The Spaniards, who obtained information of the Inca people and their dominion soon after crossing the isthmus of Panama, reconnoitred the Peruvian coast in 1525, during the head-chieftaincy of Huaina-Capac. But this chief had died, and a civil war, in which the succession was contested between his two sons Tupac-cusi-huallpa (“the sun makes joy”), commonly known by the epithet Huascar (“the chosen one”), and Tupac-atau-huallpa (“the sun makes good fortune”), had been terminated in favour of the latter, when Pizarro invaded the country in 1532 with a party of 183 soldiers. Everywhere large accumulations of treasure were found; for gold and silver had been mined both in the coast-pueblos and in the sierra from remote times, and the whole of the produce still remained, largely accumulated in the numerous burial-places of a people who preserved with almost Egyptian care the corpses of the dead, depositing with them the gold and silver which had belonged to them when alive. The facilities for marching, which a century of well-organised aboriginal rule had established from one end of the dominion to the other, and in several places between the coast and the mountains, made Pizarro’s progress easy. So soon as the supreme chief had been seized and imprisoned or put to death, the submission of his followers, and the subjugation of his territory, quickly followed. But it was an easier task for the vile and sordid adventurers who invaded Peru to destroy the tyranny of its aboriginal conquerors and sack its pueblos, than for the Spanish government to assert the authority of the Crown, and provide the Inca dominion with a suitably organised administration. After much bloodshed, extending over many years, this was at length accomplished; the lands which had belonged to the Inca, the sun, or the native chiefs, and the peasantry, were, with their peasant inhabitants, chiefly serfs attached to the soil, granted by the Crown to gentlemen immigrants, and held on similar terms to those annexed to the “commends” of the military Orders—the name “commend,” indeed, becoming the technical term for estates so held. Here, as in Mexico, churches were built and endowed, diocesan organisations were established, and the difficult work of converting the Indians was begun and earnestly carried on by a devoted clergy; superior courts of justice were constituted, and law was administered in the village by alcaldes; the aboriginal population, freed from the grinding tyranny of their old masters, increased and throve; new mines, especially of silver, were discovered and wrought. Both Peru and Mexico gradually assumed the resemblance of civilised life; and their prosperity testified to the benefits conferred on them by conquests which, however unjustifiable on abstract grounds, in both cases redeemed the populations affected by them from cruel and oppressive governments, and bloody and senseless religions.
After the conquest of Peru the treasure sent by America to Spain was trebled; the silver mines of Europe were practically abandoned, and before long Europe’s entire gold-supply was obtained from the New World. In these circumstances the naval enterprise not only of the enemies, but of the political rivals of Spain was stimulated to assume the form of piracy; and in this connexion a peculiar cause came into operation about this time, which had a strongly modifying effect on the destinies of the New World. Both Charles V and his son and successor in Spain, Philip II, had constituted themselves the champions of the Catholic Church; and they freely employed the gold of America in the pursuit of intrigues favourable to their policy in every European country. Hence, to cut off the supply at its source became the universal policy of Protestantism, now struggling for life throughout Western Europe. The persecution of the Huguenots drove large numbers of French Protestants to join the roving captains who harassed Spanish commerce; and their efforts, begun in time of war, were continued in time of peace. Thus did the French wars with Spain develope into a general war on the part of the Protestants of Western Europe against Spain as the champion of the Papacy and the author of the Inquisition. In the New World this movement resulted in the plundering of Spanish vessels, attacks on the Spanish ports with the object of holding them to ransom, and finally attempts, unsuccessful at first, but effectual when experience in colonisation had once been gained, to found new European communities, in the teeth of all opposition, on the soil of a continent which the Spaniards regarded as most justly their own, and as before all things entrusted to them for the diffusion, and the ultimate extension over the whole globe, of the Catholic faith.
Here, at length, we reach a point of view from which the general bearing of the New World on the parallel growth of European economics and politics on the one hand, and of religious theory, philosophical thought, and scientific advancement on the other, might be brought under observation. Our remarks must be confined to the latter group of topics. For during the period covered by this chapter the political system of Europe was not sensibly disturbed, while the economic changes produced by the discovery and conquest of the New World were as yet imperfectly developed. But the sudden shattering of the old geography produced by the Discovery reacted at once in a marked way on European habits of thought. Religion is man’s earliest philosophy; and what affects his habits of thought and alters his intellectual points of view cannot but modify his religious conceptions. The discovery of the New World, and its prospective employment as a place for the planting of new communities of European origin, greatly contributed to substitute for the medieval law of religious intolerance the modern principle of toleration. In the Old World the former theory had hitherto enjoyed general acceptance, and it rested on a logical basis. There was Scriptural warranty for the doctrine that the Supreme Being was a jealous God, visiting the sins of men not only upon their descendants to the third and fourth generation, but also upon the nation to which such men belonged; and it followed that to believe or conceive of Him, or to worship Him, otherwise than in accordance with the revelation graciously made by Him for the guidance of man, was something more than an offence against Himself. It was an intolerable wrong to society, for it exposed the pious many to the penalty incurred by an impious minority. Plague and pestilence, famine and destruction in war, were brought on a nation by religious apostasy; and it was therefore not merely lawful, but a national duty, to stamp out apostasy in its beginnings. The history of Christendom down to the Discovery of America is in the main one long series of more or less successful applications of this perfectly intelligible principle to the general conduct of human affairs. Had it not been for the New World, the Old World might perhaps to this day have been governed in accordance with it.
But the New World was virgin soil. All Christendom, with the approbation even of Jew and Islamite, would readily have united in the opinion that its gross aboriginal idolatries should be extinguished, and the worship of the One God introduced into it, in whatever form. And in the plantation or creation of new Christian communities in America the reason for intolerance as a necessary social principle no longer