Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/92

72 to the gross culprits before him, made them writhe in passion. He told them that Moors and Turks had a chance better than their own for salvation. To their plea that they could not dispense with the toil and service of the natives for all menial and laborious work, he bade them to do it themselves, with their own wives and children. The blood of the Spaniards was maddened by these “delirious things” uttered by the bold monk; his life was threatened, and it was expected that, under compulsion, he would retract his defiant sermon on the next Sunday. Instead of doing so, he but repeated and intensified his daring rebukes, and frankly warned his hearers that the Dominicans would refuse the sacraments to any who were guilty of oppressing the natives. That the Church and its priests had a power, which before this might have been used in terror if not to large effect, is proved by the fact that the monk was unharmed; while his scathed hearers, the chief in the Island, determined to send a protest against his alarming preaching to the Spanish monarch. Strangely enough too, they chose for the errand a Franciscan monk, Alonzo de Espinal, while the Dominicans commissioned the heroic preacher to represent their side at the Court. The agent of the colonists got the start for a hearing, found strong supporters in his plea for those who had sent him, and by his artful statement of the danger of impending ruin to the colony he had induced the king to engage the head of the Dominican order in Spain in a complaint against the preacher. It was only after meeting and overcoming many obstacles and much resistance that Father Antonio obtained access and a hearing at Court. But his noble earnestness was not wholly without effect. Thus were the colonists and the natives represented by priest against priest. The king took the usual course of referring the controversy to a junta, composed of some of his council and of theologians. But little that accrued to the relief or benefit of the natives came from the conference, from the measures which