This patent was purchased by some Genoese merchants, who immediately put it into execution, and thus that detestable traffic, the “slave trade,” was introduced by men calling themselves _Christians_, and professing to follow the doctrines of their divine Master, while they deliberately set at nought his great precept—“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” It is not within the plan of the present work to inquire how much the situation of the Indians was improved by this arrangement, but will merely observe, that while Las Casas spent his time, his money, and his health, in trying to benefit his favourite people, he forgot all other classes, and completely shut the door of mercy upon the unoffending Africans; and for no other cause than it had pleased their Creator to bestow upon them greater strength than upon the natives of the West, they were torn from their country, their friends, and home, and, to “increase a stranger’s treasures,” consigned to hopeless misery. To the Portuguese and Genoese the slave-trade exclusively belonged for many years; at length, the Dutch, seeing the gainfulness of it, engaged in it; and in 1564, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Sir John, then Mr. Hawkins, introduced this bloodstained commerce (for so it may justly be termed) into the English trade, and thus tarnished the bright name he had acquired by his many naval victories. Oh, that England, so famous for her spirit of liberty, should have ever imbrued her hands in this inhuman traffic!—that she, the “empress of the waves,” should have lent her power to crush these unfortunate beings!—that that nation by whom the sweets of domestic ties are so peculiarly felt and appreciated, should have been among the first to rend husband from wife, the babe from its mother, the daughter from her old parent, and condemn them to “Plough the winter’s wave, and reap despair!” that Britons, free-born Britons, such advocates for liberty! should have acted thus for so many years, even when the dark clouds of ignorance had been dispersed, and “knowledge to their eyes” had unfolded “her ample page,” is almost beyond credence. But, alas! it proves how much “the clink of Mammon’s box” charms the ear and deadens the nobler feelings of the soul. In 1592, two years before he died, Sir John Hawkins was so impressed with horror at what he had done in introducing the slave-trade to the notice of his countrymen, who had eagerly pursued it, that he built a hospital at Rochester, to atone, in some measure, for his violation of the laws of humanity.