474 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



lands and that nominal Christian princes did bo also, though their 

 morals were often not so good as those of the Indians, and moreover, 

 that God bestowed his gift-s, as he made his sun to rise and his rain to 

 fall, upon the evil and the good. Proceeding with relentless logic, the 

 learned professor demonstrated that the Pope could have no possible 

 right over the lands of these people, since the dominion of Christ hiçi- 

 self was spiritual, and, if they were heathen, then stiJl less would be 

 the power of the Pope over them ; for they would not even be subject 

 to his sj)iritual autliority and that no just war could be waged against 

 them on that account. These views, as to the power of the Pope in 

 matters jmrely temporal, held as they were in the great Spanish univer- 

 sity of Salamanca, will be referred to later on ; but at present it must 

 be observed that he still made out to justify the Bull of Pope Alexander, 

 but by two arguments so modern and "up to date," that they might 

 emanate from a Mission Board at New York, or a board of directors at 

 London, If, he argues, these Indians allow the missionaries freely to 

 preach the gospel and meet their efforts only by indifference, they stand 

 in their right ; but if they resist with violence or persecute the 

 neojîhytes, there will be a just cause of war. That is the argument for 

 the Mission Boards, but the other is no less happy. Every Christian 

 nation, he argued, has an absolute right of commerce with every other 

 Christian nation and to sail its ships along their coasts : that right 

 exists therefore towards every pagan nation as well, and, if resisted, 

 there is also a just cause of war. Now we can see the right of the 

 Britisli ships to open the ports of China and the American ships the 

 ports of Japan ; but the learned professor of three centuries ago is still 

 in advance of us, for we evade his conclusions by coasting laws and 

 prohi1)itive tariffs. If the Chinese and Japanese had admitted our 

 ships under similar laws one would like to call back the shade of this 

 most excellent ecclesiastic and ask his opinion, whether a prohibitive 

 tariff' was not a prohibitive law. 



The reference of such territorial questions to the Pope wias more- 

 over rational : since geographical knowledge was nowhere cultivated 

 with so much curiosity and iïitelligence as at Rome, because of the 

 universality of the claims of the Roman See. The CaJion law required 

 the attendance of bisliopg, at definite intorvjils, at the Court of Rome, 

 and they were bound to make certain reports tlirough their metro- 

 politans. By these channels the Popes became, on geographical 

 matters, the best informed men in Europe. 



Upon this subject there has been a great deal of ad caplanduni 

 wTiting ; for, while it is quite true that current opinion in the middle 

 ages upon gcognijjhy was crude and absui-d, it is also true that the 



