THE SPANISH CONQUEST IN AMERICA.

THE fourth and concluding volume of Mr. Helps's Spanish Conquest exhibits the known characteristics of this popular author's literary composition. The style is clear, simple, and agreeable ; the narrative easy and animated; the philosophy a kind of reflective common sense. As an historian, however (we form our judgment only from the volume before us), Mr. Helps does not evince ability of the highest order. He has no claim to be regarded as an acute or pro- found analytical investigator; he never makes us thrill with deep emotion, nor can we point to passages in his book which are remark- able for originality, or power, or suggestiveness, or beauty of thought or expression; he does not draw pictures, like Carlyle or Motley, which leave an indelible impression; he does not inspire an intense ethico-political sentiment like Mr. Grote, and he has little of that

• The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery and to the Government of the Colonies. By Arthur Helps. The Fourth Volume. Parker, Son, and Bourn.

passionate sympathy with an age which enables us to live in it, as it were, or with a character which makes us feel that the man whose mental lineaments he traces, is for a moment, the foremost man of all the world. Yet if his work has not the,advantages which a history written by a more imaginative or more philosophical author would possess, it is exempted from the imperfections of hasty generalization, or exaggerated hero-viorship, or antithetical composition. Mr. Helps relates with a quiet animation and in unaffected language the tale o the Spanish Conquest, neither excusing questionable deeds nor apologizing for atrocities, nor metamorphosing those " remorseless missionaries," the Spaniards, into divinely accredited apostles of glad tidings to the Gentiles of Peru. Indeed, he commences his fourth volume with a remark by no means complimentary to the Pizarros and Almagros: " When the wild beasts of a forest have hunted down their prey, there comes the difficulty of tearing it into equal or rather satisfying shares, which mostly ends in renewed bloodshed." Here, the key-note is struck truly, and we are prepared for the rough music of savage action which follows—the feud be- tween the Pizarros and Alinagros.

Francisco Pizarro, the discoverer and conqueror of Peru, the natural son of Gonzalo Pizarro, is said by Gomara to have been born on the steps of a church, and in his earliest days to have been suckled by a sow—a statement which has a somewhat mythical air about it, and which we are by no means bound to believe. It is asserted, however, that he was employed by his father in tending pigs, a cir- cumstance in which the story of the primitive wet-nurse may have originated. Education, in the modern sense of the word, he had none. Atahualpa, whom he first robbed and afterwards murdered, regarded his conqueror with contempt when he found that he had acquired neither the art of reading, nor that of writing, accomplish- ments which the Inca both recognized and admired, in the Spaniards. Pizarro's associate and rival, Almagro, was of birth as equivocal, and of manners as uncultivated, as the marquis himself. Both were rude unlettered men, but both were prompt in action, experienced in the camp, patient, persevering, and undaunted. Pizarro, in particular, though be could not read books, could govern men; and though he would have cut but a poor figure as Captain Pen, his bearing and faculty as Captain Sword were sufficiently conspicuous and empha- tic. Francisco, however, as a man of war, was at most but prttnus inter pares in his family. All his brothers were "good soldiers and brave men. Fernando was a most skilful captain, Gonzalo was said to be the best lance that had come to the Indies, Juan showed his valour at the siege of Cusco, and Martin afterwards died fighting by his brother's side."

On his return from Spain, Fernando Pizarro took the command at Cusco. Not long after his arrival, the Indians of Collao revolted. Manco Inca thereon requested permission to go out of the city to receive Villaoma (an ecclesiastical dignitary held in a kind of papal veneration by the Peruvians), who had just returned from an expe- dition, in which he had served as captain of the Indian forces. Mr. Helps hesitates to accept the construction which the Spanish his- torians put on the transaction that followed. He seems to think it more likely that the revolt which Villaoma counselled and the Inca consented to, was not the consequence of a deep-laid conspiracy but of bitter resentment at the real or supposed ill-treatment which the Indian chiefs had received during a long and arduous journey. How- ever this may be, the Inca revolted. A great assembly of the Caciques and principal persons of the district was held, in which appeals were made to the valour, the vindictiveness, and piety of the Indians. The city of Cusco was chosen as the last battle-Found of the Peruvian patriots. Mr. Helps gives us a graphic descriptionof this ancient capital, with its streets, palaces, and houses, its twopurifying streams, its wards, called "Place of the Great Snake," the "Ward of the Lion's Tail," and its bill-built fortress. One peculiarity in it deserves to be re- marked. The empire had four divisions. On arriving in Cusco the men of the different tribes took up their position as nearly as possible in the same geographical order which each tribe held in its own country. Each tribe, moreover, was distinguished by a special head-dress; so that in traversing his city the Inca was enabled to review every section of his dominions, and to recognize the inhabitants of each district at a glance. Cusco was, in fact, a "microcosm of the whole empire." To return. Notwithstanding the patriotic efforts and fanatical heroism of the Peruvians, the Spaniards succeeded in making good their entrance. The high priest fled ; the Inca, whose position was distant three leagues from the city, though not inactive, was not among the immediate defenders of Cusco ; the chief who last encouraged his countrymen by his example, and who was one of those who had drunk out of the golden vases in sign of their deter- mination to destroy their oppressors, hurled himself from the height down upon his invaders. The besieged, above fifteen hundred, were put to the sword by the ruthless Fernando Pizarro and his men. It was on this occasion, while attacking the fortress of Cusco, that his brother Juan received his death-wound.

Almagro and his little army were on the march to Chili when the revolt of the Indians was made known to him. Mr. Helps thinks that his knowledge of this occurrence was not the real cause of his return. Almagro had been appointed governor of New Toledo, before he commenced this last expedition, but the despatches from Spain conferring the appointment only reached him after the journey had begun. Tired of the hardships of the desert, freezing in the snowy passes, sighing for the palatial splendours and luxuries of Cusco, and probably believing that the city of Cusco really fell within the limits of Toledo, Almagro returned, it may be treacherously and unwisely, but not, says Mr. Helps, unnaturally. There were various ways, it ap- pears, of reckoning the two hundred andseventy-five leagues which had

been assigned to Pizarro. The question of geographical demarcation thus became a dubious one. Negotiations, arbitrations, and battles fol- lowed. In the action of Salinas (April 6,1538), Almagro was defeated. Treated at first with forbearance and generosity, he endeavoured to gain over Pizarro's captains. An armed movement now took place, which had for its object the liberation of Almagro. Fernando Pi- zarro then summoned a council. This council passed sentence of death on the mariscal. In order to avoid a tumult he was strangled in prison. Almagro was a splendid soldier, but not, perhaps, a great commander. He was profusely generous, and had "the art of at- taching men to him who were far greater than himself in most things." So far as we understand the transaction, the responsibility of this feud with Pizarro, must rest with his ambitions, unaccommodating, and by no means strictly honourable, rival. In the sequel of his narrative, Mr. Helps relates the conspiracy of the "men of Chili," the untiring enemies of Francisco Pizarro. Led by a resolute and clever soldier, Juan de Rada, who had been employed in the mans- cal's household, and who was the guardian of the young Almagro, this faction determined to murder the marquis. Throwing off his purple robe, Francisco, when attacked, put on a cuirass, and seized a spear. He maintained his character for heroic courage to the last, but brought to the ground with a wound in the throat, and struck on his prostrate face by some base fellow with a jug, "the stern con- queror of a powerful nation" passed away from a world where he had done and where he had endured so much.

The next division of Mr. Helps's narrative touches on the New

Laws, describes the severe proceeding of the Viceroy Nufiez Vela who was sent to Peru to enforce those laws, relates the disastrous consequences of his violence, the rebellion of the colonists, the murder of the factor De Carvassal by the viceroy or his servants, and his own defeat and death. Gonzalo Pizarro, appointed Governor of

Peru by the auditors, after his victory over Vela, remained without a rival in Peru. The licentiate De la Gasca, sent from Spain com- missioned to pacify that country, on his arrival endeavoured to per- suade Gonzalo to return to his allegiance to his sovereign. Pizarro, however, resolved to carry his rebellion to the utmost hmits, and to make himself king. Preparations for war were commenced, and in the battle of Sacsabuana Gonzalo was defeated. His defeat was followed by his condemnation and execution and thus was effected the reconquest of Peru by the President Giisca. Henceforth, says Mr. Helps, we may consider the royal authority as firmly established throughout the Spanish possessions in America; and it will only re- main to trace the progress of those humane and benevolent laws which emanated from time to time from the home government, rendering the sway of the Spanish monarchs over the conquered na- tions as remarkable for mildness as any, perhaps, that has ever been recorded in the pages of history.

The strictly historical portion of Mr. Helps's new volume is fol- lowed by two books on the efforts and achievements of the Pro- tectors of the Indians, the most eminent of whom was Las Casas, and a general survey of Spanish Colonisation in America. In a previous part of this notice we have mentioned the New Laws, the attempted enforcement of which by Nnfiez Vela spread dismay among the colonists, and gave occasion to the rebellion of Gonzalo, as well as two subsequent minor rebellions. These new laws were made in the interests of the Tmlises the clients of Las Cams, but for whose un- tiring energy and singular influence they would never have been enacted. "Too much praise can hardly be awarded," says our historian, "to the humane intentions of those who promoted and framed this great code." Unfortunately, however, an equal degree of censure must be dealt out to the untempered legislation which it manifests. Its prin- cipal clauses affected the rights and interests of all the conquerors in the New World; it confiscated the property of respectable clerical and civic functionaries, whose crime was that they had been ap- pointed, from their known probity, to the discharge of certain onerous official duties; and it depnved of their encomierulas or per- sonal-service grants, all who were inculpated in the factious pro- ceedings of Pizarro and Almagro when there was, perhaps, not one "person of note in Peru who Almagro, not been concerned in those de- plorable transactions." Such was the resistance directed against the "New Laws," that Charles the Fifth was obliged to abrogate them. Mr. Helps gives us some account of the laws affecting encomiendas and personal services, observing that this legislation marks the long. continued contest that existed between the conquerors and the pro- tectors of Indians. The growing depopulation of the Indies was an effect of the Spanish conquest. Accor • to Las Casas, twelve or

1/2 fifteen millions of the natives had been destroyed by the Spaniards in the first forty years after the discovery of America; and extending the forty to sixty years, and including the ravages of disease, Mr. Helps is of opinion that the lower of the two numbers assigned by Las Casas may be reasonably accepted as very near the truth. The wars of the Spaniards among themselves proved highly destructive of Indian life. When the feuds between the Almagros and Pizarros were at their height, the Council of the Indies received a letter, stating, that in consequence of the seizure by the Spaniards of the provisions and cattle at Cusco and within an area of more than fifty leagues round it, upwards of eighty thousand Indians had died of hunger. Burns might well exclaim, "Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn."

Another chapter in Mr. Helps's new volume treats of the laws regulating negro slavery, and preventing the slavery of the Tndians

One of the results of the indulgent legislation of which the latter race was the subject, was the contraction of the labour-market in the Spanish Indies. An increased demand for negro-labour naturally ensued, "and accordingly licenses for importing seventeen thousand

negro slaves were offered for sale in the year 1557." In the following year Philip II. granted a monopoly for the importation of twenty- three thousand negroes into the Indies. From that time the traffic was unceasingly continued. The number of negroes imported into America, from the year 1517, when the trade was first permitted by Charles V., to 1807, the year in which the British Parliament passed the act abolishing the slave trade, cannot, according to Mr. Helps's computation, be estimated at less than five or six millions. The negroes were found to be stronger than the Indians, and care was taken that the villages of the more docile people should not be molested by the intractable and dangerous black race. One good man, Father Claver, a Jesuit, devoted himself to the mitigation of the sufferings of the negroes for forty years. He never protested, however, against the horrors of the traffic, and the treatment of the negroes during "the middle passage has remained one of the greatest scandals on the earth from that day down to this day." It should be noted here, that during the reign of Charles III., and under the admirable administration of Count Florida Blanca, the negroes were humanely governed, "being taught to read and write, having the privilege of purchasing their freedom, and also the power of getting themselves transferred to another master if their own had been guilty of cruelty to them." In the study of the kind and considerate legislation of the Spaniards in the Indies, Mr. Helps thinks it possible that at least a partial remedy may be found for the great evil occa- sioned by "the introduction of a subject race from another continent whose enforced presence has since proved a dire obstacle to the maintenance of concord and to the growth of civilization." To Spain he awards the very highest praise for the provident humanity which after the conquest distinguished the spread of her sway in the Indies ; for a legislation, in short, which displayed in their noblest forms the peculiar characteristics of the Spanish race—piety, loyalty, and chivalry. In different chapters of this volume, Mr. Helps gives us a sketch of the missions of Paraguay, and does ample justice to the Jesuit rule and discipline, not forgetting, however, to point out that a minute and despotic supervision is fatal to the development of cha- racter and the assertion of spontaneous action; he also gives an ade- quate account of Las Casas and his writings, sayings, and doings, sketches the progress and extent of Spanish discovery, and describes the strange mythology of the Muyscas. Among other singular beliefs which this people entertained, was included a belief in their own shadows which they considered to be gods. When the Spaniards explained to them the nature of a shadow, and pointed out to them that stones and trees had shadows, they replied that the shadows of the stones were the gods of the stones.

We congratulate Mr. Helps on the completion of his version of the marvellous records of Spanish Discovery, Conquest, and Coloniza- tion. In the new and concluding portion of his work he has pro- duced a volume which, partly narrative and partly expository, cannot fail to please, to interest, and instruct.