Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/392

340 Lopez de Gamar relates, "that the Spaniards found near St. Martha, several baskets full of crabs, snails, grashoppers, and locusts, which proved to be the ordinary provision of the natives. This the conquerors turned to a heavy charge against the conquered." The author owns that this, with their smoaking and trimming their beards in a different manner, gave rise to the law by which the Americans became slaves to the Spaniards.

Knowledge humanises mankind, and reason inclines to mildness; but prejudices eradicate every tender disposition.

WOULD as soon say that religion gives its professors a right to enslave those who dissent from it, in order to render its propagation more easy.

This was the notion that encouraged the ravagers of America in their iniquity. Under the influence of this idea, they founded their right of enslaving so many nations; for these robbers, who would absolutely be both robbers and Christians, were superlatively devout.

Lewis XIII. was extremely uneasy at a law, by which all the negroes of his colonies were to be made slaves; but it being strongly urged to him as the the readiest means for their conversion, he acquiesced without further scruple. Rh