118 THE " NEW LAWS." Chap. VIII. 



South America, and the natives gi-oaned, for three centuries, 

 under a yoke which crashed them to the earth, and converted 

 vast tracts of once thickly populated country into uninhabited 

 deserts. 



Yet the humane intentions of the Spanish government, 

 and the labours of the Peruvian viceroys, were not wholly 

 without results ; and it is partly due to them that a system 

 of worse than African slavery was not established in Peru, 

 and that the native race has not long ago become entirely 

 extinct. 



At the time of the Spanish conquest Pizarro was empow- 

 ered, in 1529, to grant " encomiendas," or estates, to his fellow- 

 conquerors, the inhabitants of which were bound to pay tribute 

 to the holders of the grants ; and in 1536 these encomiendas 

 were extended to two lives. The consequent exactions and 

 cruelties were so intolerable that the good Las Casas, and 

 other friends of the Indians, at length induced the Emperor 

 Charles V. to enact the code so well known as the " New 

 Laws," in 1542 ; by which the encomiendas were to pass 

 immediately to the Crown after the death of the actual 

 holders ; all officers under government were prohibited from 

 holding them ; all men who had been mixed up in the civil 

 wars of the Pizarros and Almagros were to be deprived at 

 once ; a fixed sum was to be settled as tribute to be paid 

 by the Indians ; and all forced personal labour was abso- 

 lutely forbidden. 



The promulgation of these beneficent lav/s excited a howl of 

 furious execration from the conquerors, — the wolves who were 

 thus to be dragged away, when their fangs were actually fixed 

 in the flesh of their victims. Gonzalo Pizarro rose in rebellion 

 in Peru, and defeated and killed Blasco NuTiez de Vela, the 

 viceroy who had arrived to enforce tliese " New Laws ;" 

 wliile the moi-e politic Belalcazar, at Popayan, though pro- 

 fessing obedience, contrived to evade the execution of his 



