From this vigorous opening, the Bishop went on to examine the nature of the Bull of donation and the intention of Alexander VI. in granting it. He demonstrated the irrefutable fact that the Catholic sovereigns and the Pope were in absolute agreement, and that the clearness of the language of the Bull left no room for two interpretations. The better to illustrate and drive home this argument, he cited articles from the last will of Queen Isabella, of which the following translation proves the truth of his contention: “Forasmuch as when the islands and terra-firma discovered, or to be discovered, in the Ocean Sea, were granted to us by the Holy Apostolic See, our principal intention, when we asked the said concession from Pope Alexander VI. of happy memory, was to provide for attracting and winning to us the natives, and to convert them to our holy Catholic faith; and to send to the said islands and and terra-firma, prelates, religious, clerics, and other learned and God-fearing men, to instruct the inhabitants in the Catholic faith: and to use all necessary diligence in teaching them and in introducing good customs among them; all this according as may be more fully seen in the wording of the said concession. I therefore very affectionately beseech my lord the King, and I charge and command the said Princess, my daughter, and the said Prince, her husband, that they shall execute and accomplish this, making it their principal object, and using the greatest diligence therein. They shall not consent, or furnish occasion that the Indian natives and inhabitants of the said islands and and terra-firma, sustain any injury, either in their persons or their belongings, but they shall rather order that they be well and justly treated. And if they [the Indians] have received any injury, they shall correct it and shall take measures to prevent what is conceded to and enjoined upon us by the wording of the said concession, from being exceeded.” Reviewing the conditions in the colonies, Las Casas described the richness of the soil and the vast resources of the Indies, declaring that what was wanted there, were industrious, honest, and frugal emigrants, who would develop the agricultural sources of wealth, instead of the horde of rapacious adventurers and dissolute soldiery then engaged in depopulating and ruining them. One by one he stripped Sepulveda’s propositions of their brilliant rhetoric, exposing the hollowness and sham beneath the specious reasoning, with which the latter sought to cloak his poverty of facts. Las Casas closed his case with the following brilliant and prophetic peroration: