THE OPEN GATE
Realising that he could do little for these poor tortured creatures while slavery was sanctioned by government, Las Casas in 1515 reluctantly left his work in Cuba where he had been much helped by the friendship of the Governor Velasquez, and returned to Spain to plead the cause of liberty and mercy. Ferdinand's long reign was soon to close. He had outlived his good genius, Queen Isabella, and the most promising of his children. Now suspicious to the last of all around him, he was dying, lonely and unloved. At heart he was superstitiously anxious to make his peace with Heaven, and Las Casas came at the right moment "when the strong man shall bow himself," and "God requireth that which is past."
In words which were "as goads" to the monarch on whom the shadow of death was falling, the Dominican spoke of the awful desolation and misery which Spanish rule had brought to the Western World. He pictured the wronged and wretched Indians, writhing under the driver's whip, tortured and slain at will by their merciless masters, and dying of hunger in the fertile land of their own inheritance. Boldly the priest declared that on Ferdinand's soul rested the guilt of their blood. A nation enslaved cried to Heaven for vengeance on their oppressor. With growing fear the king listened. In vain he protested that it was in the service of God he had sanctioned slavery, since multitudes of heathens were thus driven into the fold of Christ. In that solemn hour, and before the searing sincerity of the friar's words, "God forbids us to do evil that
