136 THE ACTS OF THE INQUISITION REPARTIMIENTOS. 



them to wander into the mazes of heresy, so that the Dominican 

 monks found but slender employment for their cruel skill. The 

 poor aborigines were hardly worth the trouble of persecution, for 

 the conquerors had already plundered them, and, unfortunately, the 

 Jews did not emigrate to the wilds of America. The inquisition, 

 however, could not restrain its natural love of labor, so, that, 

 diverting its attention from the bodies of its victims it devoted 

 itself, with the occasional recreation of an auto da jTe, to the 

 spiritual guardianship of Spanish and Indian intellects. Educa- 

 tion was of course modified and repressed by such baneful influ- 

 ences. Men dared neither learn nor read, except what was 

 selected for them by the monks. At the end of the eighteenth 

 century there were but three presses in Spanish America, — one 

 in Mexico, one in Lima, and one which belonged to the Jesuits at 

 Cordova ; but these presses were designed for the use of the 

 government alone in the dissemination of its decrees. The eye of 

 the inquisition was of course jealously directed to all publications. 

 Booksellers were bound to furnish the Holy Fathers annually with 

 a list of their merchandise, and the fraternity was empowered to 

 enter wheresoever it pleased, to seek and seize prohibited litera- 

 ture. Luther, Calvin, Vattel, Montesquieu, PurTendorff, Robertson, 

 Addison, and even the Roman Catholic Fenelon, were all pro- 

 scribed. The inquisition was the great censor of the press, and 

 nothing was submitted to the people unless it had passed the fiery 

 ordeal of the holy office. It was quite enough for a book to be 

 wise, classical, or progressive, to subject it to condemnation. 

 Even viceroys and governors were forbidden to license the publi- 

 cation of a work unless the inquisition sanctioned it ; and we have 

 seen volumes in Mexico, still kept as curiosities in private libraries, 

 out of which pages were torn and passages obliterated by the 

 Holy Fathers, before they were permitted to be sold. 1 



Inasmuch as the Indians formed the great bulk of Hispano- 

 American population, the king, of course, soon after the discovery, 

 directed his attention to their capabilities for labor. We have seen 

 in a previous part of this chapter that by a system of repartimientos 

 they were divided among the conquerors and made vassals of the 

 land holders, although always kept distinct from the negroes who 

 were afterwards imported from Africa. Although the Emperor 

 Charles V., enacted a number of mild laws for the amelioration of 

 their fate, their condition seems, nevertheless, to have been very 

 little improved, — according to our personal observation, — even to 



1 See Zavala, vol. 1, p. 52. 



