Page:Notices of Negro slavery as connected with Pennsylvania.djvu/12

375 Spain by permission of King Ferdinand V After his death, the proposal was made to the Regent of Spain, Cardinal Ximenes, by Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, to establish a regular commerce in African slaves, under the plausible and well-intentioned, but fallacious pretext of substituting their labor in the colonies for that of the native Indians, who were rapidly becoming exterminated by the severity of their labor and the cruel treatment of their Spanish masters. To the immortal honor of Cardinal Ximenes, he rejected the proposition on the ground of the iniquity of slavery itself in the abstract, and also the great injustice of making slaves of one nation for the liberation of another. The Cardinal appears, therefore, to have been the first avowed opponent of this traffic in men.