Inasmuch as the Indians formed the great bulk of Hispano-American population, the king, of course, soon after the discovery, directed his attention to their capabilities for labor. We have seen in a previous part of this chapter that by a system of _repartimientos_ they were divided among the conquerors and made vassals of the land holders, although always kept distinct from the negroes who were afterwards imported from Africa. Although the Emperor Charles V., enacted a number of mild laws for the amelioration of their fate, their condition seems, nevertheless, to have been very little improved,--according to our personal observation,--even to the present day. We have noticed that a capitation tax was levied on every Indian, and that it varied in different parts of Spanish America, from four to fifteen dollars, according to the ability of the Indians. They were likewise doomed to labor on the public works, as well as to cultivate the soil for the general benefit of the country, whilst by the imposition of the _mita_ they were forced to toil in the mines under a rigorous and debasing system which the world believed altogether unequalled in mineral districts until the British parliamentary reports of a few years past disclosed the fact, that even in England, men and women are sometimes degraded into beasts of burden in the mines whose galleries traverse in every direction the bowels of that proud kingdom.[29] Toils and suffering were the natural conditions of the poor Indian in America after the conquest, and it might have been supposed that the plain dictates of humanity would make the Spaniards content with the labor of their serfs, without attempting afterwards, to rob them of the wages of such ignominious labor. But even in this, the Spanish ingenuity and avarice were not to be foiled, for the _corregidores_ in the towns and villages, to whom were granted the minor monopolies of almost all the necessaries of life, made this a pretext of obliging the Indians to purchase what they required at the prices they chose to affix to their goods. Monopoly--was the order of the day in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its oppressions extended through all ranks, and its grasping advantages were eagerly seized by every magistrate from the _alguazil_ to the viceroy. The people groaned, but paid the burthensome exaction, whilst the relentless officer, hardened by the contemplation of misery, and the constant commission of legalized robbery, only became more watchful, sagacious and grinding in proportion as he discovered how much the down-trodden masses could bear. Benevolent viceroys and liberal kings, frequently interposed to prevent the continuance of these unjust acts, but they were unable to cope with the numerous officials who performed all the minor ministerial duties throughout the colony. These inferior agents, in a new and partially unorganized country, had every advantage in their favor over the central authorities in the capital.