I heartily wish it may produce the intended effect."[17]
In a speech upon West-Indian affairs, which Lord Brougham delivered in
the House of Commons in 1823, there is some account of the religious
instruction of the slaves as conducted by the curates. He alludes in
particular to the testimony of a worthy curate, who stated that he had
been twenty or thirty years among the negroes, "and that no single
instance of conversion to Christianity had taken place during that
time,--all his efforts to gain new proselytes among the negroes had
been in vain; all of a sudden, however, light had broken in upon their
darkness so suddenly that between five and six thousand negroes had
been baptized in a few days. I confess I was at first much surprised
at this statement. I knew not how to comprehend it; but all of a
sudden light broke in upon my darkness also. I found that there was a
clue to this most surprising story, and that these wonderful
conversions were brought about, not by a miracle, as the good man
seems himself to have really imagined, and would almost make us
believe, but by a premium of a dollar a head paid to this worthy
curate for each slave that he baptized!"
We return to Las Casas once more, to state precisely his complicity in
the introduction of the race whose sorrows have been so fearfully
avenged by Nature in every part of the New World.
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