Alas
for humanity, if it should fail!
The testimony of the Spanish conquerors is not uniform in respect
to the favorable influence exerted by the Peruvian institutions
on the character of the people. Drinking and dancing are said to
have been the pleasures to which they were immoderately addicted.
Like the slaves and serfs in other lands, whose position excluded
them from more serious and ennobling occupations, they found a
substitute in frivolous or sensual indulgence. Lazy, luxurious,
and licentious, are the epithets bestowed on them by one of those
who saw them at the Conquest, but whose pen was not too friendly
to the Indian. *39 Yet the spirit of independence could hardly be
strong in a people who had no interest in the soil, no personal
rights to defend; and the facility with which they yielded to the
Spanish invader - after every allowance for their comparative
inferiority - argues a deplorable destitution of that patriotic
feeling which holds life as little in comparison with freedom.
[Footnote 39: "Heran muy dados a la lujuria y al bever, tenian
acceso carnal con las hermanas y las mugeres de sus padres como
no fuesen sus mismas madres, y aun algunos avia que con ellas
mismas lo hacian y ansi mismo con sus hijas. Estando borrachos
tocavan algunos en el pecado nefando, emborrachavanse muy a
menudo, y estando borrachos todo lo que el demonio les traia a la
voluntad hacian Heran estos orejones muy soberbios y
presuntuosos.
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