Moreover, the idea of freedom was unknown to them. While the Inca gave his subjects—and gave nobly, “as a king,” to friend and foe alike—every other boon his hand could bestow, he never dreamed of giving them the rights of free men. Properly speaking, they were _not_ men, they were children; to be cared for kindly, even tenderly; to be fed, and clothed, and housed; to have their work and their play, and plenty of the latter, duly apportioned them; and, in one word, to be made good and happy. It may be said, and truly, that in intelligence they _were_ children, incapable of self-control and self-government. Still, the Inca’s ideal fell below the Christian one in this, that he neither sought to raise them out of that condition, nor provided room for them should they desire to raise themselves. Under his system there was no growth, no freedom of choice; and there was to be none. Every man must be harmless, well-behaved, industrious, or there would be no room for him in Tahuantin Suyu. But a principle which should make a free man choose the good and refuse the evil, was amongst the things not revealed to the Children of the Sun. But growth there must be, or decay will take its place. If the cruel white men from beyond the sea had not overwhelmed Tahuantin Suyu with swift destruction, it is still probable that the whole system would have melted gradually away, like a palace of ice, grand and beautiful, white and glistening with rainbow hues, but, from its very nature, unenduring. And the bloody civil war, which preceded and facilitated the conquest of the Spaniards, seems no doubtful indication of what might have taken place. One such tyrant as Atahualpa[27] (who, it should however be remembered, was not a legitimate Inca) had it in his power to cause unspeakable confusion and misery, and to destroy the fruit of the beneficent labours of a long line of honoured predecessors. Perhaps, therefore, after all, it was not so dark and sad a fate for the Empire of the Incas to fall at once and in a single day almost from the very summit of prosperity, like a royal oak in the forest struck down by the tempest. If it was ever true of any empire (which is doubtful) that she “fell unwept, without a crime,” it was true of Tahuantin Suyu. She and her children took, once for all, their place amongst the sufferers, not the doers, of wrong; the oppressed, not the oppressors. There can be no doubt which is the better place.