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secutors only changed their weapon, and replaced the sword of war, by that of the scaffold... It is worthy of remark, that France, destined to be the only great Catholic state, where the Inquisition was denied admittance, was, by a singular fatality, the first prey of inquisitors.'

The final establishment of this pest in France, was prevented by the firmness and address of the illustrious l'Hopital, seconded by Marillae, archbishop of Vienne, and Montluc, bishop of Valence.

Italy, after a faint struggle, yielded to the tyranny of the Inquisition. A general insurrection of the people prevented its extension to the kingdom of Naples. The Doge and Senate long resisted the repeated and urgent intreaties" of several successive Popes, for its introduction into the Venetian states; and, when at last they gave a reluctant consent, it was clogged with so many stipulations and restrictions, and the conduct of the Inquisitors was observed with such jealous and vexatious vigilance, that the conces sion never produced any considerable benefit to the Roman

see..

In Germany, every effort to introduce it was unsuccessful.

"Of the different cities into which the popes had, as it were by stealth, insinuated their inquisitors; some did not give them time to make good their standing, and drove them out as soon as they came in; others abstained from open resistance, but refused to have any intercourse with them, forbad the merchants to furnish them with the necessaries of life, and thus compelled them to withdraw. In others, the first acts of the Inquisitors were the signals of universal commotion, they were assailed with threats and curses, and surrounded with dangers, and a concern for their own safety forced them to depart for

ever,'

وز

The Inquisition was established in Spain by the ambition of Torquemada, and protected by the policy of Ximenes. The first, a Dominican, had in view, for his order, the religious government of Spain; and, for himself, a seat in the sacred college. Ximenes, a Cordelier, a man of vast and commanding genius, of unbounded ambition, and not always very scrupulous in the means by which he atchieved his purposes, considered the Inquisition as a ready and convenient instrument for, contronling the turbulence of the great, and the insolence and licentiousness of the monks. Of its ravages in this unhappy country-where the Dukes of Medina Celi enumerated among their privileges that of standard bearer to the Holy Office, and the Marquisses of Poiiar claimed the envied title of its hereditary protec tor in the kingdom of Toledo-we need not speak. They

are universally known. In our own country, their history is among the first elements of education; and the feelings of horror and indignation which they excite, are some of the earliest and most sacred impulses of the heart. Every feature of this establishment is marked with infernal characters: its object, to maintain a system of superstition, ty ranny, and priesteraft: its means,-the destruction of social confidence, the suppression of all freedom, the perpetration of all barbarities; its spirit,-proud, sullen, subtle, remorseless; implacably vindictive, unsparingly cruel, immeasurably ambitious. Such was the Inquisition in the countries. where its genuine nature had room to display itself. With what triumph do we say, Such was the Inquisition!

In Spain, two corporations were instituted, the Cruciata and the Hermandad,which were singularly serviceable in promoting the views, and confirming the despotism, of the Inquisition. The first included the higher clergy, and nearly all the nobility of Spain; they were united for the purposes of preserving the purity of the catholic faith, and of exercising a system of general espionage in subservience to the Holy Office.

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The Hermandad was a body of runners or spies constantly upon the alert, not only in the cities, but also in the towns and villages. There was no hamilet so small as to be exempt from these miscreants. They were an army of men collected together by idleness and want. Ignorant victims of that same Inquisition whose fatal influence had annihilated every species of industry, they served for a few miaravedis the stepmother who had shut them out from the means of gaining an ho-, norable livelihood.'

The emperor Charles Vth met with such resistance, in attempting to impose this terrible tribunal upon his Flemish subjects, as scon induced him to abandon the design.

After him, Philip IInd, more crafty, sanguinary, and obstinate, resu→ med the project of compelling these same countries to submit to the Inquisition, without any restriction, and in all its horror, He was deaf to the just and energetic remonstrances of the states. He insisted upon: obedience, and revolt broke out. Thus the interest of the Inquisition, whose birth had formerly cost so much blood to Italy and France, again provoked a war of more than 60 years duration, convulsed Europe, devoured myriads, rendered the Spaniards universally hated, dismembered one of the most powerful monarchies of the age, and deprived its king of the richest portion of his dominions.'

It is remarkable that the first establishment of the Inquisition, in Portugal, was effected by a fictitious Bull. It answered the end, however, as well as if it had been ge

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nuine; nor was its design even frustrated by its detection. It was in this country, that its influence became perhaps the most powerful and destructive. Even the enormities it committed in Spain, were, if possible, exceeded in Portugal. Heretics, and fancied heretics, were persecuted with unrelenting ferocity. The native cruelty of the human heart, the degrading efficacy of superstition, and the unspeakable horrors of intolerance, were here exhibited at once in the hideous spectacle-of a deluded populace urged on by a sanguinary priesthood to conciliate the favour of Him who delighteth in mercy', by investing him with the attributes of Moloch, and offering human victims at his feet.

The second of these volumes consists, principally, of anecdotes relating to the conduct of the Inquisition towards individuals. Few of these are authenticated, many are suspicious, and some of them we do not hesitate to pronounce fabrications. Of the latter description, is the story of Don Estevan and his slave Zamora. As a romance, it might pass very well; the situations are striking, and the escapes are managed to the breadth of a hair. But if the Sieur Lavallée expected us to receive it as matter of history, he should have produced some better authority than his own. Indeed he paints so well, that he is disposed to paint much too freely. We were highly interested by his detail of the secret artifices and arguments employed by Torquemada to influence the mind of Isabella in favour of the Inquisition; but, unfortunately, as he has no where informed us to whom the Dominican indiscreetly communicated this curious information which it was of so much importance for him to conceal, and as it does not appear that his royal penitent ever detected his hypocrisy, we cannot pretend to have been greatly edified. There is, besides, especially in the first volume, a good deal of irrelevant matter. It is surely refining too far, to discover the Inquisition in the destruction of the Templars, and the infamous persecution of Urbain Grandier, in the secret Tribunal, and the judicial murder of the Maid of Orleans. Most of the instances here cited, were measures of state policy; and such as were the result of a bigoted and intolerant spirit, and therefore referable in part to a common source with the Inquisition, were obviously unconnected with it,-originating only in the exigency or the rancour of the moment, and issuing only in the destruction of their immediate victims.

M. L, seems to be but ill informed with respect to English literature; for he very gravely gives his reasons for believing the celebrated romance of Gaudentio di Lucca,

generally attributed to the illustrious Bishop of Cloyne, not to be legitimate history; and concludes with the opinion, the result of an attentive reading,' that it appears to be the work of some hidden friend to the Inquisition, and that it was much less his object to give a true account of it, than to justify and extenuate its character. Romances are universally read, and the author, by adopting that form, best fulfilled his intention.'-Poor Berkley!

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On the whole, the work is superficial, but spirited, romantic, and amusing. It contains scarcely any thing that has not been long familiar to most classes of readers, and is deficient in many particulars of considerable importance. One of these we will mention, than which nothing can more strongly paint the wanton cruelty of the Inquisition, and its baneful influence upon the human mind. We take it from the interesting miscellanies of Michael Geddes. When the victim is fastened to the stake, and the confessor has left him, the cry is, let the dogs' beards, let the dogs' beards be made; which is done by thrusting flaming furzes fastened to a long pole against their faces. And this inhumanity is commonly continued until their faces are burnt to a coal, and is always accompanied with such loud acclamations of joy as are not to be heard upon any other occasion; a bull- fight or a farce being dull entertainments to the using of a professed heretick thus inhumanly.'. Of this, however, there is nothing in Lavallée. Geddes had been chaplain to the English Factory at Lisbon; and we have obtained a clearer insight into the character and conduct of the Inquisition from his short tract, intitled, A View of the Court of Inquisition in Portugal with a list of the Prisoners that came forth in an Act of the Faith cele.. brated at Lisbon, in the year 1682,' than from any other publication on the subject, that we have ever seen. He has added a narrative, obtained by himself from a Jew, who had been a considerable time in the dungeons of the Holy Office, had passed through the regular process of exami nation and torture, and been liberated on forced confession. The imagination of this man was so powerfully affected by the scenes he had witnessed, and the sufferings he had uudergone, that he was firmly convinced, that although Inquisitors appeared to be men, yet in reality they were not so, but were bands of fiends sent from hell to assume the shape of men, and all that belonged to them, except their bowels. The Tracts, historical and argumentative, of Geddes, are chiefly on the subject of Popery, and are among the most interesting collections we are acquainted with; they are complete, as far as we know, in seven octavo volumes.

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The documents, dated October, 1808, with which Lavallée concludes his second volume, are the most important part of the work. If authentic, they prove that the spirit, the principles, and the energy of the Inquisition had suffered little from the general progress of knowledge among man. kind, and would yield only to the stroke of an equally arbitrary and unprincipled, but mightier and more intelligent

power.

M. Lavallée has acknowledged h's obligations to Limborch; but has by no means superseded the necessity of reference to that laborious and authentic writer. He who would skim the subject, may amuse himself with the lively Frenchman; but, to master it, he must study the somewhat tedious, but instructive pages of the Dutch professor.-A translation of these volumes into English is stated to be in the press.

Art. Ill. The high Price of Bullion a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes. By David Ricardo. 8vo. pp. 52. Price 2s. Murray. 1810. THE subject of this tract has recently assumed unusual

importance, from the phænomena which our circulation has of late exhibited. The almost total disappearance of specie; the want even of small coins to pay the balance of one pound notes in petty payments; a degree of difficulty and inconvenience from the want of change,such as the business of this nation has very seldom suffered; a premium to no trifling amount actually thongh clandestinely paid for guineas exchanged against bank notes; the market price of gold permanently, and to a very unusual degree, above the mint price, affording thereby an effectual temptation to the melting down of the gold coin; and a permanently unfavourable state of exchange with foreign countries; these are all circumstances, the existence of which cannot be denied, and which indicate, as it is equally impossible to deny, something unusually diseased in the habit of the agent of our currency.

This pamphlet is an attempt, and by no means a feeble one, to trace the malady to its cause. That cause, the author imagines, is not far to seek. It is to be found in the state of the paper currency. That currency has fallen into disease by excess. It labours under the effects of a plethora. It has been dieted so intemperately by its guardians and supporters, that it is swelled and bloated into feebleness; not only into a comparative unfitness for its proper functions, but into a danger of apoplexy, or of bursting a blood vessel.

But this unwise regimen, this mistake or misconduct on the part of those on whom the treatment of the patient depended, is no usual effect. Many were the years during which the steady temperance, enjoined by necessity, suffered no

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