The laws
were carefully directed to their preservation and personal
comfort. The people were not allowed to be employed on works
pernicious to their health, nor to pine - a sad contrast to their
subsequent destiny - under the imposition of tasks too heavy for
their powers. They were never made the victims of public or
private extortion; and a benevolent forecast watched carefully
over their necessities, and provided for their relief in seasons
of infirmity, and for their sustenance in health. The government
of the Incas, however arbitrary in form, was in its spirit truly
patriarchal.
Yet in this there was nothing cheering to the dignity of human
nature. What the people had was conceded as a boon, not as a
right. When a nation was brought under the sceptre of the Incas,
it resigned every personal right, even the rights dearest to
humanity. Under this extraordinary polity, a people advanced in
many of the social refinements, well skilled in manufactures and
agriculture, were unacquainted, as we have seen, with money. They
had nothing that deserved to be called property. They could
follow no craft, could engage in no labor, no amusement, but such
as was specially provided by law. They could not change their
residence or their dress without a license from the government.
They could not even exercise the freedom which is conceded to the
most abject in other countries, that of selecting their own
wives. The imperative spirit of despotism would not allow them
to be happy or miserable in any way but that established by law.
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