290 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON 



The mode, however, in which these riches were 

 at first obtained, forms one' of the most guilty pages 

 in the moral history of man ; and the cruelties 

 which were exercised in the American mines are a 

 blot on the escutcheon of human nature, which can 

 never be effaced or concealed, and which is now 

 only to be confessed with humility and contrition. 

 Besides the mita, or forced labour of the Indians 

 (the particular cruelty of which it is not the present 

 object to describe), the whole system was one of 

 extortion and oppression^. The miners were 

 barely sheltered from the weather ; the use of all 

 spirits was forbidden ; their food was coarse, and 

 the weighty tools which were placed in their hands. 



* Those who formefly worked the South-American mines 

 have been accused of ignorance, in having brought ore and 

 water from the mine on the backs of men. If the Indians 

 employed had received English wages and English comforts, and 

 had carried the small quantity which in England would be called 

 a load, the ignorance of their masters would have been great 

 indeed. But the case was very different. The Indian Apires 

 were beasts of burden, who carried very nearly the load of a 

 mule; and their food cost but little. Their unrecorded suffer- 

 ings were beyond description ; and I have been assured, from 

 unquestionable authority, that, with the loads on their backs, 

 many of them threw themselves down the mine^ to end a life of 

 misery and anguish. 



