So early as in the year 1503 a few slaves had been sent from the Portuguese settlements in Africa into the Spanish colonies in America.  In 1511, Ferdinand the Fifth, king of Spain, permitted them to be carried in greater numbers.  Ferdinand, however, must have been ignorant in these early times of the piratical manner in which the Portuguese had procured them.  He could have known nothing of their treatment when in bondage, nor could he have viewed the few uncertain adventurous transportations of them into his dominions in the western world, in the light of a regular trade.  After his death, however, a proposal was made by Bartholomew de las Casas, the bishop of Chiapa, to Cardinal Ximenes, who held the reins of the government of Spain till Charles the Fifth came to the throne, for the establishment of a regular system of commerce in the persons of the native Africans.  The object of Bartholomew de las Casas was undoubtedly to save the American Indians, whose cruel treatment and almost extirpation he had witnessed during his residence among them, and in whose behalf he had undertaken a voyage to the court of Spain.  It is difficult to reconcile this proposal with the humane and charitable spirit of the bishop of Chiapa.  But it is probable he believed that a code of laws would soon be established in favour both of Africans and of the natives in the Spanish settlements, and that he flattered himself that, being about to return and to live in the country of their slavery, he could look to the execution of it.  The cardinal, however, with a foresight, a benevolence, and a justice, which will always do honour to his memory, refused the proposal, not only judging it to be unlawful to consign innocent people to slavery at all, but to be very inconsistent to deliver the inhabitants of one country from a state of misery by consigning to it those of another.  Ximenes therefore may be considered as one of the first great friends of the Africans after the partial beginning of the trade.

This answer of the cardinal, as it showed his virtue as an individual, so it was peculiarly honourable to him as a public man, and ought to operate as a lesson to other statesmen, how they admit any thing new among political regulations and establishments, which is connected in the smallest degree with injustice.  For evil, when once sanctioned by governments, spreads in a tenfold degree, and may, unless seasonably checked, become so ramified, as to affect the reputation of a country, and to render its own removal scarcely possible without detriment to the political concerns of the state.  In no instance has this been verified more than in the case of the Slave-trade.  Never was our national character more tarnished, and our prosperity more clouded by guilt.  Never was there a monster more difficult to subdue.  Even they, who heard as it were the shrieks of oppression, and wished to assist the sufferers, were fearful of joining in their behalf.  While they acknowledged the necessity of removing one evil, they were terrified by the prospect of introducing another; and were therefore only able to relieve their feelings, by lamenting in the bitterness of their hearts, that this traffic had ever been begun at all.