about is a thing which we poor Indians have never seen done amongst Christians!"
Poor people! how little did they know how feeble are the strongest reasons drawn from the Christian faith, when addressed to those who would resent as a deadly insult the true charge that they are no Christians at all. In this case the Indians were the only Christians concerned in this melancholy affair. Well might they say, "Your actions are so different from your words, that we are more amazed than if we saw two suns in the firmament." Well might they ask, "What will God say to you after your death on this account? What answer will you make in the day of judgment when we shall all be gathered together?" Like all other Europeans when doing their will on the natives of their colonies, they cared neither for God, nor the day of judgment; they went on and drove the genuine Christians, the poor simple-hearted Indians, to the woods, or compelled them to submit. Their lands were laid waste, their towns burnt; many were slain, many were dispersed, many died heart-broken in the homeless woods,—and scarcely was all this misery and wickedness completed,—when the news of the king's death arrived,, and soon after, the annulment of this very treaty; so that these lands were not to be yielded to the Portuguese, and all this evil had been done, even politically, in vain. The poor people were invited to return to their possessions, and the Jesuits to their sorrowful labour of repairing the ravages so foolishly and heartlessly committed.
Mr. Southey thinks that the Portuguese in Brazil were more lenient to the natives than the Spaniards
