New Worlds and Th eir Challenges 119to receive it.” Even those Indians who remained outside the faith “are by no
means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property; nor
should they be in any way enslaved.” Th is ruling was echoed in the New
Laws that were promulgated by the Spanish crown in 1542, barring enslave-
ment of Indians on any ground whatsoever.
A more moderate version of this thesis held that the Indians were incapable
of self- government and that consequently, as an act of charity, the Spanish were
entitled to take them under their care— that is, to extend their po liti cal sover-
eignty over them. Vitoria conceded the force of this argument in principle,
although he stopped short of holding that the American Indians actually were
in such a state of disability. Solórzano, however, writing in the seventeenth
century, did take a stand on this question— and concluded unambiguously,
in a detailed analysis, that the Indians were fully human and rational, so that
the argument based on their incapacity for self- government was invalid.
Th e Dilatatio Principle— and a Great Debate
It has been observed that there was signifi cant support for the thesis that the
papal awards of the fi ft eenth century had merely been allocations of spheres
of missionary activity and not grants of sovereignty over territory. Th at did
not rule out the possibility, however, that the one might lead to the other.
Moreover, there was a readily available legal doctrine tailor- made to accom-
plish just that intellectual jump: the principle of dilatatio, which was now
applied to the New World rather than to northeastern Eu rope.
In the reopened debate over dilatatio, the doctrine was justifi ed on the
basis of a more fundamental general principle of law: that, if jurisdiction is
granted or a duty imposed, then the party aff ected must be understood to
possess everything necessary to exercise the jurisdiction or perform the
duty. On this thesis, the Spanish rulers could be entitled to acquire sover-
eignty over the Indian kingdoms as an adjunct to, or instrument of, the
conversion pro cess. Th is argument is interesting because it eff ectively con-
ceded that the pope did not directly grant sovereignty to Spain. Instead, he
granted the right to acquire sovereignty by means of forcible self- help, if that
was necessary to eff ectuate the task of conversion.
With this argument, Vitoria had considerable sympathy, listing it among
the potentially valid bases of Spanish title in his 1539 relection. He conceded