“The injuries and loss which have befallen the Crown of Castile and Leon will be visited likewise on all Spain, because the tyranny wrought by their devastations, massacres, and slaughters is so monstrous, that the blind may see it, the deaf hear it, and the dumb recount it, while after our brief existence, the wise shall judge and condemn it. I invoke all the hierarchies and choirs of angels, all the saints of the Celestial Court, all the inhabitants of the globe and especially those who may live after me, to witness that I free my conscience of all that has been done; and that I have fully exposed all these woes to his Majesty; and that if he abandons the government of the Indies to the tyranny of the Spaniards, they will all be lost and depopulated—as we see Hispaniola, and other islands and three thousand leagues of the continent destitute of inhabitants. For these reasons, God will punish Spain and all her people with inevitable severity. So may it be!”(72) Language worthy of a saint and a statesman, in which there breathed the spirit of prophecy, for the system of government, once initiated by the Spanish officials, was persisted in till the end, while one by one the great possessions of Spain in the New World were torn from the mother country. In no land where freedom of speech was a recognised right, could an orator have used plainer language, and it shows both the Spanish civil and ecclesiastical authorities of that age in a somewhat unfamiliar light that Las Casas not only escaped perilous censures but even won a moral victory over his talented opponent. What would have become of the champion of such unpopular doctrines, attacking as he did the material interests of thousands of the greatest men in the land, had there been daily newspapers in those times, it is not difficult to imagine. Examples of the defenders of forlorn causes are not wanting in our own day, and the fate of those who lead an unpopular crusade is the pillory of the press, which spares no less than did the fires of the mediaeval stake. The discovery and conquest of the American dominions brought ruin to Spain as a nation; beyond the tribute of glory which those early achievements yielded to the Spanish name, the results were disastrous to her power. During centuries, much of the best blood of her prolific people was drained by the Americas, so that the population of the peninsula to-day is little more numerous than in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, whereas her territory and natural resources might maintain triple their number. CHAPTER XXI. - SAN GREGORIO DE VALLADOLID. LAST LABOURS. THE DEATH OF LAS CASAS