But I seem to hear many voices exclaiming, “Yes! these things _might_ have been, had men been what they are not, nor ever were!” Precisely so!—that is the point I wish expressly to illustrate before I proceed to my narrative. These things might have been, and would have been, had men been merely what they professed. They called themselves Christians, and I merely state what Christians would and must, as a matter of course, have done. The Spaniards professed to be, and probably really believed that they were, Christians. They professed zealously that one of their most ardent desires was to bring the newly-discovered hemisphere under the cross of Christ. Columbus returned thanks to God for having made him a sort of modern apostle to the vast tribes of the West. Ferdinand and Isabella, when he returned and related to them the wonderful story of his discovery, fell on their knees before their throne, and thanked God too! They expressed an earnest anxiety to establish the empire of the Cross throughout their new and splendid dominions. The very Spanish adventurers, with their hands heavy with the plundered gold, and clotted with the blood of the unhappy Americans, were zealous for the spread of their faith. They were not more barbarous than they were self-deluded; and I shall presently shew whence had sprung, and how had grown to such a blinding thickness, that delusion upon them. But the truth which I am now attempting to elucidate and establish, is of far higher and wider concernment than as exemplified in the early adventurers of Spain and Portugal. This grand delusion has rested on Europe for a thousand years; and from the days of the Spaniards to the present moment, has gone on propagating crimes and miseries without end. For the last three hundred years, Europe has been boasting of its Christianity, and perpetrating throughout the vast extent of territories in every quarter of the globe subjected to its power, every violence and abomination at which Christianity revolts. There is no nation of Europe that is free from the guilt of colonial blood and oppression. God knows what an awful share rests upon this country! It remains therefore for us simply to consider whether we will abandon our national crimes or our Christian name. Whether Europe shall continue so to act towards what it pleases to term “savage” nations, as that it must seem to be the very ground and stronghold of some infernal superstition, or so as to promote, what a large portion of the British public at least, now sincerely desires,—the Christianization, and with it the civilization, of the heathen.