Even they, who heard as it were the shrieks of oppression, and wished to assist the sufferers, were fearful of joining in their behalf.

While they acknowledged the necessity of removing one evil, they were terrified by the prospect of introducing another; and were, therefore, only able to relieve their feelings by, lamenting, in the bitterness of their hearts, that this traffic had ever been begun at all.
After the death of Cardinal Ximenes, the emperor Charles the Fifth, who had come into power, encouraged the Slave Trade.

In 1517, he granted a patent to one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right of importing four thousand Africans into America.

But he lived long enough to repent of what he had thus inconsiderately done; for in the year 1542, he made a code of laws for the better protection of the unfortunate Indians in his foreign dominions, and he stopped the progress of African slavery by an order that all slaves in his American islands should he made free.

This order was executed by Pedro de la Gasca.