had no right of property over them; whatever right he had, regarded only their actions. It was his duty,

1. To protect them against every injustice, against every vexation, to which their ignorance of the civil laws exposed them.

2. To unite them in one village, without the power of residing there himself.

3. To cause them to be instructed in the christian religion.

4. To organize their domestic government after the model of the social institutions, causing the head of a family to enjoy the respect due to paternal authority, an authority very feeble, not to say, altogether unknown amongst the greater part of the dians.

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5. To cause to be observed by families the relations which society establishes amongst all its members.

6. To direct them in their agricultural and domestic labours.

7. To destroy in them all inclinations, all habits of the savage life. ·

In return for these attentions, the Indians owed to the commissioned superintendants of the encomiendas, who were called encomenderos, a yearly tribute, paid in labour, fruits, or money. When this tribute was once paid, the Indian was exempted from every other personal service.

Their utility.

This establishment was, therefore, as may be observed, a kind of apprenticeship to the civil life, for,

at the same time that philosophy and humanity were contending for the liberty of the Indians, reason and policy required that some precautions should be taken equally suitable to their total want of knowledge, and to the rudeness of their manners. Their sudden admission to the exercise of civil rights could not but be hurtful to themselves, and fatal to the society of which they too hastily became members: for, as is observed by an ancient magistrate, a love of social life is happily a natural sentiment in man, but it ought to be fortified by habit and cultivated by reason. Nature, by endowing man with sensibility, has inspired him with the love of pleasure and the dread of pain. Society is the work of nature, since it is nature that places man in society; but the love of society is a secondary sentiment which flows from reason only, and reason itself is but the knowledge acquired by experience and reflection upon what is useful or hurtful to us. Man lives in society, because nature gives him birth in it. He loves that society, because he finds he has need of it. Thus, when we say, that sociability is a sentiment natural to man, we thereby declare that man having a desire of providing for his own safety, and contributing to his own happiness, cherishes the means which promote those views; that being born with the faculty of sensation, he prefers the good to the bad; that being susceptible of experience and reflection, he becomes reasonable, that is to say, capable of comparing the advantages, which the social life procures him, with the disadvantages which he would experience, if he were deprived of it. In one word, man is social, because these sentiments,

natural to all men, are developed and fortified by the education received in the social state, but are stifled and annihilated by the individual independence attached to the savage life. They must then have been entirely extinguished amongst the Indians of Terra Firma, who enjoyed neither govcrnment, nor laws, nor arts, nor police, and it was only by reasoning, and the powerful influence of example that they could be inspired with a taste for them. It is in this point of view, that the probationary course which the Indians went through under the encomiendas, may be considered as a laudable institution. It is even observable that the government was constantly attentive to conduct them to that degree of perfection, which forms the limits of human foresight and power.

Principles by which they were governed.

On the 13th of May 1538, it was ordained, that the encomiendas should be exclusively granted to inhabitants residing in the very places where they were to exercise their functions; but cupidity, which is always accompanied with intrigue, soon made it the boon of favour. A law of the 20th of October, 1545, opened the door to solicitations, by permitting that the Indians should be indiscriminately entrusted to persons of merit. Then were courtiers observed to receive encomiendas, and thus the end of their institution was defeated. That abuse, and it was a great one, was corrected by an ordinance of the 28th of November 1568, and by the instruction of

the viceroys in 1595, which may be seen in chap. xvii. It was no longer permitted to give encomiendas, except to those who had contributed to the conquest, pacification and population of the Indies, and to their descendents Viceroys, governors, military chiefs, bishops, priests, and fiscal officers, hospitals, convents, and religious fraternities, were deprived of the right of holding encomiendas by the ordinance of 1565. That disposition extended, in 1591, to foreigners, although in the service of the king.

The right of the encomendero was fixed, unalienable, and, as it were, attached to the personal qualities of the incumbent by different laws, the execution of which was confirmed by that of the 13th of April 1628. The encomenderos could neither hire, nor pledge the Indians committed to their charge, under penalty of privation of office. The product of the tribute paid by the Indians could not amount in favour of the encomendero to more than two thousand piasters. The surplus was disposed of in pensions, according to the order of the king of the 30th of November, 1568. Finally, according to the regulation for promoting the population of the Indians, the encomiendas were granted for two lives, that is to say, to descend from father to son, after which, they were to revert to the crown, and the Indians to become direct vassals of the king, and members of the great society. Personal considerations had caused an extension to be given to this disposition, which was abrogated by an ordinance of the 14th of Octo ber, 1580.

Their extinction.

This order of things subsisted, as long as conquest was effected by force of arms, because, then, after having reduced, they sought to civilize the Indians. But when they adopted the resolution of employing, for their reduction, christian morality alone; when the Spanish sovereignty called religion to assist; when apostolic missions supplied the place of military expeditions, and ministers of the church alone were charged with the civil and religious instruction of the Indians, the encomiendas had no longer any object, and consequently became useless. It is since that period, which extends to the middle of the seventeenth century, that they ceased to be granted in the captain-generalship of Caraccas; and it is before the middle of the seventeenth, that those which existed became extinct. Is the object of them better fulfilled? That is a question, which shall be examined in its proper place.

Causes which occasioned force to be employed at Venezuela and conciliatory measures to be abandoned.

The part of Terra-Firma, and perhaps of all America, which owes least to the zeal of the missionaries is the province of Venezuela. Whatever conquest has been made there during the first century of its discovery, has been effected by the force of arms. Persuasion and morality, if they had been constantly employed, would have spared much blood; the wise, but too short administration of Ampues, is an incontestible proof of this truth. But the irruption