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Updated: May 12, 2025
It thirsts and burns for distinction; and if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then, to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us?
Yet were certain limitations still imposed on him by the very army to which he owed his immense authority. That singular body of men was, for the most part, composed of zealous republicans. In the act of enslaving their country, they had deceived themselves into the belief that they were emancipating her.
They fled, by throngs, to church and monastery, and were happy, by enslaving themselves, to escape the more terrible bondage of the sea-kings. During the brief dominion of the Norman Godfrey, every free Frisian was forced to wear a halter around his neck. The lot of a Church-slave was freedom in comparison. To kill him was punishable by a heavy fine.
At last his eyes were opened, and he saw plainly that it was neither right to take the lands and the property of the natives nor to hold them as slaves. For Bartolomé Las Casas to see the right was always to do it. He resolved at once to give up his own Indians and to preach against enslaving them.
But that 'not knowing' is not so dull as your 'knowing. I am going up a ladder which is called progress, civilization, culture; I go on and up without knowing definitely where I am going, but really it is worth living for the sake of that delightful ladder; while you know what you are living for, you live for the sake of some people's not enslaving others, that the artist and the man who rubs his paints may dine equally well.
A sure proof that he had formed no system for enslaving his people is, that the chief object of his government has been to raise a naval, not a military force; a project useful, honorable, nay, indispensably requisite, and, in spite of his great necessities, brought almost to a happy conclusion.
They bought negro slaves from slave-traders along the coast, or kidnaped negroes whom they found, and carried them to the Spanish planters of the West Indies. Hawkins and Drake were as devout and humane as other men of their time. They simply could not see any wrong in enslaving the heathen black men in Africa.
These people were in intimate communication with the Indians: in the south the Spaniards were robbing, slaughtering, enslaving and converting them; higher up, the English were trading beads and blankets to them for a consideration, and throwing in civilization and whiskey, 'for lagniappe; and in Canada the French were schooling them in a rudimentary way, missionarying among them, and drawing whole populations of them at a time to Quebec, and later to Montreal, to buy furs of them.
But conflicts soon arose among them. An abortive attempt was made by John of Calabria to deprive Ferdinand of Naples of his inheritance . In 1478 there was a coalition against Florence; in 1482, a coalition against Venice. The Turks made the best use of these quarrels, and captured Otranto , killing or enslaving twelve thousand Christians.
He has been called a patriot, because from time to time he raised the cry of driving the barbarians from Italy: it must, however, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal di San Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; it was he who stirred up the League of Cambray against Venice, and who invited the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy; in each case adding the weight of the Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his country.
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