Page:Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law.djvu/15

 in those days to maintain absolutely without suggesting an alternative. Accordingly he contended that the rights of the Spaniards were based on what he termed the right of natural society, which entitled them to seek to establish and carry on an innocent trade with the Indians, the rejection of which on their part would justify a declaration of war against them, and might lead to the conquest of their country. He did not, however, hesitate to pronounce it to be wrong to deprive the Indians of their independence, either on the ground that they were sinners, or on the ground that they were pagans. “Indis non debere auferri imperium, ideo quia sunt peccatores, vel ideo quia non sunt Christiani.” The sixth dissertation, on the right of war, treats most of the questions subsequently discussed by Albericus Gentilis and Grotius, and breathes an intrepid spirit of justice and humanity, the characteristic of the Spanish theologians, which was transmitted to Dominicus Soto, the pupil and successor of Victoria, and who deserves, equally with his master, to live in the recollection of posterity. Soto, who was also a member of the Dominican Order, was the confessor of the Emperor Charles V. and the oracle of the council of Trent, to whom that assembly was indebted for much of the precision and even elegance for which its doctrinal decrees are not unjustly commended. He was the authority consulted by Charles V. on occasion of the conference held before him at Valladolid in 1542 between Sepulveda, the advocate of the Spanish colonists, who maintained that the conquest of the Indies from the natives was lawful, and Bartholomew Las Casas, the bishop of Chiapa, who contended that such conquest was unlawful, tyrannical, and unjust. The opinion of Soto may be gathered from the excellent principle laid down in his treatise on justice and law,