Colonization and Christianity. William Howitt
But a strange and astounding epoch was now at hand. The names of Cortez and Pizarro, Mexico and Peru, are become sounds familiar to all ears—linked together as in a spell of wild wonder, and stand as the very embodiment of all that is marvellous, dazzling, and romantic in history. Here were vast empires, suddenly starting from the veil of ages into the presence of the European world, with the glitter of a golden opulence beyond the very extravagance of Arabian fable; populous as they were affluent; with a new and peculiar civilization; with arts and a literature unborrowed of other realms, and unlike those of any other. Here were those fairy and most interesting kingdoms as suddenly assaulted and subdued by two daring adventurers with a mere handful of followers; and as suddenly destroyed! Their young civilization, their fair and growing fabric of policy, ruthlessly dashed down and utterly annihilated; their princes murdered in cold blood; their wealth dissipated like a morning dream; and their swarming people crushed into slaves, or swept from their cities and their fair fields, as a harvest is swept away by the sickle!
It is difficult, amid the intoxication of the imagination on contemplating such a spectacle—for there is nothing like it in the history of the whole world—it is difficult, dazzled by military triumph, and seduced by the old sophisms of glory and adventure, to bring the mind steadily to contemplate the real nature and consequences of these events. The names of Cortez and Pizarro, indeed, through all the splendour of that renown with which the acclamations of their interested cotemporaries, and the false morality of their historians have surrounded them, still retain the gloom and terror of their cruelties. But this is derived rather from particular acts of outrageous atrocity, than from a just estimate of the total villany and unrighteous nature of their entire undertakings. Their entrance, assault, and subduction of the kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, were from first to last, in limine et in termino, the acts of daring robbers, on flame with the thirst of gold, and of a spurious and fanatical renown—setting at defiance every sentiment of justice, mercy and right, and bound by no scruples of honour or conscience, in the pursuit of their object. It is not to be denied that in the prosecution of their schemes, they displayed the most chivalrous courage, and Cortez the most consummate address—but these are the attributes of the arch-fiend himself—boundless ambition, gigantic talent, the most matchless and successful address without one feeling of pity, or one sentiment of goodness! These surely are not the qualities for which Christians ought to applaud such men as Cortez and Pizarro! They are these false and absurd notions, derived from the spirit of gentile antiquity, that have so long mocked the progress of Christianity, and held civilization in abeyance. It is to these old sophisms that we owe all the political evils under which we groan, and under which we have made all nations that have felt our power groan too. To every truly enlightened and Christian philosopher can there be a more melancholy subject of contemplation, than these romantic empires thus barbarously destroyed by an irruption of worse than Goths and Vandals? But that melancholy must be tenfold augmented, when we reflect what would have been the fate of these realms if Europe had been not nominally, but really Christianized at the moment of their discovery. If it had learned that the “peace on earth and good-will towards men,” with which the children of heaven heralded the gospel into the world, was not a mere flourish of rhetoric—not a mere phrase of eastern poetry, “beautiful exceedingly;” but actually the promulgation of the grandest and most pregnant axiom in social philosophy, that had ever been, or should be made known to mankind, or that it was possible for heaven itself from the infinitude of its blessedness to send down to it. That in it lay concentrated the perfection of civil policy, the beauty of social life, the harmony of nations, and the prosperity of every mercantile adventure. That it was the triumphant basis, on which arts and sciences, literature and poetry, should raise their proudest fabrics, and society from its general adoption, date its genuine civilization and a new era of glory and enjoyment. Suppose that to have been the mind and feeling of Europe at that time—and it is merely to suppose it to be what it pretended to be—in possession of Christianity—what would have been the simple consequence? To the wonder that thrilled through Europe at the tidings of such discovered states, an admiration as lively would have succeeded. Vast kingdoms in the heart of the new world, with cities and cultivated fields; with temples and palaces; monarchs of great state and splendour; vessels of silver and gold in gorgeous abundance; municipal police; national couriers; and hieroglyphic writing, and records of their own invention! Why, what interesting intelligence to every lover of philosophy, of literature, and of the study of human nature! Genuine intelligence, and enlightened curiosity would have flocked thither to look and admire; genuine philanthropy, to give fresh strength and guidance to this germinating civilization—and Christian spirits would have glowed with delight at the thought of shewing, in the elevated virtues, the justice, generosity and magnanimity derived by them from their faith, the benefits which it could confer on these growing states.
But to have expected anything of this kind from the Spaniards, would have been the height of folly. They had no more notion of what Christianity is, than the Great Mogul had. They knew no more than what Rome chose to tell them. They were not distinguished by one Christian virtue—for they had been instructed in none. They were not more barbarous to the Americans, than they were faithless, jealous, malignant, and quarrelsome amongst each other. Disorderly and insubordinate as soldiers, nothing but the terrors of their destructive arms, and the fatal paralysis of mind which singular prophesies had cast on the Americans, could have prevented them from being speedily swept away in the midst of their riot and contention. The idea which the Spaniards had of Christianity, is best seen in the form of proclamation which Ojeda made to the inhabitants of Tierra Firmè, and which became the Spanish model in all future usurpations of the kind. After stating that the popes, as the successors of St. Peter, were the possessors of the world, it thus went on: “One of these pontiffs, as lord of the world, hath made a grant of these islands, and of Tierra Firmè of the ocean sea, to the Catholic kings of Castile, Don Ferdinand and Donna Isabella of glorious memory, and their successors, our sovereigns, with all they contain, as is more fully expressed in certain deeds passed upon that occasion, which you may see if you desire it, (Indians, who neither knew Latin, Spanish, nor the art of reading!). Thus his majesty is king and lord of these islands, and of the continent, in virtue of this donation; and as king and lord aforesaid, most of the islands to which his title hath been notified, have recognised his majesty, and now yield obedience and subjection to him as their lord, voluntarily and without resistance! and instantly, as soon as they received information (from the sword and musket!) they obeyed the religious men sent by the king to preach to them, and to instruct them in our holy faith! … You are bound and obliged (true enough!) to act in the same manner. … If you do this, you act well, and perform that to which you are bound and obliged; his majesty, and I in his name, will receive you with love and kindness, and will leave you and your children free and exempt from servitude, and in the enjoyment of all you possess, in the same manner as the inhabitants of the islands! (ay, love and kindness, such as they had shewn to the islanders. Satan’s genuine glozing—“lies like truth, and yet most truly lies.”) Besides this, his majesty will bestow upon you many privileges, exemptions, and rewards! (Ay, such as they had bestowed on the islanders—but here begins the simple truth.) But if you will not comply, or maliciously delay to obey my injunctions, then, with the help of God, I will enter your country by force; I will carry on war against you with the utmost violence; I will subject you to the yoke of the church and the king; I will take your wives and children, and will make slaves of them, and sell or dispose of them according to his majesty’s pleasure; I will seize your goods, and do all the mischief in my power to you as rebellious subjects, who will not acknowledge or submit to their lawful sovereign. And I protest that all the bloodshed and calamities which shall follow are to be imputed to you, and not to his majesty, or to me, or to the gentlemen who serve under me, etc.”—Herrera.
Here then we have the romance stripped away from such ruffians as Cortez and Pizarro. We have here the very warrant under which they acted—a tissue of such most impudent fictions, and vindictive truths, as could only issue from that great office of delusion and oppression which corrupted all Europe with its abominable doctrine. The last sentence, however, betrays the inward feeling and consciousness of those who used it, that blood-guiltiness was not perfectly removed to their satisfaction, and is a miserable attempt at further self-delusion. These apostles of the sword, before whose proclamation our sarcasms against