Treatment of the Natives by the Spanish.--In his treatment of the natives, whose lands he captured, the Spanish king attempted three things,--first, to secure to the colonist and to the crown the advantages of his labor, second, to convert the Indians to the Christian religion as maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, and third, to protect them from cruelty and inhumanity. Edict after edict, law after law, issued from the Spanish throne with these ends in view. As they stand upon the greatest of colonial law-books, the Recopilacion de Leyes de las Indias, they display an admirable sensitiveness to the needs of the Indian and an appreciation of the dangers to which he was subjected; but in the actual practice these beneficent provisions were largely useless. The first and third of Spain's purposes in her treatment of the native proved incompatible. History has shown that liberty and enlightenment can not be taken from a race with one hand and protection given it with the other. All classes of Spain's colonial government were frankly in pursuit of wealth. Greed filled them all, and was the mainspring of every discovery and every settlement. The king wanted revenue for his treasury; the noble and the soldier, booty for their private purse; the friar, wealth for his order; the bishop, power for his church. All this wealth had to come out of the native toiler on the lands which the Spanish conqueror had seized; and while noble motives were probably never absent and at certain times prevailed, yet in the main the native of America and of the Philippines was a sufferer under the hand and power of the Spaniard. "The Encomenderos."--Spain's system of controlling the lives and the labor of the Indians was based to a certain extent on the feudal system, still surviving in the Peninsula at the time of her colonial conquests. The captains and soldiers and priests of her successful conquests had assigned to them great estates or fruitful lands with their native inhabitants, which they managed and ruled for their own profit. Such estates were called first "repartimientos." But very soon it became the practice, in America, to grant large numbers of Indians to the service of a Spaniard, who had over them the power of a master and who enjoyed the profits of their labor. In return he was supposed to provide for the conversion of the Indians and their religious instruction. Such a grant of Indians was called an "encomienda." The "encomendero" was not absolute lord of the lives and properties of the Indians, for elaborate laws were framed for the latter's protection. Yet the granting of subjects without the land on which they lived made possible their transfer and sale from one encomendero to another, and in this way thousands of Indians of America were made practically slaves, and were forced into labor in the mines.