In no instance has this been verified more
than in the case of the Slave-trade. Never was our national character more
tarnished, and our prosperity more clouded by guilt. Never was there a
monster more difficult to subdue. Even they, who heard as it were the
shrieks of oppression, and wished to assist the sufferers, were fearful of
joining in their behalf. While they acknowledged the necessity of removing
one evil, they were terrified by the prospect of introducing another; and
were therefore only able to relieve their feelings, by lamenting in the
bitterness of their hearts, that this traffic had ever been begun at all.
After the death of cardinal Ximenes, the emperor Charles the Fifth, who had
come into power, encouraged the Slave-trade. In 1517 he granted a patent to
one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right of importing
four thousand Africans into America. But he lived long enough to repent of
what he had thus inconsiderately done. For in the year 1542 he made a code
of laws for the better protection of the unfortunate Indians in his foreign
dominions; and he stopped the progress of African slavery by an order, that
all slaves in his American islands should be made free.
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