The
law was constantly directed to enforce a steady industry and a
sober management of his affairs. No mendicant was tolerated in
Peru. When a man was reduced by poverty or misfortune, (it could
hardly be by fault,) the arm of the law was stretched out to
minister relief; not the stinted relief of private charity, nor
that which is doled out, drop by drop, as it were, from the
frozen reservoirs of "the parish," but in generous measure,
bringing no humiliation to the object of it, and placing him on a
level with the rest of his countrymen. *39
[Footnote 39: "Era tanta la orden que tenia en todos sus Reinos y
provincias, que no consentia haver ningun Indio pobre ni
menesteroso, porque havia orden i formas para ello sin que los
pueblos reciviesen vexacion ni molestia, porque el Inga lo suplia
de sus tributos." (Conq. i Pob. del Piru, Ms.) The Licentiate
Ondegardo sees only a device of Satan in these provisions of the
Peruvian law, by which the old, the infirm, and the poor were
rendered, in a manner, independent of their children, and those
nearest of kin, on whom they would naturally have leaned for
support; no surer way to harden the heart, he considers, than by
thus disengaging it from the sympathies of humanity; and no
circumstance has done more, he concludes, to counteract the
influence and spread of Christianity among the natives. (Rel.
Seg., Ms.) The views are ingenious, but, in a country where the
people had no property, as in Peru, there would seem to be no
alternative for the supernumeraries, but to receive support from
government or to starve.
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