HISTORICAL SKETCH. 223 



with other questions of general polity. It 

 is the more requisite, perhaps, that this 

 subject should not be lost sight of, as for 

 many years it was asserted by successive 

 authors, and generally believed in Europe 

 (nay, it is probably still credited in many 

 quarters), that the aboriginal Indians, both 

 in Mexico and in the Spanish dominions 

 in South America, were all destroyed ; and 

 that the vacuum thus left was filled up 

 by negroes imported from Africa. The 

 truth is, that a great number of the In- 

 dians, undoubtedly, were sacrificed to the 

 inhuman cupidity of their conquerors, who 

 tasked them beyond their strength, and 

 who were thus the means of prematurely 

 sending them to their graves ; and also, 

 that numerous cargoes of negroes were 

 successively imported from Africa, to exe- 

 cute that labour which was beyond the 

 strength, or inconsistent with the consti- 

 tutional habits, of the Indians. But, as 



