This Measure Was Deemed Indispensibly
Necessary For The Well Being Of This Distant Country, The Richest And Most
Valuable Dominion Which Belonged To The Crown In All America.
All these
regulations were enacted and published at Madrid in 1542, and copies of
them were immediately sent to different parts of the New World.
These new
reglations gave extreme dissatisfaction to the conquerors of the American
provinces, and particularly to those of Peru; as every Spanish settler in
that country must have been deprived by them of almost every thing they
possessed, and reduced to the necessity of looking out for new means of
subsistence. Every one loudly declared that his majesty must have received
erroneous information respecting the late events, as the partizans and
adherents both of the marquis and of Almagro, had conducted themselves to
the best of their judgment as faithful subjects of his majesty, believing
that they acted in obedience to his orders in what respected the two rival
governors, who acted in his name and by his authority, and were besides
under the necessity of obeying their officers, either by force or good
will, so that they were in fact guilty of no crime in what they had done;
or, even if their conduct were in some measure faulty, they certainly did
not deserve to be stript entirely of their property. They alleged farther,
that when they discovered and conquered the country, which had been done
at their own proper cost, it had been expressly covenanted that they were
to enjoy the division of the lands and Indians among them for their lives,
with remainder to their eldest sons, or to their widows in case of having
no children; and that, in confirmation of all this, an order had been
issued by his majesty, by which all who had participated in making the
conquest of Peru were to marry within a certain specified time, under the
penalty of losing their lands and Indians, with which regulation most of
them had complied; and that it were now unjust, when they had become old
and worn out, and were encumbered with wives and families, to deprive them
of their substance, when they looked to enjoy repose after all their
fatigues and dangers; being unable from age and infirmity to go in search
of new countries and new establishments.
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