THE OPEN GATE
while they did all they could by many careful regulations to protect and relieve the Indians, pronounced that the hateful system of repartimientos was absolutely necessary for the welfare of the colony, which would without forced native labour inevitably fail.
Not for a moment would Las Casas accept this attempt at compromise. No regulations, no conditions could justify the accursed evil of slavery. Doomed to continual disappointment he battled on all through the strenuous years of his long life, in the New World and the Old, for this glorious cause of liberty. His great history of the Indies is a passionate plea for the enslaved people. He did not live to realise his high ideal, but who shall say that his attempted projects, his deeds of patient heroism, his words of thunder were in vain. Even in his own day public opinion in Spain as to the rights of humanity began insensibly to change, and Cervantes wrote, "Liberty is one of the most valuable blessings that Heaven has bestowed upon mankind."
