FRANCIS VICTORIA, p. 383.-Francis Victoria, who began to teach at Valladolid in 1525, is said to have first expounded the doctrines of the schools in the language of the age of Leo X. Dominic Soto, a Dominical, the confessor of Charles V. and the oracle of the Council of Trent, to whom that assembly were indebted for much of the precision and even elegance for which their doctrinal decrees are not unjustly commended, dedicated his treatise on "Justice and Law" to Don Carlos, in terms of praise which, used by a writer who is said to have declined the high dignities of the church, lead us to hope that he was unacquainted with the brutish vices of that wretched prince. It is a concise and not inelegant compound of the scholastic ethics, which continued to be of considerable authority for more than a century. Both he and his master Victoria deserve to be had in everlasting remembrance for the part which they took on behalf of the natives of America and of Africa against the rapacity and cruelty of the Spaniards. Victoria pronounced war against the Americans for their vices or for their paganism to be unjust. Soto was the authority chiefly consulted by Charles V. on occasion of the conference held before him at Valladolid, in 1542, between Sepulveda, and Las Casas, the champion of the unhappy Americans; of which the result was a very imperfect edict of reformation in 1543, which, though it contained little more than a recognition of the principle of justice, almost excited a rebellion in Mexico. Sepulveda, a scholar and reasoner, advanced many maxims which were specious, and in themselves reasonable, but which practically tended to defeat even the scanty and almost illusive reform which ensued. Las Casas was a passionate missionary, whose zeal, kindled by the long and near contemplation of cruelty, prompted him to exaggerations of fact and argument; yet, with all its errors, it afforded the only hope of preserving the natives of America from extirpation. The opinions of Soto could not fail to be conformable to his excellent principle, that, “There can be no difference between christians and pagans, for the law of nations is equal to all nations." To Soto belongs the signal honour of being the first writer who condemned the African slave-trade. * * **As the work which condemned this man-stealing and slavery was the substance of lectures many years delivered at Salamanca, philosophy and religion appear, by the hand of their faithful minister, to have thus smitten the monsters in their earliest infancy. It is hard for any man of the present day to conceive the praise which is due to the excellent monks who courageously asserted the rights of those whom they never saw, against the prejudices of their order, the supposed interests of their religion, the ambition of their government, the avarice and pride of their countrymen, and the prevalent opinions of their times."-Sir James Mackintosh.

"It is very remarkable, though hitherto unobserved, that Aquinas anticipated those controversies respecting perfect disinterestednes in the religious affections which occupied the most illustrious members of his communion four hundred years after his death; and that he discussed the like question respecting the other affections of human nature with a fulness and clearness, an exactness of distinction, and a justness of determination, scarcely surrassed by the most acute of modern philosophers. It ought to be added, that

according to the most natural and reasonable construction of his words, he allowed to the church a control only over spiritual concerns, and recognised the supremacy of the civil powers in all temporal affairs.”—Sir J. Mackintosh.

SEPULVEDA. The title of the conference at Valladolid on the subject of Indian conquest and slavery is, "The Controversy between the Bishop of Chiapa and Dr. Sepulveda, in which the Doctor contended thot the Conquest of the Indies from the Natives was lawful, and the Bishop maintained that it was unlawful, tyrannical, and unjust, in the presence of many theologians, lawyers, and other learned men assembled by his majesty."-Antonii, Bibl. Hisp.