doctors to instruct him in the faith; and how the Holy Father had never provided him with these doctors; and that great towns were perishing, from the belief of their inhabitants in idolatry, and from receiving amongst them “sects of perdition.”  After the above statement, he adds, “Your highnesses, as Catholic Christians and princes, lovers and furtherers of the Christian faith, and enemies of the sect of Mahomet, and of all idolatries and heresies, thought to send me, Christopher Columbus, to the aforesaid provinces of India to see the aforesaid princes, the cities and lands, and the disposition of them and of everything about them, and the way that should be taken to convert them to our holy faith.”

  Good faith of Columbus.

Columbus then speaks of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain as occurring at the same time as that in which he received orders to pursue a westerly course to India, thus combining the two transactions together, no doubt as proofs of the devout intentions of their highnesses:  and, indeed, throughout the document, he ascribes no motives to the monarchs but such as were religious.

The diary to which this address was prefixed is probably one of the books which their highnesses allude to in a letter to Columbus, as being in their possession, and which they assured him they had not shown to anybody.  I see no reason to doubt the perfect good faith of Columbus in making such a statement as that just referred to; and it is well to remark upon it, because we shall never come to a right understanding of those times and of the question of slavery as connected with them, unless we fully appreciate the good as well as the bad motives which guided the most important persons of that era.

  Character of the queen.

As for Queen Isabella, there can be no doubt about her motives.  Even in the lamentably unjust things in which she was but too often concerned, she had what, to her mind, was compelling reason to act as she did.  Perhaps there is hardly any great personage whose name and authority are found in connection with so much that is strikingly evil, all of it done, or rather assented to, upon the highest and purest motives.  Whether we refer to the expulsion of the Jews, the treatment of the Moorish converts, or the establishment of the Inquisition, all her proceedings in these matters were entirely sincere and noble-minded.  Methinks I can still see her beautiful majestic face (with broad brow, and clear, honest, loving eye), as it looks down upon the beholder from one of the chapels in the cathedral at Granada:  a countenance too expressive and individual to be what painters give as that of an angel, and yet the next thing to it.  Now, I could almost fancy, she looks down reproachfully, and yet with conscious sadness.  What she would say in her defence, could we interrogate her, is, that she obeyed the voice of heaven, taking the wise