For the soldier, the sailor, the cavalier, the vagabond, the governor, and all their subordinates and associates, all the New World rabble from viceroy to menial willed it otherwise, the New World clergy too often winking assent. However omnipotent in Spain, there were some things in America that the sovereigns and their confessors could not do. They could not control the bad passions of their subjects when beyond the reach of rope and dungeon. That these evil proclivities were of home engendering, having for their sanction innumerable examples from church and state, statesmen and prelates would hardly admit, but it is in truth a plausible excuse for the excesses committed. The fact is that for every outrage by a subject in the far away Indies, there were ten, each of magnitude tenfold for evil, committed by the sovereigns in Spain; so that it is by no means wonderful that the Spaniards determined here to practise a little sinfulness for their own gratification, even though their preceptors did oppose wickedness which by reason of their absence they themselves could not enjoy. Though the monarchs protested earnestly, honestly, and at the length of centuries, their subjects went their way and executed their will with the natives. Were I to tell a tenth of the atrocities perpetrated by Christian civilization on the natives of America, I could tell nothing else. The catalogue of European crime, Spanish, English, French, is as long as it is revolting. Therefore, whenever I am forced to touch upon this most distasteful subject, I shall be as brief as possible. [Sidenote: DASTARDLY DOINGS OF OVANDO.] Passing the crimes of Columbus and Bobadilla, the sins of the two being, for biographical effect, usually placed upon the latter, let us look at the conduct of Ovando, who, as Spanish provincial rulers went in those days, was an average man. He ruled with vigor; and as if to offset his strict dealings with offending Spaniards, unoffending Indians were treated with treachery and merciless brutality.