Distant legislation was of no avail. The branding-iron still seared the captive's flesh, the pine-torch was still applied to the rich victim's feet, and the lash still fell on the toiler's uncovered back. The encomenderos, bent only on amassing wealth, worked their Indians until they were on the verge of death, and then cast them forth from their houses or left them where they fell dead in the streets, as food for prowling dogs and carrion birds, until the odor of corruption infected the settlements.[XIV‑11] Nor did the homes of the living escape destruction or their property violent seizure. Their dwellings were pulled down to supply building materials, and the produce and wares which they brought each day to exchange in their market at Santiago were taken from them by the servants of the Spaniards, or by soldiers, who repaid them only with blows or stabs.[XIV‑12] Thus notwithstanding the ordinances enacted by the emperor for the protection of the natives, and in the face of a papal bull issued in 1531 by his holiness Paul III.,[XIV‑13] restoring to the Indians their liberty throughout the provinces, their numbers rapidly decreased and the condition of the survivors grew worse as fresh taskmasters arrived in the New World. Few even of the poorer and none of the wealthier class of Spaniards expected to find there an abiding-place. Spain's boldest and most reckless left her shores and voyaged westward with the placid satisfaction of ruffians released from law's control, and now free from the check of an effectual executive power regarded themselves as masters of the position. * * * * * [Sidenote: BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS.] In 1542 Bartolomé de Las Casas placed in the hands of the emperor the manuscript of his well known work on the destruction of the Indies, and through the exertions mainly of that never-tiring missionary a royal junta composed of ecclesiastics and jurists was held during the previous year at Valladolid for the purpose of drawing up regulations for the better government of the provinces. The great apostle of the Indies pleaded his favorite cause with all the fire of his eloquence, urging that the natives of the New World were by the law of nature free, and giving utterance to the now somewhat trite maxim "God does not allow evil that good may come." It is somewhat singular, to say the least, to hear such doctrine from the lips of a Dominican,[XIV‑14] while yet the dark looming cloud of the inquisition cast, as from the wings of a fallen angel, the dun spectre of its huge eclipse athwart the hemispheres. [Sidenote: THE NEW LAWS.]