The Edinburgh Review

ART. I. The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery and to the Government of Colonies. By ARTHUR HELPS. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1855-57.

IF we had to select for an author a task of unusual difficulty,

it would be such an one as Mr. Helps has, in his latest work, chosen for himself, to repeat a story already often told by writers of high reputation, and with which readers generally are, or imagine themselves to be, well acquainted. Several portions of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' have, indeed, been expanded by subsequent historians; but such topics as the rise of Mahomedanism, the Monastic Orders, or the Crusades, are incidental parts of Gibbon's work, which admit of being detached from it and treated independently. No similar privilege belongs to the annals of the Spanish Conquest in America. The empires then overthrown did not pass, like the great empires of the Old Continent, into new forms, or strike any fresh roots in their native soil. No metempsychosis, such as that which superseded pagan Rome by Latin Christianity, was granted to Mexico and Peru. The Aztec Nebo and the Peruvian Bel stooped and bowed down at once and for ever, and with them fell into cureless ruin all the budding and all the ripening arts of Indian civilisation. The conquerors brought with them a civilisation too alien or too strong to be grafted on those military or sacerdotal despotisms, and the conquered were either absorbed by the faith and laws of their oppressors, or fell back into the savage state from which their native priests or lawgivers had raised them. Accordingly, within a century and half after their discovery, the history of

VOL. CIX. CCXXI.

the Indian empires terminates, rolled up like a scroll, rounded as with a perpetual sleep; and what remains is little more than an account of Spanish viceroyalties, of the Plate fleets, of Jesuit colonies, of buccaneers in the 17th century, of fierce and fruitless revolutions in the 19th. Mr. Helps, therefore, has undertaken to repeat not only a thrice-told, but also a very brief tale, if its duration be measured by the terms of Asiatic or European dynasties. Yet within this period of about one hundred and fifty years there lies a story so extraordinary and so romantic, that it never fails to interest even in repetition, and to this tale its latest narrator has given some of the attractions of novelty by his mode of regarding and relating it.

The peculiar drift and scope of his work, differing in many respects from those of his precursors, will be best stated in the author's own words. Mr. Helps informs the reader that—

'Some years ago, being much interested in the general subject of slavery, and engaged in writing upon it, I began to investigate the origin of modern slavery. I soon found that the works commonly referred to gave me no sufficient insight into this matter. Questions, moreover, arose in my mind, not immediately connected with slavery, but bearing closely upon it, with respect to the distribution of races in the New World. 66 Why," said I to myself, "are there none but "black men in this island; why are there none but copper-coloured "men on this line of coast; how is it that in one town the white 'population predominates, while in another the aborigines still hold "their ground? There may be a series of historical events, which, if "brought to light, would solve all these points; and I will endeavour "to trace this out for myself."-Eventually, however, I found that I was involved in a large work, and that there was much to be told about the early discoveries and conquests in America, which is not to be met with in its history as hitherto narrated. I am confirmed in this opinion by one of the greatest lawyers and most learned men that Spain has produced, whose office gave him access to all the colonial records of that country.* He justly remarks, that the historians of New Spain neglected to treat of that which was the great result of all the political transactions they narrated. He alludes to the subject of encomiendas. I have unconsciously, as far as his remark is concerned (for I did not meet with it until I had matured my own plan), been endeavouring to write a history that should not be liable to this censure. To bring before the reader not conquest only, but the results of conquest the mode of colonial government which ultimately prevailed-the extirpation of native races - the introduction of other races the growth of slavery, and the settlement of the encomiendas, on which all Indian society depended-has been the object of this history.'

* Antonio de Leon Pinelo, Relator del Consejo de las Indias.

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