[Click the back button on your web browser to return to the
section of “Signs of the Times” for which the following serves
as an annotation.] Las Casas: Bartolomé de las Casas, a priest,
writer, and the first Bishop of Chiapas, the southernmost state
of Mexico, was born in November, 1484 in Seville, Spain. After
taking part in Columbus' second voyage, he settled in the New
World, where he witnessed atrocities, such as torture and
genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists. He
criticized bringing natives to Spain as slaves in order to repay
the cost for Columbus' expeditions. He went to King Charles V
(ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, Spain and Netherlands) to gain
rights for the natives. Originally, he wanted to replace native
slave labor of with that of slaves from Africa but became an
advocate for the Africans in the colonies, as well. Carlyle
brings up Las Casas when discussing how man is not the product
of Mechanism but its creator and producer, arguing that "it is
the noble People that make