" Sarmiento, Relacion, Ms., cap. 22.
But the most emphatic testimony to the merits of the people is
that afforded by Mancio Sierra Lejesema, the last survivor of the
early Spanish Conquerors, who settled in Peru. In the preamble
to his testament, made, as he states, to relieve his conscience,
at the time of his death, he declares that the whole population,
under the Incas, was distinguished by sobriety and industry; that
such things as robbery and theft were unknown; that, far from
licentiousness, there was not even a prostitute in the country;
and that every thing was conducted with the greatest order, and
entire submission to authority. The panegyric is somewhat too
unqualified for a whole nation, and may lead one to suspect that
the stings of remorse for his own treatment of the natives goaded
the dying veteran into a higher estimate of their deserts than
was strictly warranted by facts. Yet this testimony by such a
man at such a time is too remarkable, as well as too honorable to
the Peruvians, to be passed over in silence by the historian; and
I have transferred the document in the original to Appendix, No.
4.]
[Footnote 38: "Sans doute l'homme moral du Perou etoit infiniment
plus perfectionne que l'Europeen." Carli, Lettres Americaines,
tom. I. p. 215.]
Yet such results are scarcely reconcilable with the theory of the
government I have attempted to analyze. Where there is no free
agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation,
there can be little claim to virtue.
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