and indicate the necessity of counter- 
 agencies of the most impulsive kind. 
 
 The Dutch have been applauded by various histo- 
 rians for the justice and mildness which they manifested 
 towards the natives of their Cape colony. This may 
 have been the case at their first entrance in 1652, and 
 until they had purchased a certain quantity of land 
 for their new settlement with a few bottles of brandy 
 and some toys. It was their commercial policy, in 
 the language of the old school of traders, to "first 
 creep and then go." It was in the same assumed 
 mildness that they insinuated themselves into the 
 spice islands of India. Nothing, however, is more 
 certain than that in about a century they had pos- 
 sessed themselves of all the Hottentot territories, and 
 reduced the Hottentots themselves to a state of the 
 most abject servitude. The Parliamentary Report 
 just alluded to, describes the first governor, Van 
 Riebeck, in the very first year of the settlement, 
 looking over the mud-walls of his fortress on " the 
 cattle of the natives, and wondering at the ways of 
 Providence that could bestow such very fine gifts on 
 heathens.'* It also presents us with two very charac- 
 teristic extracts from his journal at this moment. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 421 
 
 « December I3th, 1652.— To-day the Hottentots 
 came with thousands of cattle and sheep close to our 
 fort, so that their cattle nearly mixed with ours. We 
 feel vexed to see so many fine head of cattle, and not 
 to be able to buy to any considerable extent. If it 
 had been indeed allowed, we had opportunity to-day 
 to deprive them of 10,000 head, which, however, if we 
 obtain orders to that effect, can be done at any time, 
 and even more conveniently, because they will have 
 greater confidence in us. With 150 men, 10,000 or 
 11,000 head of black cattle might be obtained without 
 danger of losing one man ; and many savages might 
 be taken without resistance, in order to be sent as 
 slaves to India, as they still always come to us un- 
 armed. 
 
 " December 18. — To-day the Hottentots came again 
 with thousands of cattle close to the fort. If no further 
 trade is to be expected with them, what would it 
 matter much to take at once 6,000 or 8,000 beasts 
 from them ? There is opportunity enough for it, as 
 they are not strong in number, and very timid ; and 
 since not more than two or three men often graze a 
 thousand cattle close to our cannon, who might be 
 easily cut ofl^, and as we perceive they place very 
 great confidence in us, we allure them still with show 
 of friendship to make them the more confident. It is 
 vexatious to see so much cattle, so necessary for the 
 refreshment of the Honourable Company's ships, of 
 which it is not every day that any can be obtained by 
 friendly trade." 
 
 It is sufficiently clear that no nice scruples of con- 
 science withheld Governor Van Riebeck from laying 
 hand on 10 or 11,000 cattle, or blowing a few of the 
 keepers away with his cannons. 
 
422 COLONIZATION 
 
 The system of oppression, adds the Report, thus 
 began, never slackened till the Hottentot nation were 
 cut off, and the small remnant left were reduced to 
 abject bondage. From all the accounts we have seen 
 respecting the Hottentot population, it could not have 
 been less than 200,000, but at present they are said 
 to be only 32,000 in number. 
 
 In 1702 the Governor and Council stated their 
 inability to restrain the plunderings and outrages of 
 the colonists upon the natives, on the plea that such 
 an act would implicate and ruin half the colony ; and 
 in 1798, Barrow, in his Travels in Southern Africa, 
 thus describes their condition : — " Some of their vil- 
 lages might have been expected to remain in this 
 remote and not very populous part of the colony. 
 Not one, however, was to be found. There is not, 
 in fact, in the whole district of Graaff Reynet, a single 
 horde of independent Hottentots, and perhaps not a 
 score of individuals who are not actually in the service 
 of the Dutch. These weak people — the most helpless, 
 and, in their present condition, perhaps the most 
 wretched of the human race, — duped out of their 
 possessions, their country, and their liberty, have en- 
 tailed upon their miserable offspring a state of exist- 
 ence to which that of slavery might bear the comparison 
 of happiness. It is a condition, however, not likely 
 to continue to a very remote posterity. Their num- 
 bers, of late years, have been rapidly on the decline. 
 It has generally been observed, that where Europeans 
 have colonized, the less civilized nations have always 
 dwindled away, and at length totally disappeared. . . . 
 There is scarcely an instance of cruelty said to have 
 been committed against the slaves in the West Indian 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 423 
 
 islands, that could not find a parallel from the Dutch 
 farmers towards the Hottentots in their service. Beat- 
 ing and cutting with thongs of the sea-cow (hip- 
 popotamus), or rhinoceros, are only gentle punish- 
 ments ; though those sort of whips, which they call 
 sjambocs, are most horrid instruments, being tough, 
 pliant, and heavy almost as lead. Firing small shot 
 into the legs and thighs of a Hottentot is a punish- 
 ment not unknown to some of the monsters who 
 inhabit the neighbourhood of Camtoos. By a resolu- 
 tion of the old government, a boor was allowed to 
 claim as his property, till the age of twenty-five, all 
 the children of the Hottentots to whom he had given 
 in their infancy a morsel of meat. At the expiration 
 of this period, the odds are two to one that the slave 
 is not emancipated ; but should he be fortunate enough 
 to escape at this pettod, the best part of his life has 
 been spent in a profitless servitude, and he is turned 
 adrift without any thing he can call his own, except 
 the sheep-skin on his back." 
 
 These poor people were fed on the flesh of old 
 ewes, or any animal that the boor expected to die of 
 age ; or, in default of that, a few quaggas or such game 
 were killed for them. They were tied to a wagon- 
 wheel and flogged dreadfully for slight off'ences ; and 
 when a master wanted to get rid of one, he was some- 
 times sent on an errand, followed on the road, and 
 shot.* The cruelties, in fact, practised on the Hotten- 
 tots by the Dutch boors were too shocking to be re- 
 lated. Maiming, murder, pursuing them like wild 
 beasts, and shooting at them in the most wanton 
 manner, were amongst them. Mr. Pringle stated 
 that he had in his possession a journal of such 
 
 * Pringle's African Sketches, p. 380. 
 
424 COLONIZATION 
 
 deeds, kept by a resident at so late a period as from 
 1806 to 1811, which consisted of forty -four pages 
 of such crimes and cruelties, which were too horrible 
 to describe. Such as we found them when the Cape 
 finally became our possession, such they remained till 
 1828, when Dr. Philip published his " Researches in 
 South Africa," which laying open this scene of barba- 
 rities, Mr. Fowell Buxton gave notice of a motion on 
 the subject in Parliament. Sir George Murray, then 
 Colonial Secretary, however, most honourably acceded 
 to Mr. Buxton's proposition before such motion was 
 submitted, and an Order in Council was accordingly 
 issued, directing that the Hottentots should be admit- 
 ted to all the rights, and placed on the same footing 
 as the rest of his Majesty's free subjects in the colony. 
 This transaction is highly honourable to the English 
 government, and the result has b*en such as to shew 
 the wisdom of such liberal measures. But before 
 proceeding to notice the effect of this change upon the 
 Hottentots, let us select as a specimen of the treat- 
 ment they were subject to, even under our rule, the 
 destruction of the last independent Hottentot kraal, 
 as related by Pringle. 
 
 " Among the principal leaders of the Hottentot 
 insurgents in their wars with the boors, were three 
 brothers of the name of Stuurman. The manly 
 bearing of Klaas, one of these brothers, is commemo- 
 rated by Mr. Barrow, who was with the English 
 General Vandeleur, near Algoa Bay, when this Hot- 
 tentot chief came, with a large body of his country- 
 men, to claim the protection of the British." " We 
 had little doubt," says Mr. Barrow, " that the greater 
 number of the Hottentot men who were assembled at 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 425 
 
 the bay, after receiving favourable accounts from their 
 comrades of the treatment they experienced in the 
 British service, would enter as volunteers into this 
 corps ; but what was to be done with the old people, 
 the women andchildren? Klaas Stuurman found no 
 difficulty in making provision for them. ' Restore,' 
 said he, ' the country of which our fathers have been 
 despoiled by the Dutch, and we have nothing more to 
 ask.' I endeavoured to convince him," continues Mr. 
 Barrow, " how little advantage they were likely to 
 obtain from the possession of a country, without any 
 other property, or the means of deriving a subsistence 
 from it. But he had the better of the argument. 
 ' We lived very contentedly,' said he, « before these 
 Dutch plunderers molested us; and why should we 
 not do so again if left to ourselves? Has not the 
 Groot Baas (the Great Master) given plenty of grass- 
 roots, and berries, and grashoppers for our use ? and, 
 till the Dutch destroyed them, abundance of wild ani- 
 mals to hunt ? and will they not turn and multiply 
 when these destroyers are gone?'" 
 
 How uniform is the language of the uncivilized man 
 wherever he has been driven from his ancient habits 
 by the white invaders, — trust in the goodness of Pro- 
 vidence, and regret for the plenty which he knew be- 
 fore they came. These words of Klaas Stuurman are 
 almost the same as those of the American Indian 
 Canassateego to the English at Lancaster in 1744. 
 
 But we are breaking our narrative. Klaas was 
 killed in a buffalo hunt, and his brother David became 
 the chief of the kraal.. " The existence of this inde- 
 pendent kraal gave great offence to the neighbouring 
 boors. The most malignant calumnies were propagated 
 
-•426 COLONIZATION 
 
 against David Stuurman. The kraal was watched 
 most jealously, and every possible occasion embraced 
 of preferring complaints against the people, with a 
 view of getting them rooted out, and reduced to the 
 same state of servitude as the rest of their nation. 
 For seven years no opportunity presented itself; but 
 in 1810, when the colony was once more under the 
 government of England, David Stuurman became 
 outlawed in the following manner : — 
 
 " IVo Hottentots belonging to this kraal, had en- 
 gaged themselves for a certain period in the service of 
 a neighbouring boor; who, when the term of their 
 agreement expired, refused them permission to depart 
 — a practice at that time very common, and much con- 
 nived at by the local functionaries. The Hottentots, 
 upon this, went oif without permission, and returned 
 to their village. The boor followed them thither, and 
 demanded them back; but their chief, Stuurman, re- 
 fused to surrender them. Stuurman was, in conse- 
 quence, summoned by the landdrost Cuyler, to ap- 
 pear before him ; but, apprehensive probably for his 
 personal safety, he refused or delayed compliance. 
 His arrest and the destruction of his kraal were deter- 
 mined upon. But as he was known to be a resolute 
 man, and much beloved by his countrymen, it was con- 
 sidered hazardous to seize him by open force, and the 
 following stratagem was resorted to: — 
 
 " A boor, named Cornelius Routenbach, a heem- 
 raad (one of the landdrost's council), had by some 
 means gained Stuurman's confidence, and this man 
 engaged to entrap him. On a certain day, accord- 
 ingly, he sent an express to his friend Stuurman, 
 stating that the Caflfres had carried off a number of his 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 427 
 
 Tcattle, and requested him to hasten with the most 
 trusty of his followers to aid him in pursuit of the 
 robbers. The Hottentot chief and his party instantly 
 equipped themselves and set out. When they reached 
 Routenbach's residence, Stuurraan was welcomed with 
 every demonstration of cordiality, and, with four of 
 his principal followers, was invited into the house. On 
 a signal given, the door was shut, and at the same 
 moment the landdrost (Major Cuyler), the field-com- 
 mandant Stoltz, and a crowd of boors, rushed upon 
 them from an inner apartment, and made them all 
 prisoners. The rest of the Hottentot party, who had 
 remained outside, perceiving that their captain and 
 comrade had been betrayed, immediately dispersed 
 themselves. The majority, returning to their kraal, 
 were, together with their families, distributed by the 
 landdrost into servitude to the neighbouring boors. 
 Some fled into CafFreland ; and a few were, at the 
 earnest request of Dr. Vanderkemp, permitted to join 
 the missionary institution at Bethelsdorp. The chief 
 and his brother Boschman, with two other leaders of 
 the kraal, were sent off prisoners to Cape Town, 
 where, after undergoing their trial before the court of 
 justice, upon an accusation of resistance to the civil 
 authorities of the district, they were condemned to 
 work in irons for life, and sent to Robben Island to 
 be confined among other colonial convicts. 
 
 " Stuurman*s kraal was eventually broken up, the 
 landdrost Cuyler asked and obtained, as a grant for 
 himself — (Naboth's vineyard again!) — the lands the 
 Hottentots had occupied. Moreover this functionary 
 kept in his own service, without any legal agreement, some 
 of the children of the Stuurmans, until after the arrival 
 of the Commissioners of Inquiry in 1823. 
 
428 COLONIZATION 
 
 " Stuurman and two of his comrades, after remain- 
 ing some years prisoners in Robben Island, contrived 
 to escape, and effected their retreat through the whole 
 extent of the colony into Caffreland, a distance of 
 more than six hundred miles! Impatient, however, 
 to return to his family, Stuurman, in the year 1816, 
 sent out a messenger to the missionary, Mr. Read, 
 from whom he had formerly experienced kindness, 
 entreating him to endeavour to procure permission for 
 him to return in peace. Mr. Read, as he himself in- 
 formed me, made application on his behalf to the land- 
 drost Cuyler, — but without avail. That magistrate 
 recommended that he should remain where he was. 
 Three years afterwards, the unhappy exile ventured 
 to return into the colony without permission. But he 
 was not long in being discovered and apprehended, 
 and once more sent a prisoner to Cape Town, where 
 he was kept in close confinement till the year 1823, 
 when he was finally transported as a convict to New 
 South Wales. What became of Boschman, the third 
 brother, I never learned. Such was the fate of the 
 last Hottentot chief who attempted to stand up for the 
 rights of his country." 
 
 Mr. Pringle adds, that this statement, having been 
 published by him in England in 1826, the benevolent 
 General Bourke, then Lieutenant-Governor at the 
 Cape, wrote to the Governor of New South Wales, 
 and obtained some alleviation of the hardships of his 
 lot for Stuurman; that, in 1829, the children of 
 Stuurman, through the aid of Mr. Bannister, presented 
 a memorial to Sir Lowry Cole, then governor at the 
 Cape, for their father's recall, but in vain ; but that, in 
 1831, General Bourke, being himself Governor of 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 4*29 
 
 New South Wales, obtained an order for his liberation ; 
 but, ere it arrived, ' the last chief of the Hottentots ' 
 had been released by death." 
 
 Such was the treatment of the Hottentots under the 
 Dutch and under the English; such were the bar- 
 barities and ruthless oppressions exercised on them till 
 the passing of the 50th Ordinance by Acting-Governor 
 Bourke in 1828, and its confirmation by the Order in 
 .Council in 1829, for their liberation. This act, so 
 honourable to the British government, became equally 
 honourable to the Hottentots, by their conduct on their 
 freedom, and presents another most important proof 
 that political justice is political wisdom. After the 
 clamour of the interested had subsided, and after a vain 
 attempt to reverse this ordinance, a grand experiment 
 in legislation was made. A tract of country was 
 granted to the Hottentots ; they were placed on the 
 frontiers with arms in their hands, to defend them- 
 selves, if necessary, from the Caffres ; and they were 
 told that they must now show whether they were 
 capable of maintaining themselves as a people, in 
 peace, civil order, and independence. Most nobly 
 did they vindicate their national character from all the 
 calumnies of indolence and imbecility that had been 
 cast upon them, — most amply justify the confidence 
 reposed in them ! " The spot selected," says Pringle, 
 " for the experiment, was a tract of wild country, from 
 which the Caffre chief, Makomo, had been expelled a 
 short time before. It is a sort of irregular basin, 
 surrounded on all sides by lofty and majestic moun- 
 tains, from the numerous kloofs of which six or seven 
 fine streams are poured down the subsidiary dells 
 into the central valley. These rivulets, bearing the 
 
430 COLONIZATION 
 
 euphonic CafFre names of Camalu, Zebenzi, Umtoka, 
 Mankazana, Umtuava, and Quonei, unite to form the 
 Kat River, which finds its way through the mountain 
 barrier by a stupendous pooi% or pass, a little above 
 Fort Beaufort. Within this mountain-basin, which 
 from its great command of the means of irrigation is 
 peculiarly well adapted for a dense population, it was 
 resolved to fix the Hottentot settlement." 
 
 It was in the middle of the winter when the settle^ 
 ment was located. Numbers flocked in from all 
 quarters; some possessing a few cattle, but far the 
 greater numbers possessing nothing but their hands to 
 work with. They asked Captain Stockenstrom, their 
 great friend, the lieutenant-governor of the frontier, 
 and at whose suggestion this experiment was made, 
 what they were to do, and how they were to subsist. 
 He told them, " if they were not able to cultivate the 
 ground with their fingers, they need not have come 
 there.'* Government, even under such rigorous cir- 
 cumstances, gave them no aid whatever except the gift 
 of fire-arms, and some very small portion of seed-corn 
 to the most destitute, to keep them from thieving. 
 Yet, even thus tried, the Hottentots, who had been 
 termed the fag-end of mankind, did not quail or 
 despair. In the words of Mr. Fairbairn, the friend of 
 Pringle, " The Hottentot, escaped from bonds, stood 
 erect on his new territory ; and the feeling of being 
 restored to the level of humanity and the simple rights 
 of nature, softened and enlarged his heart, and diffused 
 vigour through every limb !" They dug up roots and 
 wild bulbs for food, and persisted without a murmur, 
 labouring surprisingly, with the most wretched imple- 
 ments, and those who had cattle assisting those who 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 431 
 
 had nothing, to the utmost of their ability. All 
 winter the CafFres, from whom this location had been 
 unjustly wrested by the English, attacked them with 
 a fury only exceeded by their hope of now regaining 
 their territory from mere Hottentots, thus newly 
 armed, and in so wretched a condition. But, though 
 harassed night and day, and never, for a moment, 
 safe in their sleep, they not only repelled the as- 
 sailants, but continued to cultivate their grounds with 
 prodigious energy. They had to form dams across 
 the river, as stated by Mr. Read, before the Parlia- 
 mentary committee, and water-courses, sometimes to 
 the depth of ten, twelve, and fourteen feet, and that 
 sometimes through solid rocks, and with very sorry 
 pickaxes, iron crows, and spades ; and few of them. 
 These works, says Mr. Read, have excited the admi- 
 ration of visitors, as well as the roads, which they had 
 to cut to a considerable height on the sides of the 
 mountains. 
 
 At first, from the doubts of colonists as to the pro- 
 priety of entrusting fire-arms, and so much self-govern- 
 ment to these newly liberated men, it was proposed 
 that a certain portion of the Dutch and English should 
 be mixed with them. The Hottentots, who felt this 
 want of confidence keenly, begged and prayed that 
 they might be trusted for two years; and Captain 
 Stockenstrom said to them, " Then show to the world 
 that you can work as well as others, and that without 
 the whip." Such indeed was their diligence, that the 
 very next summer they had abundance of vegetables, 
 and a plentiful harvest. In the second year they net 
 only supported themselves, but disposed of 30,000 lbs. 
 of barley for the troops, besides carrying other pro- 
 
432 COLONIZATION 
 
 duce to market at Graham's Town. Their enemies 
 the CafFres made peace with them, and those of their 
 own race flocked in so rapidly that they were soon 
 4,000 in number, seven hundred of whom were armed 
 with muskets. The settlement was left without any 
 magistrate, or officers, except the native field-cornets, 
 and heads of parties appointed by Captain Stocken- 
 strom, yet they continued perfectly orderly. Nay, they 
 were not satisfied without possessing the means of both 
 religious and other instruction. Within a few months 
 after their establishment, they sent for Mr. Read, the 
 missionary, and Mr. Thompson was also appointed 
 Dutch minister amongst them. They established tem- 
 perance societies, and schools. Mr. Read says,- that 
 during the four years and a half that he was there, they 
 had established seven schools for the larger children, 
 and one school of industry, besides five infant schools. 
 And Captain Stockenstrom, writing to Mr. Pringle 
 in 1833, says, "So eager are they for instruction, 
 that when better teachers cannot be obtained, if they 
 find any person that can merely spell, they get him to 
 teach the rest the little he knows. They travel consi- 
 derable distances to attend divine service regularly, 
 and their spiritual guides speak with delight of the 
 fruits of their labours. " Nowhere have temperance 
 societies been half so much encouraged as among this 
 people, formerly so prone to intemperance ; and they 
 have of their own account petitioned the government 
 that their grants of land may contain a prohibition 
 against the establishment of canteens, or brandy- 
 houses. They have repulsed the Calfres on every side 
 on which they have been attacked, and are now upon 
 the best terms with that people. They pay every tax 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 433 
 
 like the rest of the inhabitants. They have cost the 
 government nothing except a little ammunition for their 
 defence, about fifty bushels of maize, and a similar 
 quantity of oats for seed-corn, and the annual stipend 
 for their minister. They have rendered the Kat river hy 
 far the safest part of the frontier ; and the same plan 
 followed up on a more extensive scale would soon enable 
 government to withdraw the troops altogether." In 1834, 
 Captain Bradford found that they had subscribed 
 499/. to build a new church, and had also proposed to 
 lay the foundation of another. In 1833 they paid in 
 taxes 2,300 rix-dollars, and their settlement was in a 
 most flourishing condition. Dr. Philip, before the 
 Parliamentary Committee of 1837, stated that their 
 schools were in admirable order ; their infant schools 
 quite equal to anything to be seen in England; and 
 the Committee closed its evidence on this remarkable 
 settlement with this striking opinion : " Had it, indeed, 
 depended on the Hottentots, we believe the frontier would 
 have been spared the outrages from which they as well as 
 others have suffered." 
 
 Of two things in this very interesting relation, we 
 hardly know which is the most surprising — the avidity 
 with which a people long held in the basest thraldom 
 grasp at knowledge and civil life, or the blind selfish- 
 ness of Englishmen, who, in the face of such splendid 
 scenes as these, persist in oppression and violence. 
 How easy does it seem to do good ! How beautiful 
 are the results of justice and liberality ! How glorious 
 and how profitable too, beyond all use of whips, and 
 chains, and muskets, are treating our fellow men with 
 gentleness and kindness — and yet after this came the 
 CafFre commandoes and the CaiFre war ! 
 
 ^ 
 
434 COLONIZATION 
 
 Of the same, or a kindred race with the Hottentots, 
 are the Bosjesmen, or Bushmen, and the Griquas ; 
 their treatment, except that they could not be made 
 slaves of, has been the same. The same injustice, the 
 same lawlessness, the same hostile irritation, have been 
 practised towards them by the Dutch and English as 
 towards the Hottentots. The bushmen, in fact, were 
 Hottentots, who, disdaining slavery and resenting the 
 usurpations of the Europeans on their lands, took arms, 
 endeavoured to repel their aggressors, and finding that 
 impracticable, fled to the woods and the mountains; 
 others, from time to time escaping from intolerable 
 thraldom, joined them. These bushmen carried on a 
 predatory warfare from their fastnesses with the op- 
 pressors of their race, and were in return hunted as 
 wild beasts. Commandoes, a sort of military battu, 
 were set on foot against them. Every one knows 
 what a battu for game is. The inhabitants of a dis- 
 trict assemble at the command of an officer, civil or 
 military, to clear the country of wild beasts. They 
 take in a vast circle, beating up the bushes and thick- 
 ets, while they gradually contract the circle, till the 
 whole multitude find themselves inclosing a small area 
 filled with the whole bestial population of the neigh- 
 bourhood, on which they make a simultaneous attack, 
 and slaughter them in one promiscuous mass. A com- 
 mando is a very similar thing, except that in it not only 
 the bestial population of the country, but the human 
 too, are slaughtered by the inhuman. These com- 
 mandoes, though they have only acquired at the Cape 
 a modern notoriety, have been used from the first day 
 of discovery. They were common in the Spanish 
 and Portuguese colonies, and under the same name, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 435 
 
 as may be seen in almost any of the Spanish and 
 Portuguese historians of the West Indies and South 
 America. 
 
 The manner in which these commandoes were con- 
 ducted at the Cape was described, before the Par- 
 liamentary Committee of 1837,* to be a joint assem- 
 blage of burghers and military force for the purpose 
 of enforcing restitution of cattle. Sir Lowry Cole 
 authorized in 1833 any field-cornet, or deputy field- 
 cornet, to whom a boor may complain, to send a party 
 of soldiers on the track and recover the cattle. These 
 persons are often of the most indifferent class of 
 society. It is the interest of these men, as much as 
 that of the boors, to make inroads into the country of 
 the Griquas, Bushmen, or Caffres, and sweep off 
 droves of cattle. These people can call on everybody 
 to aid cuid assist, and away goes tlie troop. The mo- 
 ment the Caffres perceive these licensed marauders 
 approaching their kraal, they collect their cattle as fast 
 as they can, and drive them off towards the woods. 
 The English pursue — they surround them if possible — 
 they fall on them ; the Caffres, or whoever they are, 
 defend their property — their only subsistence, indeed ; 
 then ensues bloodshed and devastation. The cattle 
 are driven off; the calves left behind to perish; the 
 women and children, the whole tribe, are thrown into 
 a state of absolute famine. Besides these " joint as- 
 semblages of burghers and military force," there are 
 parties entirely military sent on the same errand ; and 
 to such a pitch of vengeance have the parties arrived 
 that whole districts have been laid in flames and re- 
 duced to utter deserts. Such has been our system — 
 • See pp. 38-42 of Ball's edit. 
 
436 COLONIZATION 
 
 the system of us humane and virtuous English, till 
 1837 ! To these dreadful and wicked expeditions 
 there was no end, and but little cessation, for the 
 boors were continually going over the boundaries into 
 the countries of Bushmen, Caffres, or Guiquas, just 
 as they pleased. They went over with vast herds and 
 eat them up. " In 1834 there were said to be," says 
 the Report, " about 1,500 boors on the other side of 
 the Orange River, and for the most part in the Griqua 
 country. Of these there were 700 boors for several 
 months during that year in the district of Philipolis 
 alone, with at least 700,000 sheep, cattle, and horses. 
 Besides destroying the pastures of the people, in 
 many instances their corn-fields were destroyed by 
 them, and in some instances they took possession of 
 their houses. It was contended that the evil could 
 not be remedied; that the state of the country was 
 such that the boors could not be stopped ; and yet an 
 enormous body of military was kept up on the fron- 
 tiers at a ruinous expense to this country. The last 
 Caifre war, brought on entirely by this system of 
 aggression, by these commandoes, and the reprisals 
 generated by them, cost this country 500,000/., and 
 put a stop to trade and the sale of produce to the 
 value of 300,000/. more !" Yet the success of a dif- 
 ferent policy was before the colony, in the case of the 
 Kat River Hottentots, and that so splendid a one, 
 that the Report says, had it been attended to and fol- 
 lowed out, all these outrages might have been spared. 
 Such are commandges- — So far as they related to 
 the Bushmen, the following facts are sufficiently in- 
 dicative. In 1774 an order was issued for the extir- 
 pation of the Bushmen, and three commandoes were 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 437 
 
 sent to execute it. In 1795, the Earl of Macartney, 
 by proclamation, authorized the landdrosts and magis- 
 trates to take the field against the Bushmen, in such 
 expeditions ; and Mr. Maynier gave in evidence, that 
 in consequence, when he was landdrost of Graaf Rey- 
 net, parties of from 200 to 300, boors were sent out, ^ 
 who killed many hundreds of Bushmen, chiefly women 
 and children, the men escaping ; andthe children too 
 young to carry off for slaves had their brains knocked 
 out against the rocks.* Col. Collins, in his tour to 
 the north-eastern boundary in 1809, says one man 
 told him that within a period of six years parties under 
 his orders had killed or taken 3,200 of these unfortu- 
 nate creatures ; and another, that the actions in which 
 he had been engaged had destroyed 2,700. That the 
 total extinction of the Bushmen race was confidently 
 hoped for, but sufficient force for the purpose could 
 not be raised. But Dr. Philips* evidence, presented in 
 a memorial to government in 1 834, may well conclude 
 these horrible details of the deeds of our countrymen 
 and colonists. 
 
 "A few years ago, we had 1,800 Boschmen belong- 
 ing to two missionary institutions, among that people 
 in the country between the Snewbergen and the 
 Orange River, a country comprehending 42,000 square 
 miles ; and had we been able to treble the number of 
 our missionary stations over that district, we might 
 have had 5,000 of that people under instruction. In 
 1832 I spent seventeen days in that country, travel- 
 ling over it in different directions. I then found the 
 country occupied by the boors, and the Boschmen 
 population had disappeared, with the exception of 
 * Report, 1837, p. 32, 33. 
 
438 COLONIZATION 
 
 those that had been brought up from infancy in the 
 service of the boors. In the whole of my journey, 
 during the seventeen days I was in the country, I met 
 with two men and one woman only of the free inha- 
 bitants, who had escaped the effects of the commando 
 system, and they were travelling by night, and con- 
 cealing themselves by day, to escape being shot like 
 wild beasts. Their tale was a lamentable one : their 
 children had been taken from them by the boors, and 
 they were wandering about in this manner from place 
 to place, in the hope of finding out where they were, 
 and of getting a sight of them." 
 
 I have glanced at the treatment of the Griquas in 
 the last page but one. Those people were the off- 
 spring of colonists by Hottentot women, who finding 
 themselves treated as an inferior race by their kinsmen 
 of European blood, and prevented from acquiring pro- 
 perty in land, or any fixed property, fled from con- 
 tumely and oppression to the native tribes. 
 
 Amongst the vast mass of colonial crime, that of the 
 treatment of the half-breed race by their European 
 fathers constitutes no small portion. Everywhere this 
 unfortunate race has been treated alike ; in every 
 quarter of the globe, and by every European people. 
 In Spanish America it was the civil disqualification 
 and social degradation of this race that brought on the 
 revolution, and the loss of those vast regions to the 
 mother country. In our East Indies, what thousands 
 upon thousands of coloured children their white fathers 
 have coolly abandoned ; and while they have them- 
 selves returned to England with enormous fortunes, 
 and to establish new families to enjoy them, have left 
 there their coloured offspring to a situation the most 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 439 
 
 painful and de^ading — a position of perpetual con- 
 tempt and political degradation. In our West Indies 
 how many thousands of their own children have been 
 sold by their white fathers, in the slave-market, or 
 been made to swelter under the lash on their own 
 plantations. Here, in South Africa, this class of de- 
 scendents were driven from civilization to the woods 
 and the savages, and a miserable and savage race they 
 became. It was not till 1800 that any attempts were 
 made to reclaim them, and then it was no parental or 
 kindred feeling on the part of the colonists that urged 
 it ; it was attempted by the missionaries, who, as in 
 every distant scene of our crimes, have stepped in be- 
 tween us and the just vengeance of heaven, between 
 us and the political punishment of our own absurd and 
 wicked policy, between us and the miserable natives. 
 Mr. Anderson, their first missionary, found them " a 
 herd of wandering and naked savages, subsisting by 
 plunder and the chase. Their bodies were daubed 
 with red paint, their heads loaded with grease and 
 shining powder, with no covering but the filthy caross 
 over their shoulders. Without knowledge, without 
 morals, or any traces of civilization, they were wholly 
 abandoned to witchcraft, drunkenness, licentiousness, 
 and all the consequences which arise from the un- 
 checked growth of such vices. With his fellow- 
 labourer, Mr. Kramer, Mr. Anderson wandered about 
 with them five years and a half, exposed to all the 
 dangers and privations inseparable from such a state of 
 society, before they could induce them to locate where 
 they are now settled." 
 
 With one exception, they had not one thread of 
 European clothing amongst them. They were in the 
 
440 COLONIZATION 
 
 habit of plundering one another, and saw no manner 
 of evil in this, or any of their actions. Violent deaths 
 were common. Their usual manner of living was 
 truly disgusting, and they were void of shame. They 
 were at the most violent enmity with the Bushmen, 
 and treated them on all occasions where they could, 
 with the utmost barbarity. So might these people, 
 wretched victims of European vice and contempt of 
 all laws, human or divine, have remained, had not the 
 missionaries, by incredible labours and patience, won 
 their good will. They have now reduced them to 
 settled and agricultural life ; brought them to live in 
 the most perfect harmony with the Bushmen; and. in 
 1819 such was their altered condition that a fair was 
 established at Beaufort for the mutual benefit of them 
 and the colonists, at which business was done to the 
 amount of 27,000 rix dollars ; and on the goods sold 
 to the Griquas, the colonists realized a profit of from 
 200 to 300 per cent ! 
 
 Let our profound statesmen, who go on from gene- 
 ration to generation fighting and maintaining armies, 
 and issuing commandoes, look at this, and see how 
 infinitely simple men, with but one principle of action 
 to guide them — Christianity — outdo them in their 
 own profession. They are your missionaries, after all 
 the boast and pride of statesmanship, who have ever 
 yet hit upon the only true and sound policy even in 
 a worldly point of view ;* who, when the profound 
 statesmen have turned men into miserable and ex- 
 asperated savages, are obliged to go and again turn 
 them from savages to men, — who, when these wise 
 
 * William Penn is the only exception, and he was a preacher and 
 in some degree a missionary. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 441 
 
 Statesmen have spent their country's money by mil- 
 lions and shed blood by oceans, and find troubles and 
 frontier wars, and frightful and fire- blackened deserts 
 only growing around — go, and by a smile and a shake 
 of the hand, restore peace, replace these deserts by 
 gardens and green fields, and hamlets of cheerful peo- 
 ple ; and instead of involving you in debt, find you 
 a market with 200 to 500 per cent, profit! 
 
 " It was apparent," says Captain Stockenstrom, 
 " to every man, that if it had not been for the influ- 
 ence w.hich the missionaries had gained over the 
 Griquas we should have had the whole nation down 
 upon us." What a humiliation to the pride of politi- 
 cal science, to the pride of so many soi^disant states- 
 men, that with so many ages of experience to refer to, 
 and with such stupendous powers as European states- 
 men have now in their hands, a few simple preachers 
 should still have to shew them the real philosophy of 
 government, and to rescue ihem from the blundering 
 and ruinous positions in which they have continually 
 placed themselves with uneducated nations ! " If 
 these Griquas had come down upon us," continues 
 Captain Stockenstrom, " we had no force to arrest 
 them ; and I have been informed, that since I left the 
 colony, the government has been able to enter into a 
 sort of treaty with the chief Waterboer, of a most 
 beneficial nature to the Corannas and Griqueis them- 
 selves, as well as to the safety of the northern frontier." 
 
 If noble statesmen wish to hear the true secret of 
 good and prosperous government, they have only to 
 listen to this chief, " who boasts," to use the words of 
 the Parliamentary Report, " no higher ancestry than 
 that of the Hottentot and the Bushman." — " I feel that 
 u2 
 
442 COLONIZATION 
 
 I am bound to govern my people by Christian prin- 
 ciples. The world knows by experience, and I know 
 in my small way, and I know also from my Bible, 
 that the government which is not founded on the 
 principles of the Bible must come to nothing. When 
 governments lose sight of the principles of the Bible, 
 partiality, injustice, oppression and cruelty prevail, 
 and then suspicion, want of confidence, jealousy, 
 hatred, revolt, and destruction succeed. Therefore I 
 hope it will ever be my study, that the Bible should 
 form the foundation of every principle of my govern- 
 ment ; then I and my people will have a standard to 
 which we can appeal, which is clear, and comprehen- 
 sive, and satisfactory, and by which we shall all be 
 tried, and have our condition determined in the day of 
 judgment. The relation in which I stand to my peo- 
 ple as their chief, as their leader, binds me, by all 
 that is sacred and dear, to seek their welfare and pro- 
 mote their happiness; and by what means shall I be 
 able to do this r* This I shall best be able to do by 
 alluding to the principles of the Bible. Would gover- 
 nors and governments act upon the simple principle 
 by which we are bound to act as individuals, that is, 
 to do as we would be done by, all would be well. I 
 hope, by the principles of the gospel, the morals of 
 my people will continue to improve ; and it shall be 
 my endeavour, in humble dependence on the Divine 
 blessing, that those principles shall lose none of their 
 force by my example. Sound education I know will 
 civilize them, make them wise, useful, powerful, and 
 secure amongst their neighbours ; and the better they 
 are educated, the more clearly will they see that the 
 principles of the Bible are the best principles for the 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 443 
 
 government of individuals, of families, of tribes, and 
 of nations.' ' 
 
 Not only governors but philosophers may listen to 
 this African chief with advantage. Some splendid 
 reputations have been made in Europe by merely 
 taking up some one great principle of the Christian 
 code and vaunting it as a wonderful discovery. A 
 thousand such principles are scattered through the 
 Bible, and the greatest philosophers of all, as well as 
 the profoundest statesmen, are they who are contented 
 to look for them there, and in simple sincerity to adopt 
 them. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN SOUTH AFRICA, — CONTINUED. 
 
 The details of our barbarisms toward the Hottentots, 
 Bushmen, and Griquas, in the last chapter, are surely 
 enough at this late period of the world to make the 
 wise blush and the humane weep, yet what are they 
 compared to our atrocities towards the Caffres ? These 
 are, as described by Pringle, a remarkably fine race of 
 people. " They a are tall, athletic, and handsome race 
 of men, with features often approaching to the Euro- 
 pean, or Asiatic model, and, excepting their woolly 
 hair, exhibiting few of the peculiarities of the negro 
 race. Their colour is a clear dark brown. Their 
 address is frank, cheerful, and manly. Their govern- 
 
444 ' COLONIZATION 
 
 ment is patriarchal, and the privileges of rank are 
 carefully maintained by the chieftains. Their prin- 
 cipal wealth and means of subsistence consist in their 
 numerous herds of cattle. The females also cultivate 
 pretty extensively maize, millet, water-melons, and a 
 few other esculents ; but they are decidedly a nation 
 of herdsmen — war, hunting, barter, and agriculture 
 being only occasional occupations. 
 
 " In their customs and traditions there seem to be 
 indications of their having sprung, at some remote 
 period, from a people of much higher civilization than 
 is now exhibited by any of the tribes of Southern 
 Africa; whilst the rite of circumcision, universally 
 practised among them without any. vestige of Islamism, 
 and several other traditionary customs greatly resem- 
 bling the Levitical rules of purification, would seem 
 to indicate some former connexion with a people of 
 Arabian, Hebrew, or perhaps, Abyssinian lineage. 
 Nothing like a regular system of idolatry exists among 
 them ; but we find some traces of belief of a Supreme 
 Being, as well as of inferior spirits, and sundry super- 
 stitious usages that look like the shattered wrecks of 
 ancient religious institutions.''* 
 
 One of the first of this race, whom this amiable and 
 excellent man encountered in South Africa, was at 
 Bethelsdorp, the missionary settlement, and under the 
 following circumstances : — " A CaiFre woman, accom- 
 panied by a little girl of eight or ten years of age, and 
 having an infant strapped on her back above her man- 
 tle of tanned bullock's hide. She was in the custody 
 of a black constable, who stated that she was one of a 
 number of female Caffres who had been made prisoners 
 
 * African Sketches, p. 414. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 445 
 
 by order of the Commandant on the frontier for cross- 
 ing the line of demarcation without permission, and 
 that they were now to be given out in servitude among 
 the white inhabitants of this district. While the con- 
 stable was delivering his message, the CafFre woman 
 looked at him and us with keen and intelligent glances, 
 and though she very imperfectly understood his lan- 
 guage, she appeared fully to comprehend its import. 
 When he had finished she stepped forward, drew her 
 figure up to its full height, extended her right arm, 
 and commenced a speech in her native language, the 
 Amakosa dialect. Though I did not understand a 
 single word that she uttered, I hav-e seldom been more 
 struck with surprise and admiration. The language, 
 to which she appeared to give full and forcible intona- 
 tion, was highly musical and sonorous ; her gestures 
 were natural, graceful, and impressive, and her dark 
 eyes and handsome bronze countenance were full of 
 eloquent expression. Sometimes she pointed back to 
 her own country, and then to her children. Some- 
 times she raised her tones aloud, and shook her 
 clenched hand, as if she denounced our injustice, and 
 threatened us with the vengeance of her tribe. Then, 
 again, she would melt into tears, as if imploring cle- 
 mency, and mourning for her helpless little ones. 
 Some of the villagers who gathered round, being 
 whole or half Caffres, interpreted her speech to the 
 missionary, but he could do nothing to alter her desti- 
 nation, and could only return kind words to console 
 her. For my part, I was not a little struck by the 
 scene, and could not help beginning to suspect that 
 my European countrymen, who thus made captives of 
 harmless women and children, were, in reality, greater 
 
446 COLONIZATION 
 
 barbarians than the savage natives of CaiFraria." He 
 had soon only too ample proofs of the correctness of 
 his surmise. This fine race of people, who strikingly 
 resemble the North American Indians in their charac- 
 ter, their eloquence, their peculiar customs and tradi- 
 tions of Asiatic origin, have exactly resembled them 
 in their fate. They have been driven out of their 
 lands by the Europeans, and massacred by thousands 
 when they have resented the invasion. 
 
 The Hottentots were exterminated, or reduced to 
 thraldom, and the European colonists then came in 
 contact with the CafFres, who were numerous and 
 warlike, resisted aggression with greater effect, but 
 still found themselves unable with their light assagais 
 to contend with fire-arms, and were perpetually driven 
 backwards with shocking carnage, and with circum- 
 stances of violent oppression which it is impossible to 
 read of without the strongest indignation. Up to 1778 
 the Camtoos River had been considered the limit of 
 the colony on that side ; but at that period the Dutch 
 governor. Van Plattenburgh, says Pringle, " in the 
 course of an extensive tour into the interior, finding 
 great numbers of colonists occupying tracts beyond 
 the frontier, instead of recalling them within the legal 
 limits, he extended the boundary (according to the 
 ordinary practice of Cape governors before and since), 
 adding, by a stroke of his pen, about 30,000 square 
 miles to the colonial territory." The Great Fish River 
 now became the boundary ; which Lord Macartney in 
 1798, claiming all that Van Plattenburgh had so sum- 
 marily claimed, confirmed. 
 
 It is singular how uniform are the policy and the 
 modes of seizing upon native possessions by Euro- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 447 
 
 peans. In America we have seen how continually, 
 when the bulk of the people, or the legitimate chiefs, 
 would not cede territory, the whites made a mock 
 purchase from somebody who had no right whatever 
 to sell, and on that title proceeded to drive out the 
 real owners. In this case, Plattenburgh, to give a 
 colour of justice to his claim, sent out Colonel Gordon 
 in search of CafFres as far as the Keiskamma, who 
 conducted di few to the governor, who consented that 
 the Great Fish River should be the boundary. The 
 real chief, Jalumba, it appears, however, had not been 
 consulted; but the colonists the next year reminded 
 him of the recent treaty with his tribe, and requested 
 him to evacuate that territory. Jalumba refused — a 
 commando was assembled — the intruders, in colonial 
 phrase, but the real and actual owners, were expelled : 
 Jalumba's own son Dlodlo was killed, and 5,200 head 
 of cattle driven off. This was certainly a wholesale 
 beginning of plunder and bloodshed ; but, says the 
 same author, " this was not the worst — Jalumba and 
 his clan were destroyed by a most infamous act of 
 treachery and murder ; the details of which may be 
 found in Thompson and Kay." 
 
 It was on such a title as this, that Lord Macartney 
 claimed this tract of country for the English in 1797, 
 the Cape having been conquered by us. It does not 
 appear, however, that any very vigorous measures 
 were employed for expelling the natives from this 
 region till I8II, when it was resolved to drive them 
 out of it, and a large military and burgher force under 
 Col. Graham was sent out for that purpose. The 
 expulsion was effected with the most savage rigour. 
 This clearing took up about a year. In the course 
 
448 COLONIZATION 
 
 of it Landdrost Stokenstrom lost his life by the 
 CafFres, and T' Congo, the father of the chiefs Pato, 
 Kamo, and T'Congo, was butchered by a party of 
 boors while he lay on his mat dying of a mortal disease. 
 The Caffres begged to be allowed to wait to cut their 
 crops of maize and millet, nearly ripe, arguing that 
 the loss of them would subject them to a whole year 
 of famine ; — not a day was allowed them. They were 
 driven out with sword and musket. Men and women, 
 ,wherever found, were promiscuously shot, though 
 they offered no resistance. " Women,*' says Lieu- 
 tenant Hart, whose journal of tliese transactions is 
 quoted by Pringle, "were killed unintentionally, be- 
 cause the boors could not distinguish them from men 
 among the bushes, and so, to make sure work, they 
 shot all they could reach.'' They were very anxious 
 to seize Islambi, a chief who had actively opposed 
 them, for they had been, like Plattenburgh, treating 
 with one chief, Gaika, for cession of claims which he 
 frankly told them belonged to several quite indepen- 
 dent of him. On this subject, occurs this entry in 
 Mr. Hart's journal: — "Sunday, Jan. 12, 1812. At 
 noon. Commandant Stollz went out with two compa- 
 nies to look for Slambi (Islambi), but saw nothing of 
 him. They met only with a few Caffres, men and 
 women, most of whom they shot. About sunset, five 
 Caifres were seen at a distance, one of whom came 
 to the camp with a message from Slambi's son, re- 
 questing permission to wait till the harvest was over, 
 and that then he (if his father would not), would go 
 over the Great Fish River quietly. This messenger 
 would not give any information respecting Slambi, 
 but said he did not know where he was. However, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 449 
 
 after having been put in irons, and fastened to a wheel 
 with a riem (leathern thong) about his neck, he said, 
 that if the commando went with him, before daylight 
 he would bring them upon 200 CafFres, all asleep." 
 Having thus treated a messenger from a free chief, 
 and attempted to compel him to betray his master, 
 away went this commando on the agreeable errand of 
 surprising and murdering 200 innocent people in their 
 sleep. But the messenger was made of much better 
 stuff than the Enoflish. He led them about on a wild- 
 goose chase for three days, when finding nothing they 
 returned, and brought him back too. 
 
 Parties of troops were employed for several weeks 
 in burning down the huts and hamlets of the natives, 
 and destroying their fields of maize, by trampling 
 them down with large herds of cattle, and at length 
 the CaiFres were forced over the Great Fish River, to 
 the number of 30,000 souls, leaving behind them a 
 large portion of their cattle, captured by the troops ; 
 many of their comrades and females, shot in the 
 thickets, and not a few of the old and diseased, whom 
 they were unable to carry along with them, to perish 
 of hunger, or become a prey to the hyenas. 
 
 " The results of this war of 1811 were," says the 
 Parliamentary Report of 1837, "first, a succession of 
 new wars, not less expensive, and more sanguinary 
 than the former ; second, the loss of thousands of good 
 labourers to the colonists (and this testimony as to 
 the actual service done by CafFre labourers, comprises 
 the strong opinion of Major Dundas, when landdrost 
 in 1827, as to their good dispositions, and that of 
 Colonel Wade to the same effect) ; and thirdly, the 
 checking of civilization and trade with the interior for 
 a period of twelve years. 
 
450 COLONIZATION 
 
 The gain was some hundreds of thousands of acres 
 of land, which might have been bought from the 
 natives for comparatively a trifle. 
 
 In 1817, those negotiations which had been entered 
 into with Gaika, as if he were the sole and paramount 
 king of CafFreland, were renewed by the governor, 
 Lord Charles Somerset. Other chiefs were present, 
 particularly Islambi, but no notice was taken of them ; 
 it was resolved, that Gaika was the paramount chief, 
 and that he should be selected as the champion of the 
 frontiers against his countrymen. Accordingly, we 
 hear, as was to be expected, that the very next year 
 a formidable confederacy was entered into amongst 
 the native chiefs against this Gaika. In the league 
 against him, and for the protection of their country, 
 were his own uncles, Islambi and Jaluhsa, Habanna, 
 Makanna, young Kongo, chief of the Gunuquebi, and 
 Hintza, the principal chief of the Amakosa, to whom 
 in rank Gaika was only secondary. To support their 
 adopted puppet, Col. Brereton was ordered to march 
 into Caffreland. The inhabitants were attacked in 
 their hamlets, plundered of their cattle, and slaughtered 
 or driven into the woods ; 23,000 cattle carried off, 
 9000 of which were given to Gaika to reimburse him 
 for his losses. 
 
 Retaliation was the consequence. The CafFres 
 soon poured into the colony in numerous bodies eager 
 for revenge. The frontier districts were overrun; 
 several military posts were seized ; parties of British 
 troops and patroles cut off; the boors were driven from 
 the Zureveld, and Enon plundered and burnt. 
 
 This and the other efforts of the outraged Caffres, 
 which were now made to avenge their injuries and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 451 
 
 check the despoiling course of the English, were or- 
 ganized under the influence and counsel of Makanna, a 
 prophet who assumed the sacred character to combine 
 and rouse his countrymen to overturn their oppressors: 
 for not knowing the vast resources of the English, he 
 fondly deemed that if they could vanquish those at 
 the Cape they should be freed from their power ; " and 
 then," said he, " we will sit down and eat honey !" 
 
 In this, as in so many other particulars, the CafFres 
 resemble the American Indians. Scarcely a confe- 
 deracy amongst those which have appeared for the 
 purpose of resisting the aggressions on the Indians 
 but have been inspired and led on by prophets, as the 
 brother of Tecumseh, amongst the Shawanees; the 
 son of Black- Hauk, Wabokieshiek, amongst the Sacs; 
 Monohoe, and others, amongst the Creeks who fell at 
 the bloody battle of Horse-shoe-bend. 
 
 Makanna had by his talents and pretences raised 
 himself from the common herd to the rank of a chief, 
 and soon gained complete ascendency over all the 
 chiefs except Gaika, to whom he was opposed as the 
 ally of the English. He went amongst the mis- 
 sionaries and acquired so much knowledge of Christi- 
 anity as served him to build a certain motley creed 
 upon, by which he mystified and awed the common 
 people. After Col. Brereton's devastations he roused 
 up his countrymen to a simultaneous attack upon Gra- 
 ham's Town. He and Dushani, the son of Islambi, 
 mustered their exasperated hosts to the number of nine 
 or ten thousand in the forests of the Great Fish River, 
 and one morning at the break of day these infuriated 
 troops were seen rushing down from the mountains 
 near Graham's Town to assault it. A bloody conflict 
 
452 COLONIZATION 
 
 ensued : the Caffres, inflamed by their wrongs and the 
 eloquence of Makanna, fought desperately ; but they 
 were mown down by the European artillery, fourteen 
 hundred of their warriors were left on the field, and 
 the rest fled to the hills and woods. The whole 
 burgher militia of the colony were called out to pur- 
 sue them, and to ravage their country in all directions. 
 It was resolved to take ample vengeance on them: 
 their lands were laid waste — their corn trampled down 
 under the feet of the cavalry, their villages burnt to the 
 ground — and themselves chased into the bush, where 
 they were bombarded with grape-shot and congreve- 
 rockets. Men, women, and children, were massacred 
 in one indiscriminate slaughter. A high price wHs 
 set upon the heads of the chiefs, especially on that of 
 Makanna, and menaces added, that if they were 
 not brought in, nothing should prevent the total 
 destruction of their country. Not a soul was found 
 timid or traitorous enough to betray their chiefs ; but 
 to the surprise of the English, Makanna himself, to 
 save the remainder of his nation, walked quietly into 
 the English camp and presented himself before the 
 commander. " The war," said he, " British chiefs, is 
 an unjust one ; for you are striving to extirpate a 
 people whom you forced to take up arms. When our 
 fathers, and the fathers of the Boors first settled in 
 the Zureveld, they dwelt together in peace. Their 
 flocks grazed on the same hills; their herdsmen 
 smoked together out of the same pipes ; they were 
 brothers, until the herds of the Amakosa increased 
 so as to make the hearts of the boors sore. What 
 these covetous men could not get from our fathers for 
 old buttons, they took by force. Our fathers were 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 453 
 
 MEN ; they loved their cattle ; their wives and children 
 lived upon milk ; they fought for their property. They 
 began to hate the colonists, who coveted their all, and 
 aimed at their destruction. 
 
 • "Now their kraals and our fathers' kraals were 
 separate. The boors made commandoes on our fathers. 
 Our fathers drove them out of the Zureveld. We 
 dwelt there because we had conquered it. There we 
 married wives, and there our children were born. The 
 white men hated us, but they could not drive us away. 
 When there was war, we plundered you. When there 
 was peace, some of our bad people stole; but our 
 chiefs forbade it. Your treacherous friend, Gaika, 
 always had peace with you, yet, when his people stole 
 he shared in the plunder. Have your patroles ever, 
 in time of peace, found cattle, runaway slaves, or 
 deserters in the kraals of our chiefs ? Have they ever 
 gone into Gaika's country without finding such cattle, 
 such slaves, such deserters in Gaika's kraals ? But he 
 was your friend ; and you wished to possess the Zure- 
 veld. You came at last like locusts.* We stood ; we 
 could do no more. You said, ' Go over the Fish 
 River — that is all we want.' We yielded, and came 
 here. We lived in peace. Some bad people stole, 
 perhaps; but the nation was quiet — the chiefs were 
 quiet. Gaika stole — his chiefs stole — his people stole. 
 You sent him copper ; you sent him beads ; you sent 
 him horses — on which he rode to steal more. To us 
 you sent only commandoes ! 
 
 " We quarrelled with Gaika about grass — no busi- 
 ness of yours. You sent a commando.f You took our 
 
 * Col. Graham's Campaign in 1811-12. 
 t Col. Brereton's Expedition in 1818. 
 
454 COLONIZATION 
 
 last cow. You left only a few calves, which died for 
 want, alon^ with our children. You gave half the spoil 
 to Gaika — half you kept yourselves. Without milk 
 — our corn destroyed, we saw our wives and chil- 
 dren perish — we saw that we must ourselves perish. 
 We fought for our lives — we failed — and you are 
 here. Your troops cover the plains and swarm in the 
 thickets, where they cannot distinguish the men from 
 the women, and shoot all.* 
 
 "You want us to submit to Gaika. That man's 
 face is fair to you, but his heart is false ; leave him to 
 himself, and we shall not call on you for help. Set 
 Makanna at liberty; and Islambi, Dushani, Kongo, 
 and the rest, will come to make peace with you at any 
 time you fix. But if you will make war, you may 
 indeed kill the last man of us ; but Gaika shall not 
 rule over the followers of those who think him a 
 woman, "f 
 
 It is said that this energetic address, containing so 
 many awful truths, affected some of those who heard 
 it even to tears. But what followed? The Caffres 
 were still sternly commanded to deliver up their other 
 chiefs ; treachery is said to have been used to compass 
 it, but in vain ; so the English made a desert of the 
 whole country, and carried off 30,000 head of cattle. J 
 Makanna was sent to Cape-Town, and thence trans- 
 ported to Robben Island, a spot appropriated to felons 
 and malefactors doomed to work in irons. Here, in an 
 attempt with some few followers to effect his escape, 
 he was drowned by the upsetting of the boat, and 
 died cheering his unfortunate companions till the 
 billows swept him from a rock to which he clung.§ 
 
 * Thompson, ii. 347. \ Captain Stockenstrora. 
 
 t Ibid, and Kay, 266. § Pringle's African Sketches. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 455 
 
 The English had hitherto gratified their avarice 
 and bad passions with their usual freedom in their 
 colonies, on those who had no further connexion with 
 them than happening to possess goodly herds under 
 their eye; but now they turned their hand upon their 
 friend and ally, Gaika. Having devoured, by his aid, 
 his countrymen, they were ready now to devour him. 
 Gaika was called upon to give up a large portion of 
 CafFre land, that is, from the Fish River to the Keisi 
 and Chumi rivers — a tract which added about 2,000 
 square miles to our own boundaries. This he yielded 
 most reluctantly, and only on condition that the basin of 
 the Chumi, a beautiful piece of country, should not be 
 included, and that all his territory should be considered 
 neutral ground. Gaika himself narrowly escaped 
 being seized by the English in 1822 — for what cause 
 does not appear, — but it does appear that he only 
 effected his escape in the mantle of his wife ; and that 
 in 1823 a large force, according to the evidence of 
 Capt. Aichison, in which he was employed, surprised 
 the kraals of his son Macomo, and took from them 
 7,000 beasts. Well might Gaika say— "When I 
 look at the large tract of fine country that has been 
 taken from me, I am compelled to say that though 
 protected, I am rather oppressed by my protectors.^* * 
 
 This Macomo, the son of Gaika, seems to be a fine 
 fellow. Desirous of cultivating peace and the friend- 
 ship of the English ; desirous of his people receiving, 
 the benefits of civilization and the Christian religion ; 
 yet, notwithstanding this, and notwithstanding the 
 alliance which had subsisted between the English and 
 his father, his treatment at the hands of the Cape 
 
 * Thompson, ii. 348. 
 
456 COLONIZATION 
 
 government has always been of the most harsh and 
 arbitrary kind. He has been driven with his people 
 from one location to another, and the most serious 
 devastation committed on his property. Pringle's 
 words regarding him are — " He has uniformly pro- 
 tected the missionaries and traders ; has readily 
 punished any of his people who committed depre- 
 dations on the colonists, and on many occasions has 
 given four or five-fold compensation for stolen cattle 
 driven through his territory by undiscovered thieves 
 from other clans. Notwithstanding all this, however, 
 and much more stated on his behalf in the Cape 
 papers, colonial oppression continues to trample down 
 this chief with a steady, firm, relentless foot." The 
 same writer gives the following instance of the sort of 
 treatment which was received from the authorities by 
 this meritorious chief. 
 
 " On the 7th of October last (1833), Macomo was 
 invited by Mr. Read to attend the anniversary meet- 
 ing of an auxiliary missionary society at Philipton, 
 Kat River. The chief went to the military officer 
 commanding the nearest frontier post, and asked per- 
 mission to attend, but was peremptorily refused. H^ 
 ventured, nevertheless, to come by another way, with 
 his ordinary retinue, but altogether unarmed, and 
 delivered in his native tongue a most eloquent speech 
 at the meeting, in which he seconded a motion, pro- 
 posed by the Rev. Mr. Thompson, the established 
 clergyman, for promoting the conversion of the Caf- 
 fres. Alluding to the great number of traders residing 
 in Caffreland, contrasted with the rude prohibition 
 given to his attending this Christian assembly, he 
 said, in the forcible idiom of his country — * There are 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 457 
 
 no Englishmen at Kat River; there are no English- 
 men at Graham's Town; they are all in my country, 
 with their wives and children, in perfect safety, while 
 I stand before you as a rogue and a vagabond, having 
 been obliged to come by stealth/* Then, addressing 
 his own followers, he said — ' Ye sons of Kahabi, I 
 have brought you here to behold what the Word of 
 God hath wrought. These Hottentots were but yes- 
 terday as much despised and oppressed as to-day are 
 we — the Caffres: but see what the Great Word has 
 done for them ! They were dead — they are now alive; 
 they are men once more. Go and tell my people what 
 you have seen and heard ; for such things as you have 
 seen and heard, I hope ere long to witness in my own 
 land. God is great, who has said it, and will surely 
 bring it to pass ! ' In the midst of this exhilarating 
 scene — the African chief recommending to his follow- 
 ers the adoption of that Great Word which brings 
 with it at once both spiritual and social regeneration — 
 they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a 
 troop of dragoons, despatched from the military post 
 to arrest Macomo for having crossed the frontier line 
 without permission. This was eiFected in the most 
 brutal and insulting manner possible, and not without 
 considerable hazard to the chieftain's life, from the 
 ruffian-like conduct of a drunken sergeant, although 
 not the slightest resistance was attempted."f 
 
 It should be borne in mind by the reader that this 
 Kat River settlement, where Macomo was attending 
 
 * There were about 200 traders froin the colony residing in Caffre- 
 land, many of them with their wives and children, at the moment 
 Macomo was thus treated ! 
 
 t African Sketches, 467. 
 
 X 
 
458 COLONIZATION 
 
 the meeting, is the same from which he had been ex- 
 pelled in 1829, and in which the Hottentots were 
 located, and, as I have already related, were making 
 such remarkable progress. Macomo had therefore 
 not only repassed the boundary line over which he 
 had been driven, and the repassing of which the 
 government would naturally regard with great jea- 
 lousy, knowing well what injury they had done him, 
 and which the sight of his old country must forcibly 
 revive in his mind, knowing also that they were 
 at this moment planning fresh outrages against him. 
 This meeting took place in October, 1833, and there- 
 fore, at that very time, an order was signed by the 
 governor for his removal from the lands he was then 
 occupying ; for the Parliamentary Report informs us 
 that Sir Lowry Cole, before leaving the colony for 
 Europe, on the 10th of August, 1833, signed an order 
 for removing the chief Tyalie from the Muncassana 
 beyond the boundaries ; and in November of that year 
 Captain Aichison was ordered to remove Macomo, 
 Botman, and Tyalie, beyond the boundary ; that is, 
 beyond the Keiskamma, which he says he did. Capt. 
 Aichison stated in evidence before the Select Com- 
 mittee, that he could assign no cause for this removal, 
 and he never, heard any cause assigned. But this was 
 not the worst. These poor people, thus driven out 
 in November, when all their corn was green, and that 
 and the crops of their gardens and their pumpkins 
 thus lost, were suffered to return in February, 1834, 
 and again, in October of that year, driven out a 
 second time ! Colonel Wade stated in evidence, that 
 at the time of their second removal, 21st of October, 
 1834, "thev had rebuilt their huts, established their 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 459 
 
 cattle kraals, and commenced the cultivation of their 
 gardens." He stated that, together with Colonel 
 Somerset, he made a visit to Macomo and Botman*s 
 kraal, across the Keiskamma, and that Macomo rode 
 back with them, when they had recrossed the river 
 and reached the Omkobina, a tributary of the Chumie. 
 " These valleys were swarming with Caffres, as was 
 the whole country in our front as far as the Gaga; the 
 people were all in motion, carrying off their effects, 
 and driving away their cattle towards the drifts of the 
 river, and to ray utter amazement the whole country 
 around and before us was in a blaze. Presently we 
 came up with a strong patrol of the mounted rifle 
 corps, which had, it appeared, come out from Fort 
 Beaufort that morning ; the soldiers were busily em- 
 ployed in burning the huts and driving the Caffres 
 towards the frontier." 
 
 Another witness said, ** the second time of my leav- 
 ing Caffreland was in October, last year, in company 
 with a gentleman who was to return towards Hantam. 
 We passed through the country of the Gaga at ten 
 o'clock at night ; the Caffres were enjoying themselves 
 after their custom, with their shouting, feasting, and 
 midnight dances ; they allowed us to pass on unmo- 
 lested. Some time after I received a letter from the 
 gentleman who was my travelling companion on that 
 night, written just before the breaking out of the 
 Caffre war : in it he says, * you recollect how joyful 
 the Caffres were, when we crossed the Gaga ; but on 
 my return a dense smoke filled all the vales, and the 
 Caffres were seen lurking here and there behind the 
 mimosa ; a patrol, commanded by an officer, was driv- 
 ing them beyond the colonial boundary. (This piece 
 
460 COLONIZATION 
 
 of country has very lately been claimed by the colony.) 
 I saw one man near me, and I told my guide to call 
 him to me : the poor fellow said, * No, I cannot come 
 nearer; that white man looks too much like a soldier ;" 
 and all our persuasions could iiot induce him to ad- 
 vance near us. ' Look,' said he, pointing to the as- 
 cending columns of smoke, * what the white men are 
 doing.' Their huts and folds were all burned." 
 
 Such was the treatment of the Caffres up to the end 
 of \8t)4, notwithstanding the most forcible and pathetic 
 appeals to their English tyrants. Dr. Philip stated 
 that, speaking with these chiefs at this time, he said to 
 Macomo, that he had reason to believe that the go- 
 vernor, when he came to the frontier, would listen to 
 all his grievances, and treat him with justice and gene- 
 rosity. " These promises," he replied, "we have had 
 for the last fifteen years;" and pointing to the huts 
 then burning, he added, "things are becoming worse; 
 these huts were set on fire last night, and we were told 
 that to-morrow the patrol is to scour the whole dis- 
 trict, and drive every Caflfre from the west side of the 
 Chumie and Keiskamma at the point of the bayonet." 
 And Dr. Philip having stated rather strongly the ne- 
 cessity the chiefs would be under of preventing all 
 stealing from the colony as the condition of any peace- 
 able relations the governor might enter into with them, 
 Botman made the following reply: "The governor 
 cannot be so unreasonable as to make our existence as 
 a nation depend upon a circumstance which is beyond 
 the reach of human power. Is it in the power of any 
 governor to prevent his people stealing from each 
 other? Have you not within the colony magistrates, 
 policemen, prisons, ^vhipping-posts, and gibbets? and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 461 
 
 do you not perceive that in spite of all these means to 
 make your people honest, that your prisons continue 
 full, and that you have constant employment for your 
 magistrates, policemen, and hangmen, without being 
 able to keep down your colonial thieves and cheats? 
 A thief is a wolf; he belongs to no society, and yet 
 is the pest and bane of all societies. You have your 
 thieves, and we have thieves among us ; but we cannot 
 as chiefs, extirpate the thieves of CafFreland, more 
 than we can extirpate the wolves, or you can extirpate 
 the thieves of the colony. There is however this dif- 
 ference between us: we discountenance thieves in 
 CafFreland, and prevent, as far as possible, our people 
 stealing from the colony ; but you countenance the 
 robbery of your people upon the Caflfres, by the sanc- 
 tion you give to the injustice of the patrol system. 
 Our people have stolen your cattle, but you have, by 
 the manner by which you have refunded your loss, 
 punished the innocent; and after having taken our 
 country from us, without even a shadow of justice, and 
 shut us up to starvation, you threaten us with destruc- 
 tion for the thefts of those to whom you left no choice 
 but to steal or die by famine." 
 
 What force and justice of reasoning in these 
 abused Caffres ! what force and injustice of action in 
 the English ! Who could have believed that from the 
 moment of our becoming masters of the Cape colony 
 such dreadful and wicked scenes as these could be 
 going on, up to 1834, by Englishmen. But the end 
 was not yet come ; other, and still more abominable 
 deeds were to be perpetrated. Another war broke 
 out, and the people of England asked, why? Dr. 
 Philip, before the Parliamentary Committee, said, — 
 
462 COLONIZATION 
 
 " The encroachments of the colonists upon the Caf- 
 fres, when they came in contact with them on the 
 banks of the Gamtoos river ; their expulsion from the 
 Rumfield, now Albany, in 1811; the commandoes of 
 Colonel Brereton, in 1818; our conduct to Gaika, 
 our ally, in 1819, in depriving him of the country 
 between the Fish and Keiskamma Rivers; the injury 
 inflicted upon Macomo and Gaika, by the ejectment 
 of Macoiiio and his people, with many of the people 
 of Gaika, from the Kat River, in 1829; the manner 
 in which the Caffres were expelled from the west bank 
 of the Chumie and Keiskamma, in 1833, and, subse- 
 quently, again (after having been allowed to return) 
 in 1834; and the working of the commando system, 
 down to December, 1834, — were sufficient in them- 
 selves to account for the Caffre war, if the CafFres are 
 allowed to be human beings, and to possess passions 
 like our own." 
 
 To all this series of insults and inflictions v/ere soon 
 added fresh ones. 
 
 " On the 2nd December, of this very year," con- 
 tinued Dr. Philip, " Ensign Sparkes went to orje of 
 the Chief Eno's kraals, for the purpose of getting 
 some horses, supposed to have been stolen. Not 
 finding them there, he proceeded to take by force a 
 large quantity of cattle as an indemnity. This pro- 
 ceeding roused the dormant anger of the Caffres ; 
 they surrounded his party, and manifested an inten- 
 tion of attacking it. They did not, however, venture 
 upon a general engagement, though one of them, 
 more daring, and perhaps a greater loser than the 
 rest, wounded Ensign Sparkes in the arm with an 
 assagai, or spear, whilst the soldiers under his com- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 463 
 
 mand were busily employed in driving the cattle out 
 of the bush. Macomo no sooner heard of this affair, 
 than he gave up of his own property, to the colony, 
 400 head of cattle, and went himself frequently to 
 visit the young man who had been wounded, express- 
 ing great sorrow at what had occurred. This conduct 
 was highly praiseworthy, as it was evidently for the 
 sake of preventing any misunderstanding, but more 
 especially so, because the deed had been committed, 
 not by one of his people, but by a CaiFre belonging 
 to Eno's tribe. On the 18th of the same month, a 
 patrol under Lieut. Sutton seized a number of cattle 
 at one of Tyalie's kraals, for some horses alleged to 
 have been stolen, but not found there. On this 
 occasion the Caffres seem to have determined to resist 
 to the last. An affray took place, in which they were 
 80 far successful as to retake the cattle. Two of 
 them were, however, shot dead, and two dangerously 
 wounded, one of whom was Tyalie's own brother (not, 
 however, Macomo), who had two slugs in his head. 
 An individual residing in the neutral territory, refer- 
 ring to this affair, thus expressed his opinion : ' The 
 system carried on, and that to the last moment, is the 
 cause the Caffres could not bear it any longer. The 
 very immediate cause was the wounding of Gaika's 
 son, at which the blood of every Caffre boiled.' '* 
 
 According to the evidence of John Tzatzoe, " every 
 Caffre who saw Xo-Xo's wound, went back to his hut, 
 took his assagai and shield, and set out to fight, and 
 said, ' It is better that we die than be treated thus.' " 
 
 The war being thus wantonly and disgracefully 
 provoked by the English, Sir Benjamin D 'Urban, 
 the governor, marched into the territory of the Caffre 
 
464 COLONIZATION 
 
 king Hintza, and summoned him to his presence. 
 The king, alarmed, and naturally expecting some fresh 
 act of mischief, fled, driving off his cattle to a place of 
 security. He was threatened with immediate procla- 
 mation of war if he did not return ; and to convince 
 him that there would be no dallying. Colonel Smith 
 immediately marched his troops into the mountain 
 districts where Hintza had taken refuge, was very 
 near seizing him by surprise, and carried off 10,000 
 head of cattle. Hintza, now, on sufficient security 
 being given, came to the camp, where the various 
 charges were advanced against him, and the following 
 modest conditions of peace proposed, — that he should 
 surrender 50,000 head of cattle, 1,000 horses, and 
 emancipate all his Fingoe slaves. There was no alter- 
 native but agreeing to these terms ; but unfortunately 
 for him, the Fingoe slaves, now considering themselves 
 put under the patronage of the governor, and knowing 
 how fond the English are of Caffre cattle, carried off 
 15,000 head belonging to the people. The people 
 flew to arms — and Hintza was made responsible. The 
 governor declared to him that if he did not put a 
 stop to the fighting in three hours, and order the deli- 
 very of the 50,000 head of cattle, he would hang 
 him, his son Creili, and his counsellor and brother 
 Bookoo, on the tree under which they were sitting.* 
 Poor Hintza issued his orders — the fighting ceased, 
 but the cattle did not arrive. He therefore proposed 
 to go, under a sufficient guard, to enforce the delivery 
 himself. The proposal was accepted, and he set out 
 with Col. Smith and a body of cavalry. Col. Smith 
 
 * Dr. Murray's Letter in the South African Advertizer, Feb. "20, 
 1836. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 465 
 
 assured him on commencing their march, that if he 
 attempted to escape he should certainly shoot him. 
 We shall. soon see how well he kept his word. They 
 found the people had driven the cattle to the moun- 
 tains, and Hintza sent one of his counsellors to com- 
 mand them to stop. On the same day they came to a 
 place where the cattle-track divided, and they followed 
 that path, at the advice of Hintza, which led up an 
 abrupt and wooded hill to the right, over the precipi- 
 tous banks of the Kebaka river. What followed we 
 give in the language of Col. Smith : — 
 
 " It had been observed that this day Hintza rode a 
 remarkably fine horse, and that he led him up every 
 ascent; the path up this abrupt and wooded hill above 
 described is by a narrow cattle-track, occasionally 
 passing through a ckft of the rock. I was riding 
 alone at the head of the column, and having directed 
 the cavalry to lead their horses, I was some three or 
 four horses' length in front of every one, having pre- 
 viously observed Hintza and his remaining two fol- 
 lowers leading their horses behind me, the corps of 
 Guides close to them ; when nearing the top, I heard 
 a cry of ' Hintza,' and in a moment he dashed past 
 me through the bushes, but was obliged, from the trees, 
 to descend again into the path. I cried out, 'Hintza, 
 stop ! ' I drew a pistol, and presenting it at him, 
 cried out, ' Hintza,' and I also reprimanded his guard, 
 who instantly came up ; he stopped and smiled, and I 
 was ashamed of my suspicion. Upon nearing the top 
 of this steep ascent, the country was perfectly open, 
 and a considerable tongue of land running parallel 
 with the rugged bed of the Kebaka, upon a gradual 
 descent of about two miles, to a turn of the river, 
 X 2 
 
466 COLONIZATION 
 
 where were several CafFre huts. I was looking back 
 to observe the march of the troops, when I heard a 
 cry of « Look, Colonel ! * I saw Hintza had set off 
 at full speed, and was 30 yards a-head of every one ; 
 I spurred my horse with violence, and coming close 
 up with him, called to him ; he urged his horse the 
 more, which could beat mine; I drew a pistol, it 
 snapped ; I drew another, it also snapped ; I then was 
 sometime galloping after him, when I spurred my 
 horse alongside of him, and struck him on the head 
 with the butt-end of a pistol ; he redoubled his efforts 
 to escape, and his horse was three lengths a-head of 
 mine. I had dropped one pistol, I threw the other 
 after him, and struck him again on the head. Having 
 thus raced about a mile, we were within half a mile of 
 the Caffre huts ; I found my horse was closing with 
 him ; I had no means whatever of assailing him, while 
 he was provided with his assagais ; I therefore resolved 
 to attempt to pull him off his horse, and I seized 
 the athletic chief by the throat, and twisting my 
 hand in his karop, I dragged him from his seat, and 
 hurled him to the earth ; he instantly sprang on his 
 legs, and sent an assagai at me, running off towards 
 the rugged bed of the Kebaka. My horse was most 
 unruly, and I could not pull him up till I reached the 
 Caffre huts. This unhorsing the chief, and his wait- 
 ing to throw an assagai at me, brought Mr. George 
 Southey of the corps of Guides up ; and, at about 200 
 yards' distance, he twice called to Hintza, in Caffre, 
 to stop, or he would shoot him. He ran on ; Mr. 
 Southey fired, and only slightly struck him in the leg, 
 again calling to him to stop, without effect ; he fired, 
 and shot him through the back; he fell headlong 
 
ANP CHRISTIANITY. 467 
 
 forwards, but springing up and running forwards, 
 closely pursued by my aide-de-camp, Lieutenant 
 Balfour, he precipitated himself down a kloof into 
 the Kebaka, and posting himself in a narrow niche of 
 the rock, defied any attempt to secure him; when, 
 still refusing to surrender, and raising an assagai, Mr. 
 George Southey fired, and shot him through the head. 
 Thus terminated the career of the chief Hintza, whose 
 treachery, perfidy, and want of faith, made him worthy 
 of the nation of atrocious and indomitable savages over 
 whom he was the acknowledged chieftain. One of 
 his followers escaped, the other was shot from an 
 eminence. About half a mile off 1 observed the vil- 
 lain Mutini and Hintza's servant looking on." 
 
 Such is the relation of the destroyer of Hintza, and 
 surely a more brutal and disgusting detail never came 
 from the chief actor of such a scene. England has 
 already testified its opinion both of this act and of this 
 war; and "this nation of atrocious and indomitable 
 savages," both before and since this transaction, have 
 given such evidences of sensibility to the law of kind- 
 ness as leave no doubt where the "treachery, perfidy, 
 and want of faith," really lay. At the very time this 
 affair was perpetrated, two British ofl&cers had gone 
 with proposals from the governor to the Caffre camp. 
 While they remained there they were treated most 
 respectfully and honourably by these " irreclaimable 
 savages," and dismissed unhurt when the intelligence 
 arrived of Hintza's having been made prisoner. What 
 a contrast does this form to our own conduct ! 
 
 The war was continued after the event of the death 
 of Hintza, until the Caffres had received what the 
 governor considered to be "sufficient" punishment; 
 
468 COLONIZATION 
 
 this consisted in the slaughter of 4,000 of their war- 
 riors, including many principal men. " There have 
 been taken from them also," says a despatch, " be- 
 sides the conquest and alienation of their country, 
 about 60,000 head of cattle, almost all their goats; 
 their habitations everywhere destroyed, and their 
 gardens and corn-fields laid waste."* 
 
 The cost of this war to the British nation, is esti- 
 mated at 241j8S4/. besides putting a stop to the trade 
 with the colony amounting to 30,000/. per annum, 
 though yet in its infancy. If any one wishes to know 
 how absurd it is to talk of the Caffres as " atrocious 
 and indomitable savages," he has only to look into 
 the Parliamentary Report, so often referred to in this 
 chapter, in order to blush for our own barbarism, and to 
 execrate the wickedness which could, by these reckless 
 commandoes and exterminating wars, crush or impede 
 that rising civilization, and that growing Christianity, 
 which shew themselves so beautifully in this much 
 abused country. It is the wickedness of Englishmen 
 that has alone stood in the way of the rapid refine- 
 ment of the Caffre, as it has stood in the way of 
 knowledge and prosperity in all our colonies. 
 
 " Whenever," says John Tzatzoe, a Caffre chief, 
 who had, before the war at his own place, a missionary 
 and a church attended by 300 people, " the mission- 
 aries attempt to preach to the Caffres, or whenever I 
 myself preach or speak to my countrymen, they say, 
 * Why do not the missionaries first go and preach to 
 the people on the other side ; why do not they preach 
 to their own countrymen, and convert them first?'" 
 
 But the very atrocity of this last war roused the 
 
 * Report on the Aboriginal Tribes, 1837. Ball's edit. p. 115. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 469^ 
 
 spirit of the British nation, awakened parliamentary- 
 investigation ; the Caffre territory is restored by order 
 of government ; a new and more rational system of 
 policy is adopted, and it is to be hoped will be steadily 
 persevered in. 
 
 CHAi^TER XXVIII. 
 
 THE ENGLISH IN NEW HOLLAND AND THE 
 ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC. 
 
 In this chapter we shall take a concluding view of our 
 countrymen amongst the aborigines of the countries 
 they have visited or settled in; and in doing this it 
 will not be requisite to go back at all into the past. 
 To trace the manner in which they possessed them- 
 selves of these regions, or in which they have from 
 that period to the present extended their power, and 
 driven back the natives, would be only treading over 
 for the tenth time the scenes of arbitrary assumption 
 and recklessness of right, which must be, now, but too 
 familiar to my readers. We will, therefore, merely 
 look at the present state of English conduct in those 
 remote regions ; and, for this purpose, the materials 
 lie but too plentifully before us. With the exception 
 of the missionary labours, the presence of the Euro- 
 peans in these far regions is a fearful curse. The two 
 
470 COLONIZATION 
 
 great prominent features of their character there, are 
 violence and debauchery. If they had gone thither 
 only to seize the lands of the natives, as they have 
 done everywhere else, it might have excited no 
 surprise ; for who, after perusing this volume, should 
 wonder that the Europeans are selfish: if they had 
 totally exterminated the aborigines with the sword and 
 the musket, it might even then have passed in the 
 ordinary estimate of their crimes, and there might 
 have been hope that they might raise some more 
 imposing, if not more virtuous, fabric of society than 
 that which they had destroyed ; but here, the danger 
 is that they will demolish a rising civilization of a 
 beautiful and peculiar character, by their pestilent 
 profligacy. That dreadful and unrighteous system, 
 which Columbus himself introduced in the very first 
 moment of discovery, and which I have more than 
 once pointed to, in the course of this volume, as a very 
 favourite scheme of the Europeans, and especially the 
 English, the convict system — the penal colony system 
 — the throwing off the putrid matter of our corrupt 
 social state on some simple and unsuspecting country, 
 to inoculate it with the rankness of our worst moral 
 diseases, without relieving ourselves at all sensibly by 
 the unprincipled deed, has here shewn itself in all its 
 hideousness. New South Wales and Van Dieman's 
 Land have been sufficient to curse and demoralize all 
 this portion of the world. They have not only ex- 
 hibited the spectacle of European depravity in the 
 most frightful forms within themselves, but the con- 
 tagion of their evil and malignity has been blown 
 across the ocean, and sped from island to island with 
 destructive power. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 471 
 
 In these colonies, no idea of any right of the natives 
 to the soil, or any consideration of their claims, com- 
 forts, or improvements, seem to have been entertained. 
 Colonies were settled, and lands appropriated, just as 
 they were needed ; and if the natives did not like it, 
 they were shot at. The Parliamentary Inquiry of 
 1836, elicited by Sir Willliam Molesworth, drew 
 forth such a picture of colonial infamy as must have 
 astonished even the most apathetic; and the Report 
 of 1837 only confirms the horrible truth of the state- 
 ments then made. 
 
 It says : " These people, unoffending as they were 
 towards us, have, as might have been expected, suf- 
 fered in an aggravated degree from the planting 
 amongst them of our penal settlements. In the forma- 
 tion of these settlements it does not appear that the 
 territorial rights of the natives were considered, and 
 very little care has since been taken to protect them 
 from the violence or the contamination of the dregs of 
 our countrymen. 
 
 " The effects have consequently been dreadful be- 
 yond example, both in the diminution of their numbers 
 and in their demoralization." 
 
 Mr. Bannister, late attorney-general for that colony, 
 says in his recent work, " British Colonization and 
 the Coloured Tribes,'* — " In regard to New South 
 Wales, some disclosures were made by the secretary 
 of the Church Missionary Society, Mr. Coates, and 
 by others, that are likely to do good in the pending 
 inquiries concerning transportation ; and if that punish- 
 ment is to be continued, it would be merciful to 
 destroy all the natives by military massacre, as a judge 
 of the colony once coolly proposed for a particular 
 
472 COLONIZATION 
 
 district, rather than let them be exposed to the lin- 
 gering death they now undergo. But half the truth 
 was not told as to New South Wales, Military massa- 
 cres have been probably more common there than 
 elsewhere; in 18*26, Governor Darling ordered such 
 massacres — and in consequence, one black native, at 
 least, was shot at a stake in cool blood. The attorney- 
 general of the colony* remonstrated against illegal 
 orders of this kind, and was told that the secretary of 
 state's instructions authorized them." 
 
 Lord Glenelg, however, adopted in his despatch to 
 Sir James Stirling in 1835 a very different language, 
 in consequence of an affair on the Murray River. 
 The natives on this river, " in the summer of the year 
 1834, murdered a British soldier, having in the course 
 of the previous five years killed three other persons. 
 In the month of October, 18;34, Sir James Stirling, 
 the governor, proceeded with a party of horse to the 
 Murray River, in search of the tribe in question. 
 On coming up with them, it appears that the British 
 horse charged this tribe without any parley, and killed 
 fifteen of them, not, as it seems, confining their ven- 
 geance to the actual murderers. After the rout, the 
 women who had been taken prisoners were dismissed, 
 having been informed, " that the punishment had 
 been inflicted because of the misconduct of the tribe; 
 that the white men never forget to punish murder; 
 that on this occasion the women and children had been 
 spared ; but if any other persons should be killed by 
 them, not one would be allowed to remain on this side 
 of the mountains." 
 
 That is, these white men, " who never forget to 
 
 * Mr. Bannister. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 473 
 
 punish murder," would, if another person was killed by 
 the natives, commit a wholesale murder, and drive the 
 natives out of one other portion of their country. Lord 
 Glenelg, however, observed that it would be neces- 
 sary that inquiry should be made whether some act of 
 harshness or injustice had not originally provoked the 
 enmity of the natives, before such massacres could be 
 justified. His language is not only just, but very de- 
 scriptive of the cause of these attacks from the natives. 
 
 "It is impossible to regard such conflicts without 
 regret and anxiety, when we recollect how fatal, in 
 too many instances, our colonial settlements have 
 proved to the natives of the places where they have 
 been formed ; and this too by a series of conflicts in 
 every one of which it has been asserted, and appa- 
 rently with justice, that the immediate aggression 
 has not been on our side. The real causes of these 
 hostilities are to be found in a course of petty en- 
 croachments and acts of injustice committed by the 
 new settlers, at first submitted to by the natives, and 
 not sufficiently checked in the outset by the leaders of 
 the colonists. Hence has been generated in the minds 
 of the injured party a deadly spirit of hatred and ven- 
 geance, which breaks out at length into deeds of atro- 
 city, which, in their turn, make retaliation a necessary 
 part of self-defence."* 
 
 It is some satisfaction that the recent inquiries have 
 led to the appointment of a protector of the Aborigines, 
 but who shall protect them from the multitudinous 
 evils which beset them on all sides from their inter- 
 course with the whites — men expelled by the laws from 
 their own country for their profligacy, or men corrupted 
 
 * Despatch to Sir James Stirling, 23d July, 1835. 
 
474 COLONIZATION 
 
 by contact with the plague of their presence ? Grand 
 individual massacres, and cases of lawless aggression, 
 such as occasioned the abandonment of the colony at 
 Raffles' Bay, on the northern coast of Australia, where 
 for the trifling offence of the theft of an axe, the sen- 
 tinels were ordered to fire on the natives whenever 
 they approached, and who yet were found by Captain 
 Barker, the officer in command when the order for the 
 abandonment of the place arrived, to be " a mild and 
 merciful race of people ;" such great cases of violence 
 may be prevented, or reduced in number, but what 
 ubiquitous protector is to stand between the natives 
 and the stock-keepers (convicts in the employ of 
 farmers in the outskirts of the colony), of the cedar- 
 cutters, the bush-rangers, and free settlers in the remote 
 and thinly cultivated districts? — a race of the most 
 demoralized and fearful wretches on the face of the 
 earth, and who will shoot a native with the same in- 
 difference as they shoot a kangaroo. Who shall pro- 
 tect them from the diseases and the liquid fire which 
 these penal colonies have introduced amongst them ? 
 These are the destroying agencies that have compelled 
 our government to commit one great and flagrant act 
 of injustice to remedy another — actually to pursue, run 
 down, and capture, as you would so many deer in a 
 park, or as the Gauchos of the South American Pam- 
 pas do wild cattle with their lassos, the whole native 
 population of Van Dieman's land ; and carry them 
 out of their own country, to Flinder's Island? Yes, to 
 save these wretched people from the annihilation which 
 our moral corruption and destitution of all Christian 
 principle were fast bringing upon them, we have seized 
 and expelled them all from their native land. What 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 475 
 
 a Strange alternative, between destruction by our vio- 
 lence and our vices, and the commission of an act which 
 in any other part or age of the world would be regarded 
 as the most wicked and execrable. We have actually 
 turned out the inhabitants of Van Dieman*s Land, 
 because we saw that it was "a goodly heritage,*' and 
 have comfortably sate down in it ourselves ; and the 
 best justification that we can set up is, that if we did 
 not pass one general sentence of transportation upon 
 them, we must burn them up with our liquid fire, poi- 
 son them with the diseases with which our vices and 
 gluttony have covered us, thick as the quills on a por- 
 cupine, or knock them down with our bullets, or the 
 axes of our wood-cutters ! What an indescribable 
 and monstrous crime must it be in the eye of the 
 English to possess a beautiful and fertile island, — that 
 the possessors shall be transported as convicts to make 
 way for the convicts from this kingdom who have been 
 pronounced by our laws too infamous to live here any 
 longer ! To such a pass are we come, that the Jeze- 
 bel spirit of our lawless cupidity does not merely tell us 
 that it will give us a vineyard, but whatever country 
 or people we lust after. 
 
 We have then, totally cleared Van Dieman's Land 
 of what Colonel Arthur himself, an agent of this 
 sweeping expulsion of a whole nation, calls " a noble- 
 minded race/'* and have reduced the natives of New 
 Holland, so far as we have come in contact with them, 
 to misery. 
 
 This is the evidence given by Bishop Brough- 
 ton : — " They do not so much retire as decay ; w here- 
 ever Europeans meet with them, they appear to 
 * Despatch to Lord Goderich, 6th April, 1833. 
 
476 COLONIZATION 
 
 wear out, and gradually to decay : they diminish in 
 numbers ; they appear actually to vanish from the face 
 of the earth, lam led to apprehend that within a 
 very limited period, a few years,*' adds the Bishop, 
 " those who are most in contact with Europeans will 
 be utterly extinct — I will not say exterminated — but 
 they will be extinct." 
 
 As to their moral condition, the bishop says of the 
 natives around Sidney — " They are in a state which 
 I consider one of extreme degradation and ignorance ; 
 they are, in fact, in a situation much inferior to what 
 I suppose them to have been before they had any 
 communication with Europe." And again, in his 
 charge, " It is an awful, it is even an appalling consi- 
 deration, that, after an intercourse of nearly half a 
 century with a Christian people, these hapless human 
 beings continue to this day in their original benighted 
 and degraded state. I may even proceed farther, so 
 far as to express my fears that our settlement in theiF 
 country has even deteriorated a condition of existence, 
 than which, before our interference, nothing more 
 miserable could easily be conceived. While, as the 
 contagion of European intercourse has extended itself 
 among them, they gradually lose the better properties 
 of their own character, they appear in exchange to 
 acquire none but the most objectionable and degrading 
 of ours." 
 
 The natives about Sidney and Paramatta are repre- 
 sented as in a state of wretchedness still more de- 
 plorable than those resident in the interior. 
 
 " Those in the vicinity of Sidney are so completely 
 changed, they scarcely have the same pursuits now ; 
 they go about the streets begging their bread, and 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 477 
 
 begging for clothing and rum. From the diseases 
 introduced among them, the tribes in immediate con- 
 nexion with those large towns almost became extinct ; 
 not more than two or three remained, when I was last 
 in New South Wales, of tribes which formerly con- 
 sisted of 200 or 300." 
 
 Dr. Lang, the minister of the Scotch church, writes, 
 " From the prevalence of infanticide, from intemper- 
 ance, and from European diseases, their number is 
 evidently and rapidly diminishing in all the older set- 
 tlements of the colony, and in the neighbourhood of 
 Sidney especially, they present merely the shadow 
 of what were once numerous tribes." Yet even now 
 " he thinks their number within the limits of the 
 colony of New South Wales cannot be less than 
 10,000 — an indication of what must once have been 
 the population, and what the destruction. It is only," 
 Dr. Lang observes, " through the influence of Chris- 
 tianity, brought to bear upon the natives by the 
 zealous exertions of devoted missionaries, that the 
 progress of extinction can be checked." 
 
 Enormous as are these evils, it would be well if 
 they stopped here; but the moral corruption of our 
 penal colonies overflows, and is blown by the winds, 
 like the miasma of the plague, to other shores, and 
 threatens with destruction one of the fairest scenes of 
 human regeneration and human happiness to which 
 we can turn on this huge globe of cruelty for hope 
 and consolation. Where is the mind that has not 
 dwelt in its young enthusiasm on the summer beauty 
 of the Islands of the Pacific ? That has not, from the 
 day that Captain Cook first fell in with them, wan- 
 dered in imagination with our voyagers and mission- 
 
478 COLONIZATION 
 
 aries through their fairy scenes — been wafted in some 
 magic bark over those blue and bright seas — h.een 
 hailed to the sunny shore by hundreds of simple and 
 rejoicing people — been led into the hut overhung with 
 glorious tropical flowers, or seated beneath the palm, 
 and feasted on the pine and the bread-fruit? These 
 are the things which make part of the poetry of our 
 memory and our youth. There is not a man of the 
 slightest claims to the higher and better qualities of 
 our nature to whom the existence of these oceanic 
 regions of beauty has not been a subject of delightful 
 thought, and a source of genial inspiration. Here in 
 fancy — 
 
 The white man landed ! — need the rest be told? 
 
 The New World stretched its dusk hand to the old ; 
 
 Each was to each a marvel, and the tie 
 
 Of wonder warmed to better sympathy. 
 
 Kind was the welcome of the sun-born sires, 
 
 And kinder still their daughters' gentler fires. 
 
 Their union grew : the children of the storm 
 
 Found beauty linked with many a dusky form ; 
 
 While these in turn admired the paler glow, 
 
 Which seem'd so white in climes that knew no snow. 
 
 The chase, the race, the liberty to roam 
 
 The soil where every cottage shewed a home ; -Jjl 
 
 The sea-spread net, the lightly launched canoe, 
 
 Which stemmed the studded Archipelago, 
 
 O'er whose blue bosom rose the starry isles; 
 
 The healthy slumber caused by sportive toils; 
 
 The palm, the loftiest dryad of the woods, 
 
 Within whose bosom infant Bacchus broods, 
 
 While eagles scarce build higher than the crest 
 
 Which shadows o'er the vineyard in her breast ; 
 
 The cava feast, the yam, the cocoa's root. 
 
 Which bears at once the cup, and milk, and fruit ; 
 
 The bread-tree, which, without the ploughshare, yields 
 
 The utireaped harvest of unfurrowed fields, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 479 
 
 And bakes its unadulterated loaves 
 Without a furnace in unpurchased groves, 
 And flings off famine from its fertile breast, 
 A priceless market for the gathering guest : — 
 These, with the solitudes of seas and woods, 
 The airy joys of social solitudes : — 
 
 The Island — Lord Byron. 
 
 These were the dreams of many a young dreamer — 
 and yet they were the realities of the Indian seas. 
 But even there, regeneration was needed to make this 
 ocean-paradise perfect. Superstition and evil passions 
 marred the enjoyment of the natives. Mr. William 
 Ellis, the able secretary of the London Missionary 
 Society, and author of Polynesian Researches, says — 
 " They were accustomed to practise infanticide, pro- 
 bably more extensively than any other nation ; they 
 offered human sacrifices in greater numbers than I 
 have read of their having been offered by any other 
 nation; they were accustomed to wars of the most 
 savage and exterminating kind. They were lazy too, 
 for they found all their wants supplied by nature. 
 ' The fruit ripens,' said they, * and the pigs get fat 
 while we are asleep, and that is all we want; why, 
 yierefore, should we work ? ' The missionaries have 
 Resented them with that which alone they needed to 
 insure their happiness, — Christianity; and the conse- 
 quence has been, that within the last twenty years 
 they have conveyed a cargo of idols to the depot 
 of the Missionary Society in London ; they have 
 become factors to furnish our vessels with provisions, 
 and merchants to deal with us in the agricultural 
 growth of their own country. Their language has 
 been reduced to writing, and they have gained the 
 knowledge of letters. They have, many of them, 
 
480 . COLONIZATION 
 
 emerged from the tyranny of the will of their chiefs 
 into the protection of a written law, abounding with 
 liberal and enlightened principles, and 200,000 of 
 them are reported to have embraced Christianity." 
 
 The most beautiful thing is, that when they em- 
 braced Christianity, they embraced it in its fulness 
 and simplicity. They had no ancient sophisms and 
 political interests, like Europe, to induce them to ac- 
 cept Christianity by halves, admitting just as much as 
 suited their selfishness, and explaining away, or shut- 
 ting their eyes resolutely to the rest; they, therefore, 
 furnished a most striking practical proof of the man- 
 ner in which Christianity would be understood by the 
 simple-hearted and the honest, and in doing this they 
 pronounced the severest censures upon the barbarous 
 and unchristian condition of proud Europe. " When," 
 says Mr. Ellis, " Christianity was adopted by the 
 people, human sacrifices, infant murder, and war^ en- 
 tirely ceased.^' Mr. Ellis and Mr. Williams agree that 
 they also immediately gave freedom to all their slaves. 
 They never considered the two things compatible. 
 
 According to the evidence of Mr. Williams, the 
 Tahitian and Society Islands are christianized ; tl^ 
 Austral Island group, about -350 miles south of Tahiff 
 the Harvey Islands, about 700 miles west of Tahiti; 
 the Vavou Islands, and the Hapai and the Sandwich 
 Islands, where the American missionaries are labour- 
 ing, and are 3,000 miles north of Tahiti, and the 
 inhabitants also of the eastern Archipelago, about 500 
 or 600 miles eavSt of Tahiti. 
 
 The population of these Islands, including the Sand- 
 wich Islands, are about 200,000. I'he Navigators' 
 Islands, Tongatabu, and the Marquesas, are partially 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 481 
 
 under the influence of the gospel, where missionary 
 labours have just been commenced. They are sup- 
 posed to contain from 100,000 to 150,000 people. 
 
 Wherever Christianity has been embraced by them, 
 the inhabitants have become actively industrious, and, ■ 
 to use the words of Mr. Williams, are "very apt 
 indeed" at learning European trades. Mr. Ellis's 
 statement is: — "There are now carpenters who hire 
 themselves out to captains of ships to work at repairs of 
 vessels, etc., for which they receive regular wages ; 
 and there are blacksmiths that hire themselves out to 
 captains of ships, for the purpose of preparing iron- 
 work required in building or repairing ships. The 
 natives have been taught not only to construct boats, 
 but to build vessels, and there are, perhaps, twenty 
 (there have been as many as forty) small vessels, of 
 from forty to eighty or ninety tons burthen, built by 
 the natives, navigated sometimes by Europeans, and 
 manned by natives, all the fruit of the natives' own 
 skill and industry. They have been taught to build 
 neat and comfortable houses, and to cultivate the soil. 
 They have new wants ; a number of articles of clothing 
 aad commerce are necessary to their comfort, and they 
 cultivate the soil to supply them. At one island, 
 where I was once fifteen months without seeing a 
 single European excepting our own families, there 
 were, I think, twenty-eight ships put in for provisions 
 last year, and all obtained the supplies they wanted. 
 Besides cultivating potatoes and yams, and raising 
 stock, fowls and pigs, the cultivation, the spinning and 
 the weaving of the cotton has been introduced by mis- 
 sionary artizans ; and there are some of the chiefs, and 
 a number of the people, especially in one of the islands, 
 
482 COLONIZATION 
 
 who are now decently clothed in garments made after 
 the European fashion, produced from cotton grown in 
 their own gardens, spun by their own children, and 
 woven in the islands. One of the chiefs of the island 
 of Rarotonga, as stated by the missionaries, never 
 wears any other dress than that woven in the island. 
 They have been taught also to cultivate the sugar- 
 cane, which is indigenous, and to make sugar, and 
 some of them have large plantations, employing at 
 times forty men. They supply the ships with this 
 useful article, and, at some of the islands, between 
 fifty and sixty vessels touch in a single year. The 
 natives of the islands send a considerable quantity 
 away ; I understand that one station sent as much as 
 forty tons away last year. In November last a vessel 
 of ninety tons burthen, built in the islands, was sent 
 to the colony of New South Wales laden with Tahitian- 
 grown sugar. Besides the sugar they have been taught 
 to cultivate, they prepare arrow-root, and they sent 
 to England in one year, as I was informed by mer- 
 chants in London, more than had been imported into 
 this country for nearly twenty previous years. Cattle 
 also have been introduced and preserved, chiefly^ 
 the missionaries ; pigs, dogs, and rats were the only 
 animals they had before, but the missionaries have 
 introduced cattle among them. While they continued 
 heathen, they disregarded, nay, destroyed some of 
 those first landed among them ; but since that time 
 . they have highly prized them, and by their attention 
 to them they are now so numerous as to enable the 
 natives to supply ships with fresh beef at the rate of 
 threepence a poimd. The islanders have also been 
 instructed by the missionaries in the manufacture of 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 483 
 
 cocoa-nut oil, of which large quantities are exported. 
 They have been taught to cultivate tobacco, and this 
 would have been a valuable article of commerce had 
 not the duty in New South Wales been so high as to 
 exclude that grown in the islands from the market. 
 The above are some of the proofs that Christianity 
 prepares the way for, and necessarily leads to, the 
 civilization of those by whom it is adopted. There 
 are now in operation among a people who, when the 
 missionaries arrived, were destitute of a written lan- 
 guage, seventy-eight schools^ which contain between 
 12,000 and 13,000 scholars. The Tahitians have also 
 a simple, explicit, and wholesome code of laws, as the 
 result of their imbibing the principles of Christianity. 
 This code of laws is printed and circulated among 
 them, understood by all, and acknowledged by all as 
 the supreme rule of action for all classes in their civil 
 and social relations. The laws have been productive 
 of great benefits." 
 
 Here again they have far outstripped us in Eng- 
 land. When shall we have a code of laws, so simple 
 and compact, that it may be " printed and circulated 
 amongst us, and understood by all ?*' The benefits 
 resulting from this intelligible and popular code, Mr. 
 Ellis tells us, have been great. No doubt of it. The 
 benefits of such a code in England would be incalcu- 
 lable ; but when will the lawyers, or our enlightened 
 Parliament let us have it? The whole scene of the 
 reformation, and the happiness introduced by Chris- 
 tianity into the South- Sea Islands, is, however, most 
 delightful. Such a scene never was exhibited to the 
 world since its foundation. Mr. Williams' recent 
 work, descriptive of these islands and the missionary 
 
484 COLONIZATION 
 
 labours there, is fascinating as Robinson Crusoe him- 
 self, and infinitely more important in its relations. 
 If ever the idea of the age of gold was realized, it is 
 here ; or rather. 
 
 Where none contest the fields, the woods, the streams ; — 
 The goldless ages, where gold disturbs no dreams. 
 
 Besides the benefits accruing from this improved state 
 to the natives, great are the benefits that accrue from 
 it to the Europeems. The benefit of commerce, from 
 their use of European articles, is and must be con- 
 siderable. They furnish, too, articles of commerce 
 in no small quantities. Instead of European crews 
 now, in case of wreck on their coasts, being murdered 
 and devoured, they are rescued from the waves at the 
 risk of the lives of the people themselves, and re- 
 ceived, as the evidence and works of Ellis and Wil- 
 liams testify, in most remarkable instances, with the 
 greatest hospitality. 
 
 But all this springing civilization ■ — this young 
 Christianity, — this scene of beauty and peace, are 
 endangered. The founders of a new and happier 
 state, the pioneers and artificers of civilization, stand 
 aghast at the ruin that threatens their labours, — that 
 threatens the welfare, — nay, the very existence of the 
 simple islanders amongst whom they have wrought 
 such miracles of love and order. And whence arises 
 this danger? whence comes this threatened ruin? Is 
 some race of merciless savages about to burst in upon 
 these interesting people, and destroy them ? Yes, the 
 same "irreclaimable and indomitable savages,*' that 
 have ravaged and oppressed every nation which they 
 have conquered, " from China to Peru." The same 
 savages that laid waste the West Indies; that mas- 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 485 
 
 sacred the South Americans; that have chased the 
 North Americans to the "far west;" that shot the 
 Caffres for their cattle ; that have covered the coasts 
 of Africa with the blood and fires and rancorous 
 malice of. the slave-wars; that have exterminated 
 millions of Hindus by famine, and hold a hundred 
 millions of them, at this moment, in the most abject 
 condition of poverty and oppression ; the same savages 
 that are at this moment also carrying the Hill Coolies 
 from the East--— as if they had not a scene of enormities 
 there wide enough for their capacity of cruelty — to 
 sacrifice them in the West, on the graves of millions 
 of murdered negroes; the same savages are come 
 hither also. The savages of Europe, the most heart- 
 less and merciless race that ever inhabited the earth 
 — a race, for the range and continuance of its atroci- 
 ties, without a parallel in this world, and, it may 
 be safely believed, in any other, are busy in the South 
 Sea Islands. A roving clan of sailors and runaway 
 convicts have revived once more the crimes and cha- 
 racter of the old bucaniers. They go from island to 
 island, diffusing gin, debauchery, loathsome diseases, 
 land murder, as freely as if they were the greatest 
 blessings that Europe had to bestow. They are the 
 restless and triumphant apostles of misery and de- 
 struction ; and such are their achievements, that it is 
 declared that, unless our government interpose some 
 check to their progress, they will as completely anni- 
 hilate the islanders, as the Charibs were annihilated in 
 the West Indies. When Captain Cook was at the 
 Sandwich Islands, he estimated the inhabitants at 
 400,000. In 1823, Mr. Williams made a calculation, 
 and found them about 150,000. Mr. Daniel Wheeler, 
 
486 COLONIZATION 
 
 a member of the Society of Friends, who has just re- 
 turned from those regions, states that they now are 
 reduced to 110,000; a diminution of 40,000 in fifteen 
 years. Captain Cook estimated the population of 
 Tahiti at 200,000 : when the missionaries arrived 
 there, there were not above 8,000. 
 
 What a shocking business is this, that when Chris- 
 tianity has been professed in Europe for this 1800 
 years, it is from Europe that the most dreadful cor- 
 ruption of morals, and the most dismal defiance of 
 every sound principle come. If Christianity, de- 
 spised and counterfeited by its ancient professors, flies 
 to some remote corner of the globe, and there unfolds 
 to simple admiring eyes her blessings and her charms, 
 out, from Europe, rush hordes of lawless savages, to 
 chase her thence, and level to the dust the dwellings 
 and the very being of her votaries. Shall this be ! 
 Will no burning blush rise to European cheeks at this 
 reflection? But let us hear what was said on this 
 subject before the British Parliament. « 
 
 " It will be hard, we think, to find compensation, not 
 only to Australia, but to New Zealand, and to the in- 
 numerable islands of the South Seas, for the murders, 
 the misery, the contamination which we have brought 
 upon them. Our runaway convicts are tlie pests 
 of savage as well as of civilized society ; so are our 
 runaway sailors ; and the crews of our whaling vessels, 
 and of the traders from New South Wales, too fre- 
 quently act in the most reckless and immoral manner 
 when at a distance from the restraints of justice : in 
 proof of this we need only refer to the evidence of 
 the missionaries. 
 
 " It is stated that there have been not less than 150 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 487 
 
 or 200 runaways at once on the island of New Zea- 
 land, counteracting all that was done for the moral 
 improvement of the people, and teaching them every 
 vice. 
 
 " « I beg leave to add,' remarks Mr. Ellis, ' the 
 desirableness of preventing, by every practicable 
 means, the introduction of ardent spirits among the 
 inhabitants of the countries we may visit or colonize. 
 There is nothing more injurious to the South Sea 
 islanders than seamen who have absconded from 
 ships, setting up huts for the retail of ardent spirits, 
 called grog-shops, which are the resort of the indolent 
 and vipious of the crews of the vessels, and in which, 
 under the influence of intoxication, scenes of immo- 
 rality, and even murder, have been exhibited, almost 
 beyond what the natives witnessed among themselves 
 while they were heathen. The demoralization and 
 impediments to the civilization and prosperity of the 
 people that have resulted from the activity of foreign 
 traders in ardent spirits, have been painful in the ex- 
 treme. In one year it is estimated that the sum of 
 12,000 dollars was expended, in Taheite alone, chiefly 
 by the natives, for ardent spirits.' 
 
 " The lawless conduct of the crews of vessels must 
 necessarily have an injurious efi'ect on our trade, and 
 on that ground alone demands investigation. In the 
 month of April, 1834, Mr. Busby states there were 
 twenty-nine vessels at one time in the Bay of Islands ; 
 and that seldom a day passed without some complaint 
 being made to him of the most outrageous conduct on 
 the part of their crews, which he had not the means of 
 repressing, since these reckless seamen totally disre- 
 garded the usages of their own country, and the un- 
 supported authority of the British resident. 
 
488 COLONIZATION 
 
 " Tlie Rev. J. Williams, missionary in the Society 
 Islands, states, * that it is the common sailors, and the 
 lowest order of them, the very vilest of the whole, 
 who will leave their ship and go to live amongst the 
 savages, and take with them all their low habits and 
 all their vices/ The captains of merchant vessels are 
 apt to connive at the absconding of such worthless 
 sailors, and the atrocities perpetrated by them are ex- 
 cessive; they do incalculable mischief by circulating 
 reports injurious to the interests of trade. On an 
 island between the Navigator's and the Friendly 
 group, he heard there were on one occasion a hundred 
 sailors who had run away from shipping. Mr. Wil- 
 liams gives an account of a gang of convicts who stole 
 a small vessel from New South Wales, and came to 
 Raiatia, one of the Sandwich Islands, where he re- 
 sided, representing themselves as shipwrecked mari- 
 ners. Mr. Williams suspected them, and told them 
 he should inform the governor, Sir T. Brisbane, of 
 their arrival, on which they went away to an island 
 twenty miles off, and were received with every kind- 
 ness in the house of the chief. They took an oppor- 
 tunity of stealing a boat belonging to the missionary 
 of the station, and made oiF again. The natives im- 
 mediately pursued, and desired them to return their 
 missionary's boat. Instead of replying, they discharged 
 a blunderbus that was loaded with cooper's rivets, 
 which blew the head of one man to pieces; they 
 then killed two more, and a fourth received the con- 
 tents of a blunderbus in his hand, fell from exhaustion 
 amongst his mutilated companions, and was left as dead. 
 This man, and a boy who had saved himself by diving, 
 returned to their island. ' The natives were very 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 489 
 
 respectable persons ; and had it not been that we were 
 established in the estimation of the people, our lives 
 would have been sacrificed. The convicts then went 
 in the boat down to the Navigator's Islands, and there 
 entered with savage ferocity into the wars of the 
 savages. One of these men was the most savage 
 monster that ever I heard of: he boasted of having 
 killed 300 natives with his own hands.' 
 
 " And in June 1833, Mr. Thomas, Wesleyan mission- 
 ary at the Friendly Islands, still speaks of the mischief 
 done by ill-disposed captains of whalers, who, he says, 
 ' send the refuse of their crews on shore to annoy us;' 
 and proceeds to state, ' the conduct of many of these 
 masters of South-Sea whalers is most abominable; they 
 think no more of the life of an heathen than of a dog. 
 And their cruel and wanton behaviour at the different 
 islands in those seas has a powerful tendency to lead 
 the natives to hate the sight of a white man.' Mr. Wil- 
 liams mentions' one of these captains, who with his 
 people had shot twenty natives, at one of the islands, 
 for no offence; and 'another master of a whaler, 
 from Sidney, made his boast, last Christmas, at 
 Tonga, that he had killed about twenty black fellows, 
 — for so he called the natives of the Samoa, or Navi- 
 gator's Islands — for some very trifling offence; and 
 not satisfied with that, he designed to disguise his 
 vessel, and pay them another visit, and get about a 
 hundred more of them.' « Our hearts,' continues 
 Mr. Thomas, ' almost bleed for the poor Samoa 
 people ; they are a very mild, inoJ0fensive race, very 
 easy of access ; and as they are near to us, we have a 
 great hope of their embracing the truth, viz. that the 
 whole group will do so; for you will learn from 
 y2 
 
490 COLONIZATION 
 
 Mr. Williams* letter, that a part of them have already 
 turned to God. But the conduct of our English 
 savages has a tone of barbarity and cruelty in it which 
 was never heard of or practised by them.' " 
 
 But these are not all the exploits of these white 
 savages. Those who have seen in shop-windows in 
 London, dried heads of New Zealanders, may here 
 learn how they come there, and to whom the phreno- 
 logists and curiosi are indebted. 
 
 " Till lately the tattooed heads of New Zealanders 
 were sold at Sidney as objects of curiosity; and Mr. 
 Yate says he has known people give property to a 
 chief for the purpose of getting them to kill their 
 slaves, that they might have some heads to take to 
 New South Wales. 
 
 " This degrading traffic was prohibited by General 
 Darling, the governor, upon the following occasion : 
 In a representation made to Governor Darling, the 
 Rev. Mr. Marsden states, that the captain of an 
 English vessel being, as he conceived, insulted by 
 some native women, set one tribe upon another to 
 avenge his quarrel, and supplied them with arms and 
 ammunition to fight. 
 
 "In the prosecution of the war thus excited, a 
 party of forty-one Bay of Islanders made an expedition 
 against some tribes of the South. Forty of the former 
 were cut off; and a few weeks after the slaughter, a 
 Captain Jack went and purchased thirteen chiefs' 
 heads, and, bringing them back to the Bay of Islands, 
 emptied them out of a sack in the presence of their 
 relations. The New Zealanders were, very properly, 
 so much enraged that they told this captain they 
 should take possession of the ship, and put the laws of 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 491 
 
 Iheir country into execution. When he found that 
 they were in earnest, he cut his cable and left the 
 harbour, and afterwards had a narrow escape from them 
 at Taurunga. He afterwards reached Sidney, and it 
 came to the knowledge of the governor, that he 
 brought there ten of these heads for sale, on which dis- 
 covery the practice was declared unlawful. Mr. Yate 
 mentions an instance of a captain going 300 miles 
 from the Bay of Islands to East Cape, enticing twenty- 
 five young men, sons of chiefs, on board his vessel, and 
 delivering them to the Bay of Islanders, with whom 
 they were at war, merely to gain the favour of the 
 latter, and to obtain supplies for his vessel. The 
 youths were afterwards redeemed from slavery by the 
 missionaries, and restored to their friends. Mr. Yate 
 once took from the hand of a New- Zealand chief a 
 packet of corrosive sublimate, which a captain had 
 given to the savage in order to enable him to poison 
 his enemies." 
 
 Such is the general system. The atrocious charac- 
 ter of particular cases would be beyond credence, 
 after all that has now been shewn of the nature of 
 Europeans, were they not attested by the fullest and 
 most unexceptionable authority. The following case 
 was communicated by the Rev. S. Marsden, to Go- 
 vernor-general Darling, and was also afterwards re- 
 ported to the governor in person by two New Zea- 
 land chiefs. Governor Darling forwarded the account 
 of it to Lord Goderich, together with the depositions 
 of two seamen of the brig Elizabeth, and those of J. B. 
 Montefiore, Esq., and A. Kennis, Esq. merchants of 
 Sidney, who had embarked on board the Elizabeth on 
 its return to Entry Island, and had there learned the 
 
492 COLONIZATION 
 
 particulars of the case, had seen the captive chief sent 
 ashore, and had been informed that he was sacrificed. 
 " In December 1830, a Captain Stewart, of the brig 
 Elizabeth, a British vessel, on promise of ten tons of 
 flax, took above 100 New Zealanders concealed in his 
 vessel, down from Kappetee Entry Island, in Cook's 
 Strait, to Takou, or Bank's Peninsula, on the Middle 
 Island, to a tribe with whom they were at war. He 
 then invited and enticed on board the chief of Takou, 
 with his brother and two daughters : ' When they 
 came on board, the captain took hold of the chiefs 
 hand in a friendly manner, and conducted him and 
 his two daughters into the cabin; shewed him the 
 muskets, how they were arranged round the sides of 
 the cabin. When all was prepared for securing the 
 chief, the cabin-door was locked, and the chief was 
 laid hold on, and his hands were tied fast; at the same 
 time a hook, with a cord to it, was struck through the 
 skin of his throat under the side of his jaw, and the 
 line fastened to some part of the cabin : in this state 
 of torture he was kept for some days, until the vessel 
 arrived at Kappetee. One of his children clung fast 
 to her father, and cried aloud. The sailors dragged 
 her from her father, and threw her from him ; her 
 head struck against some hard substance, which killed 
 her on the spot.* The brother, or nephew, Ahu (one 
 of the narrators), ' who had been ordered to the fore- 
 castle, came as far as the capstan and peeped through 
 into the cabin, and saw the chief in the state above 
 mentioned.' They also got the chief's wife and two 
 sisters on board, with 100 baskets of flax. All the 
 men and women who came in the chief's canoe were 
 killed. ' Several toore CEUioes came off also with flax, 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 493 
 
 and the people were all killed by the natives of Kappe- 
 tee, who had been concealed on board for the purpose, 
 and the sailors who were on deck, who fired upon 
 them with their muskets/ The natives of Kappetee 
 were then sent on shore with some sailors, with orders 
 to kill all the inhabitants they could find ; and it was 
 reported that those parties who went on shore mur-. 
 dered many of the natives ; none escaped but those 
 who fled into the woods. The chief, his wife and two 
 sisters were killed when the vessel arrived at Kappetee, 
 and other circumstances yet more revolting are added." 
 
 We will now close this black recital of crimes by 
 one more case, in which the natives are represented 
 as the aggressors, though alone upon the evidence of 
 the accused party, and particularly on that of Captain 
 Guard, of whom Mr. Marshall of the Alligator, stated 
 that, " ' in the estimation of the officers of the Alliga- 
 tor, the general sentiment was one of dislike and dis- 
 gust at his conduct on board, and his conduct on 
 shore.' He has himself heard him say, that a musket- 
 ball for every New Zealander was the best mode of 
 civilizing the country. 
 
 " In April, 1834, the barque Harriet, J. Guard, 
 master, was wrecked at Cape Egmont, on the coast 
 of New Zealand. The natives came down to plunder, 
 but refrained from other violence for about ten days, 
 in which interval two of Guard's men deserted to the 
 savages. They then got into a fray with the sailors, 
 and killed twelve of them : on the part of the New 
 Zealanders twenty or thirty were shot. The savages 
 got possession of Mrs. Guard and her two children. 
 Mr. Guard and the remainder were sulffered to retreat, 
 but surrendered themselves to another tribe whom 
 
494 COLONIZATION 
 
 they met, and who finally allowed the captain to 
 depart, on his promising to return, and to bring back 
 with him a ransom in powder; and they retained 
 nine seamen as hostages. Three native chiefs accom- 
 panied Guard to Sidney. Captain Guard had been 
 trading with the New Zealanders from the year 1823, 
 and it was reported that his dealings with them had, 
 in some instances, been marked with cruelty. On 
 Mr. Guard's representation to the government at 
 Sidney, the Alligator frigate. Captain Lambert, and 
 the schooner Isabella, with a company of the 50th 
 regiment, were sent to New Zealand for the recovery 
 of Mrs. Guard and the other captives, with instruc- 
 tions, if practicable, to obtain the restoration of the 
 captives by amicable means. On arriving at the 
 coast near Cape Egmont, Captain Lambert steered 
 for a fortified village or pah, called the Nummo, where 
 Mrs. Guard was known to be detained. He sent 
 two interpreters on shore, who made promises of pay- 
 ment (though against Captain Lambert's order) to 
 the natives, and held out also a prospect of trade in 
 whalebone, on the condition that the women and 
 children should be restored. The interpreter could 
 not, from stress of weather, be received on board for 
 some days. The vessel proceeded to the tribe which 
 held the men in captivity, and they were at once 
 given up on the landing of the chiefs whom Captain 
 Lambert had brought back from Sidney. Captain 
 Lambert returned to the tribe at the Nummo, with 
 whom he had communicated through the interpreter, 
 and sent many messages to endeavour to persuade 
 them to give up the woman and one child (the other 
 was held by a third tribe), but without oflfering 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 495 
 
 ransom. On the 28th September, the military were 
 landed, and two unarmed and unattended natives 
 advanced along the sands. One announced himself 
 as the chief who retained the woman and child, and 
 rubbed noses with Guard in token of amity, express- 
 ing his readiness to give them up on the receipt of 
 the promised ' payment.' ' In reply,* as Mr. Mar- 
 shall, assistant-surgeon of the Alligator^ who witnessed 
 the scene, states, ' he was instantly seized upon as a 
 prisoner of war' (by order of Captain Johnson, com- 
 manding the detachment), ' dragged into the whale- 
 boat, and despatched on board the Alligator, in custody 
 of John Guard and his sailors. On his brief passage 
 to the boat insult followed insult ; one fellow twisting 
 his ear by means of a small swivel which hung from 
 it, and another pulling his long hair with spiteful vio- 
 lence ; a third pricking him with the point of a bayo- 
 net. Thrown to the bottom of the boat, she was 
 shoved off before he recovered himself, which he had 
 no sooner succeeded in doing than he jumped over- 
 board, and attempted to swim on shore, to prevent 
 which he was repeatedly fired upon from the boat ; 
 but not until he had been shot in the calf of the leg 
 was he again made a prisoner of. Having been a 
 second time secured, he was lashed to a thwart, and 
 stabbed and struck so repeatedly, that, on reaching 
 the Alligator, he was only able to gain the deck by a 
 strong effort, and there, after staggering a few paces 
 aft, fainted, and fell down at the foot of the capstan 
 in a gore of blood. When I dressed his wounds, on 
 a subsequent occasion, I found ten inflicted by the 
 point and edge of the bayonet over his head and face, 
 one in his left breast, which it was at first feared 
 
496 COLONIZATION 
 
 would prove, what it was evidently intended to have 
 proved, a mortal thrust, and another in the leg.' 
 
 " Captain Lambert, who did not himself see the 
 seizure, admits that the chief was unarmed when he 
 came down to the shore, and that he ' certainly was 
 severely wounded: he had a ball through the calf of 
 his leg, and he had been struck violently on the head.* 
 
 " Captain Johnson proceeded to the pah or fortified 
 village, found it deserted, and burnt it the next morn- 
 ing. On the 30th September, Mrs. Guard and one 
 child were given up, and the wounded chief thereupon 
 was very properly sent on shore, without waiting for 
 the delivery of the other child ; but ' in the evening 
 of the same day,* Captain Lambert states, ' I again 
 sent Lieutenant Thomas to ask for the child, whose 
 patience and firmness during the whole of the nego- 
 tiations, notwithstanding the insults that were offered 
 to him, merit the greatest praise. He shortly after 
 returned on board, having been fired at from one of 
 the pahs while waiting outside the surf. Such treach- 
 ery could not be borne, and I immediately commenced 
 firing at them from the ship ; a reef of rocks, which 
 extend some distance from the shore, I regret, pre- 
 vented my getting as near them as I could have 
 wished. Several shots fell into the pahs, and also 
 destroyed their canoes.'* 
 
 " October 8. After some fruitless negotiation, all 
 the soldiers and several seamen were landed, making 
 a party of 112 men, and were stationed on two ter- 
 races of the cliff, one above the other, with a six- 
 pounder carronade, while the interpreter and sailors 
 were left below to wait for the boy. The New Zea- 
 
 • Pari. Papers, 1835. No. 585. p. 7. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 497 
 
 landers approached at first with distrust ; but at length 
 a fine tall man came forward, and assured Mr. Marshall 
 that the child should be immediately forthcoming, and 
 also forbade our fighting, alleging that his ' tribe had 
 no wish to fight at all.' Soon afterwards the boy was 
 brought down on the shoulders of a chief, who 
 expressed to Lieutenant M'Murdo his desire to go 
 on board for the purpose of receiving a ransom : — 
 
 " On being told that none would be given, he turned 
 away, when one of the sailors seized hold of the child, 
 and discovered it was fastened with a strap or cord ; 
 to use his own expression, he had recourse to cutting 
 away, and the child fell upon the beach. Another 
 seaman, thinking the chief would make his escape, 
 levelled his firelock, and shot him dead. The troops 
 hearing the report of the musket, and thinking it was 
 fired by the natives, immediately opened a fire from 
 the top of the cliff upon them, who made a precipitate 
 retreat to the pahs. The child being now in our posses- 
 sion, I made a signal to the ships for the boats, intend- 
 ing to reimbark the troops ; but the weather becoming 
 thick, and a shift of wind obliging the vessels to stand 
 out to sea, and, at the same time, finding myself at- 
 tacked by the natives, who were concealed in the high 
 flax, I found my only alternative was to advance on 
 the pahs. I therefore ordered Lieutenant Gunton with 
 thirty men to the front, in skirmishing order, for the 
 purpose of driving the natives from the high flax from 
 which they were firing : this was done, and, as I have 
 reason to think, with considerable loss on the part of 
 the natives.'* 
 
 « Captain Johnson's report to the Governor of New South Wales, 
 Pari. Papers, 1835. No. 583, p. 10. 
 
498 COLONIZATION 
 
 " The body of the chief is said to have been muti- 
 lated, and the head cut off by a soldier, and kicked about. 
 It was identified by means of a brooch, which Mrs. 
 Guard said belonged to the chief, who had adopted 
 and protected her son. It is scarcely necessary to 
 add, that this wanton act met with the reprobation it 
 deserved from Captain Lambert and his officers. 
 
 " Captain Lambert states, that he should think there 
 were between twenty and thirty of the natives wounded 
 (and this, be it observed, after the child was re- 
 covered), but it was not ascertained. * The English 
 went straight forward to attack the pahs, and they 
 had no communication with the natives after.' The 
 troops immediately took possession of the two villages ; 
 and on quitting them, three days afterwards, burnt 
 them to the ground.' " 
 
 The language of Lord Goderich, on reviewing some 
 of these cases, must be that of every honourable man. 
 
 " ' It is impossible to read, without shame and in- 
 dignation, the details which these documents disclose. 
 The unfortunate natives of New Zealand, unless some 
 decisive measures of prevention be adopted, will, I 
 fear, be shortly added to the number of those barbarous 
 tribes who, in different parts of the globe, have fallen 
 a sacrifice to their intercourse with civilized men, who 
 bear and disgrace the name of Christians. ... I can- 
 not contemplate the too probable results without the 
 deepest anxiety. There can be no more sacred duty 
 than that of using every possible method to rescue the 
 natives of those extensive islands from the further 
 evils which impend over them, and to deliver our own 
 country from the disgrace and crime of having either 
 occasioned or tolerated such enormities.' " 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 499 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Two gods divide them all — pleasure and gain : 
 
 For these they live, they sacrifice to these. 
 
 And in their service wage perpetual war 
 
 With conscience and with thee. Lust in their hearts. 
 
 And mischief in their hands, they roam the earth 
 
 To prey upon each other ; stubborn, fierce, 
 
 High-minded, pouring out their own disgrace. 
 
 Thy prophets speak of such ; and, noting down 
 
 The features of the last degenerate times, 
 
 Exhibit every lineament of these. 
 
 Come then, and added to thy many crowns, 
 
 Receive one yet, as radiant as the rest, 
 
 Due to thy last and most effectual work. 
 
 Thy word fulfilled, the conquest of a world. 
 
 Cowper—The Task. 
 
 We have now followed th« Europeans to every 
 region of the globe, and seen them planting colonies, 
 and peopling new lands, and everywhere we have 
 found them the same— a lawless and domineering 
 race, seizing on the earth as if they were the first- 
 born of creation, and having a presumptive right to 
 murder and dispossess all other people. For more 
 than three centuries we have glanced back at them in 
 their course, and everywhere they have had the word 
 of God in their mouth, and the deeds of darkness in 
 
500 COLONIZATION 
 
 their hands. In the first dawn of discovery, forth 
 they went singing the Te Deum, and declaring that 
 they went to plant the cross amongst the heathen. 
 As we have already observed, however, it turned out 
 to be the cross of one of the two thieves, and a bitter 
 cross of crucifixion it has proved to the natives where 
 they have received it. It has stood the perpetual 
 sign of plunder and extermination. The Spaniards 
 were reckless in their carnage of the Indians, and all 
 succeeding generations have expressed their horror of 
 the Spaniards. The Dutch were cruel, and every- 
 body abominated their cruelty. One would have 
 thought that the world was grown merciful. Behold 
 North America at this moment, with its disinherited 
 Indians ! See Hindustan, that great and swarming 
 region of usurpations and exactions ! Look at the 
 Cape, and ask the CafFres whether the English are 
 tender-hearted and just: ask the same question in 
 New Holland : ask it of the natives of Van Dieraan's 
 Land, — men, transported from the island of their 
 fathers. Ask the New Zealanders whether the war- 
 riors whose tattooed heads stare us in the face in our 
 museums, were not delicately treated by us. Go, 
 indeed, into any one spot, of any quarter of the 
 world, and ask — no you need not ask, you shall hear 
 of our aggressions from every people that know us. 
 The words of Red- Jacket will find an echo in the 
 hearts of tens of millions of sorrowful and expatriated 
 and enthralled beings, who will exclaim, "you want 
 more land! — you want our country !" It is needless 
 to tell those who have read this history that there is, 
 and can be, nothing else like it in the whole record of 
 mortal crimes. Many are the evils that are done 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 501 
 
 under the sun; but there is and can be no evil like 
 that monstrous and earth-encompassing evil, which the 
 Europeans have committed against the Aborigines of 
 every country in which they have settled. And in 
 what country have they not settled ? It is often said 
 as a very pretty speech — that the sun never sets on 
 the dominions of ouf youthful Queen ; but who dares 
 to tell us the far more horrible truth, that it never sets 
 on the scenes of our injustice and oppressions ! When 
 we have taken a solemn review of the astounding 
 transactions recorded in this volume, and then add to 
 them the crimes against humanity committed in the 
 slate-trade and slavery, the account of our enormities 
 is complete ; and there is no sum of wickedness and 
 bloodshed — however vast, however monstrous, how- 
 ever enduring it may be — which can be pointed out, 
 from the first hour of creation, to be compared for a 
 moment with it. 
 
 The slave-trade, which one of our best informed 
 philanthropists asserts is going on at this moment to 
 the amount of 170,000 negroes a year, is indeed the 
 dreadful climax of our crimes against humanity. It 
 was not enough that the lands of all newly discovered 
 regions were seized on by fraud or violence ; it was 
 not enough that their rightful inhabitants were mur- 
 dered or enslaved ; that the odious vices of people 
 st)'ling themselves the followers of the purest of beings 
 should be poured like a pestilence into these new 
 countries. It was not enough that millions on millions 
 of peaceful beings were exterminated by fire, by 
 sword, by heavy burdens, by base violence, by dele- 
 terious mines and unaccustomed severities — by dogs, 
 by man-hunters, and by grief and despair — there yet 
 
If 
 
 502 COLONIZATION 
 
 wanted one crowning crime to place the deeds of 
 Europeans beyond all rivalry in the cause of evil, — and 
 that unapproachable abomination was found in the 
 slave-trade. They had seized on almost all other 
 countries, but they could not seize on the torrid regions 
 of Africa. They could not seize the land, but they 
 could seize the people. They could not destroy them 
 in their own sultry clime, fatal to the white men, they 
 therefore determined to immolate them on the graves 
 of the already perished Americans. To shed blood upon 
 blood, to pile bones upon bones, and curses upon curses. 
 What an idea is that ! — the Europeans standing with 
 the lash of slavery in their hands on the bones of ex- 
 terminated millions in one hemisphere, watching with 
 remorseless eyes their victims dragged from another 
 hemisphere — tilling, not with their sweat, but with 
 their heart's blood, the soil which is, in fact, the dust 
 of murdered generations of victims. To think that 
 for three centuries this work of despair and death has 
 been going on — for three centuries ! — while Europe 
 has been priding itself on the growth of knowledge 
 and the possession of the Christian faith ; while 
 mercy, and goodness, and brotherly love, have been 
 preached from pulpits, and wafted towards heaven in 
 prayers ! That from Africa to America, across the 
 great Atlantic, the ships of outrage and agony have 
 been passing over, freighted with human beings denied 
 all human rights. The mysteries of God's endurance, 
 and of European audacity and hyrocrisy are equally 
 marvellous. Why, the very track across the deep 
 seems to me blackened by this abominable traffic; — 
 there must be the dye of blood in the very ocean. 
 One might surely trace these monsters by the smell of 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 503 
 
 death, from their kidnapping haunts to the very sugar- 
 mills of the west, where canes and human flesh are 
 ground together. The ghosts of murdered millions, 
 were enough, one thinks, to lead the way without chart 
 or compass ! The very bed of the ocean must be paved 
 with bones ! and the accursed trade is still going on ! 
 We are still strutting about in the borrowed plumes 
 of Christianity, and daring to call God our father, though 
 we are become the tormentors of the human race from 
 China to Peru, and from one pole to the other !* 
 
 The whole history of European colonization is of a 
 piece. It is with grief and indignation, that passing 
 before my own mind the successive conquests and 
 colonies of the Europeans amongst the native tribes 
 of newly-discovered countries, I look in vain for a 
 single instance of a nation styling itself Christian and 
 civilized, acting towards a nation which it is pleased 
 to term barbarous with Christian honesty and common 
 feeling. The only opportunity which the aboriginal 
 tribes have had of seeing Christianity in its real form 
 and nature, has been from William Penn and the 
 missionaries. But both Penn and the missionaries 
 have in every instance found their efforts neutralized, 
 and their hopes of permanent good to their fellow- 
 creatures blasted, by the profligacy and the unprin- 
 cipled rapacity of the Europeans as a race. Never 
 was there a race at once so egotistical and so terrible ! 
 With the most happy complacency regarding them- 
 
 * Everything connected with this trade is astonishing. Queen 
 Elizabeth eagerly embarked in it in 1563, and sent the notorious 
 John Hawkins, knighted by her for this and similar deeds, out to 
 Sierra Leone for a human cargo, with four vessels, three of which, as 
 if it were the most pious of expeditions, bore the names of Jesus ! 
 Solomon! and John the Baptist ! — See Haklvyt's Voyages. 
 
504 COLONIZATION 
 
 selves as civilized and pious, while acting the savage 
 on the broadest scale, and spurning every principle of 
 natural or revealed religion. But where the mission- 
 aries have been permitted to act for any length of 
 time on the aboriginal tribes, what happy results have 
 followed. The savage has become mild ; he has con- 
 formed to the order and decorum of domestic life; he 
 has shewn that all the virtues and affections which 
 God has implanted in the human soul are not extinct 
 in him ; that they wanted but the warmth of sympathy 
 and knowledge to call them forth ; he has become an 
 effective member of the community, and his produc- 
 tions have taken their value in the general market. 
 From the Jesuits in Paraguay to the missionaries in 
 the South Seas, this has been the case. The idiocy 
 of the man who killed his goose that he might get the 
 golden eggs, was wisdom compared to the folly of 
 the European nations, in outraging and destroying 
 the Indian races, instead of civilizing them. Let any 
 one look at the immediate effect amongst the South 
 Sea Islanders, the Hottentots, or the Caffres, of civili- 
 zation creating a demand for our manufactures, and 
 of bringing the productions of their respective coun- 
 tries into the market, and then from these few and 
 isolated instances reflect what would have been now 
 the consequence of the civilization of North and South 
 America, of a great portion of South Africa, of the 
 Indian Islands, of the good treatment and encourage- 
 ment of the millions of Hindustan. Let him imagine, 
 if he can, the immense consumption of our manufac- 
 tured goods through all these vast and populous coun- 
 tries, and the wonderful variety of their natural pro- 
 ductions which they would have sent us in exchange. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 605 
 
 There is no more doubt than of the diurnal motion 
 of the earth, that by the mere exercise of common 
 honesty on the part of the whites, the greater part of 
 all these countries would now be civilized, and a tide 
 of wealth poured into Europe, such as the strongest 
 imagination can scarcely grasp ; and that, too, pur- 
 chased, not with the blood and tears of the miserable, 
 but by the moral elevation and happiness of countless 
 tribes. The waste of human life and human energies 
 has been immense, but not more immense than the 
 waste of the thousand natural productions of a thou- 
 sand different shores and climates. The arrow-root, 
 the cocoa-nut oil, the medicinal oils and drugs of the 
 southern isles ; the beautiful flax of New Zealand ; 
 sugar and coffee, spices and tea, from millions of acres 
 where they might have been raised ill abundance — 
 woods and gums, fruits and gems and ivories, have 
 been left unproduced or wasted in the deserts, because 
 the wonderful and energetic race of Europe chose to 
 be as lawless as they were enterprising, and to be the 
 destroyers rather than the benefactors of mankind. 
 For more than three centuries, and down to the very 
 last hour, £is this volume testifies, has this system, 
 stupid as it was wicked, been going on. Thank God, 
 the dawn of a new era appears at last ! 
 
 The wrongs of the Hottentots and Caffres, brought 
 to the public attention by Dr. Philip and Pringle,* 
 have led to Parliamentary inquiry ; that inquiry has 
 
 * This excellent man was a martyr to his advocacy of the claims of 
 tlie CafFres. Powerful appeals on behalf of his widow, left in painful 
 circumstances, have been made by Mr. Leitch Ritchie, in his " Life 
 of Pi^ingle," and by Mr. Bannister, in his •' Colonization and the 
 Coloured Tribes," which, if they are not eflPective, will reflect but 
 little credit upon the government, or the philanthropic public. 
 
 Z 
 
506 COLONIZATION 
 
 led to others; — the condition of the natives of the 
 South Seas, and finally of all the aboriginal tribes in 
 our colonies, has been brought under review. The 
 existence of a mass of evils and injuries, so enormous 
 as to fill any healthy mind with horror and amazement, 
 has been brought to light; and it is impossible that 
 such facts, once made familiar to the British public, 
 can ever be lost sight of again. Some expiation has 
 already been made to a portion of our victims. Part 
 of the lands of the CafFres has been returned, a 
 milder and more rational system of treatment has been 
 adopted towards them. Protectors of the Aborigines 
 have in one or two instances been appointed. New 
 and more just principles of colonization have been 
 proposed, and in a degree adopted. In the proposed 
 Association for colonizing New Zealand, and in the 
 South Australian settlement* already made, these 
 better notions are conspicuous. But these symptoms 
 of a more honourable conduct toward the Aborigines, 
 are, with respect to the evils we have done, and the 
 evils that exist, but as the light of the single morning 
 star before the sun has risen. Many are the injuries 
 and oppressions of our fellow-creatures which the 
 philanthropic have to contend against; but there is no 
 evil, and no oppression, that is a hundredth part so 
 gigantic as this. There is no case in which we owe 
 such a mighty sum of expiation : all other wrongs are 
 but the wrongs of a small section of humanity com- 
 pared with the whole. The wrongs of the Negro are 
 great, and demand all the sympathy and active attention 
 which they receive ; but the numbers of the negroes 
 
 * See a Lecture on this settlement, with letters from the settlers, 
 by Henry Watson, of Chichester. 
 
AND CHRISTIANITY. 507 
 
 in slavery are but as a drop in the bucket compared to 
 the numbers of the aborigines who are perishing be- 
 neath our iron and unchristian policy. The cause of 
 the aborigines is the cause of three-fourths of the popu- 
 lation of the globe. The evil done to them is the 
 great and universal evil of the age, and is the deepest 
 disgrace of Christendom. It is, therefore, with plea- 
 sure that I have seen the " Aborigines' Protection 
 Society" raise its head amongst the many noble 
 societies for the redress of the wrongs and the eleva- 
 tion of humanity that adorn this country. Such a 
 society must become one of the most active and pow- 
 erful agents of universal j ustice : it must be that or 
 nothing, for the evil which it has to put down is 
 tyrannous and strong beyond all others. It cannot 
 fail without the deepest disgrace to the nation — for 
 the honour of the nation, its Christian zeal, and its 
 commercial interests, are all bound up with it. Where 
 are we to look for a guarantee for the removal of the 
 foulest stain on humanity and the Christian name ? 
 Our government may be well disposed to adopt juster 
 measures; but governments are not yet formed on 
 those principles, and with those views, that will war- 
 rant us to depend upon them. 
 
 There is no power but the spirit of Christianity 
 living in the heart of the British public, which can 
 secure justice to the millions that are crying for it 
 from every region of the earth. It is that which must 
 stand as the perpetual watch and guardian of humanity ; 
 and never yet has it failed. The noblest spectacle in 
 the world is that constellation of institutions which 
 have sprung out of this spirit of Christianity in the 
 nation, and which are continually labouring to redress 
 
508 COLONIZATION, ETC. 
 
 wrongs and diffuse knowledge and happiness wherever 
 the human family extends. The ages of dreadful in- 
 flictions, and the present condition of the native tribes 
 in our vast possessions, once known, it were a libel on 
 the honour and faith of the nation to doubt for a mo- 
 ment that a new era of colonization and intercourse 
 with unlettered nations has commenced ; and I close 
 this volume of the unexampled crimes and marvellous 
 impolicy of Europe, with the firm persuasion — 
 
 That heavenward. all things tend. For all were once 
 Perfect, and all must be at length restored. 
 So God has greatly purposed ; who would else 
 In his dishonoured works himself endure 
 Dishonour, and be wronged without redress. 
 Haste, then, and wheel away a shattered world 
 Ye slow revolving seasons ! We would see — 
 A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet — 
 A world that does not hate and dread His laws. 
 And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair 
 The creature is that God pronounces good, 
 How pleasant in itself what plea«es Him. — Cowper. 
 
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