twenty at a time. The most cruel tortures were applied for the purpose of forcing them to confess their associates, their connexions, their friends, their favorers, the nature of their books, their instructors, and the whole ramifications of that heretical conspiracy which the tribunal was determined to destroy, root and branch. By the extreme agony on the rack, Mary Bohorquia, a young lady of noble birth, who was burnt for being a Lutheran, was driven to confess that she had conversed on religious subjects with her sister Dona Juana Ponce de Leon, wife of lord de la Heguera. This latter was immediately apprehended, confined in a loathsome dungeon though far gone in her pregnancy, and a few days after her delivery tortured with such diabolical rigor, that the ropes cut into the very bones of her arms, legs, and thighs. She died after this inhuman treatment, when the fiends who inflicted it, in order to make her atonement, or rather to deprive the reformation of the glory of such a martyr, pronounced her innocent of heresy. In May, 1559, an auto was celebrated at Valladolid which was attended by the regent of Spain (in the absence of Philip), prince Charles, and all the dignitaries and authorities of the state, when thirty persons were brought forth, fourteen of whom were committed to the flames. At the entrance of Philip into his capital, and into the active government of his kingdom in October of the same year, he was regaled by another sacrifice more splendid and imposing than the last, from the number of the victims (which amounted to forty, twenty of whom were burnt), from the greater attendance of guards, courtiers, grandees, and authorities, and from the more extensive and gorgeous diplay of inquisitorial pageantry. A protestant nobleman, don Carlos de Sessé, when passing to the stake, cried out to the king for mercy: No,' answered the bigot, with a stern countenance, I would bring wood to burn my own son were he such a wretch as you!' and continued to view the horrifie ceremony with the greatest coolness. As part of the forms of this terrible day, the inquisitor-general demanded of the monarch the continuance of his protection to the tribunal, repeating the blasphemous words, Domine, adjuva nos, and the king, standing and grasping his sword, half unsheathed it, in token of his zealous compliance.

Among other miseries which the new world experienced from its discoverers and conquerors, it was not to be exempted from this execrable Scourge. Philip II. introduced it into his Western dominions in 1571; and such is the blindness of superstition, that the human sacrifices of the Mexicans, which excited such horror in Cortes and his troops, were imitated by the pretended ministers of Christ. One bleeding limb of the monarchy still shook it off with convulsive violence, and rather bore to be severed from the trunk than to endure it. The people of the Netherlands, where heresy was stronger and authority weaker than in Spain, resisted its introduction; and the result of the struggle is well known. By a master stroke of flagitious policy, Philip extinguished the reformation in Spain, but the infatuation of his zeal

extended it in the north. In the one case his great engine, the holy office, had been established for more than half a century; in the provinces it had not been able to gain a footing. When representations were made to him of the zeal and numbers of the protestants, he sent against them, as he would have done at home, a reinforcement of priests and ecclesiastics. Hearing that heresies had increased by the cruelties employed for their suppression, he ordered the prisons to be increased in proportion, more fires to be lighted, and more scaffolds to be erected. Informed by his sister that she could no longer govern on the maxims of massacre and extermination, he sent the furies and the duke of Alba. When the casuistical bigots who surrounded the throne, the turba minor diri capitis, began to doubt the success of their cruelty, the monarch fell down before the cross in a frenzy of fanaticism, and swore on that emblem of mercy an oath of blood and extermination against all but Catholics. The sanction of this tremendous oath survived to his successors, who seem to have taken his character as their model. The inquisition appears to have communicated to them all, whether of the family of Austria or of Bourbon, certain repulsive features of resemblance. Established in an age of persecution and despotism, it, for centuries, defied all moral and political changes, creating its own atmossphere, assimilating all things in its neighbourhood, bending every thing to its dominating genius, and, by the fascination of its fiery asspect, disarming its prey of all power of resistance.

Such has been the wretched lot of Spain. Nowhere has religious intolerance risen so high in human esteem. In Spain it has placed cruelty among the virtues. In no country of the world have people been so plundered of their property, so bereaved of their rights, so duped in their understandings. Bigotry has for generations been seated on the throne, and the inquisitor-general has been regarded as its chief pillar. Under the shelter of this tribunal no deceit could be detected, no abuse denounced, no error disproved, no prejudice exploded, no aggression repelled, no mistake corrected, no injustice opposed. Confidence and frankness were destroyed by the fear of finding every man an informer, in a society where friends were enjoined to accuse friends, on pain of excommunication; no liberal opinion could be formed or expressed with impunity, where every such opinion might be visited with the punishment of heresy. The impudent and barefaced insults offered to the reason, common sense, and common feeling of the people, under such secure protection, are almost incredible.

While the inquisition prevented improvement, . and cut off the springs of knowledge, it tended, by the form of process by which it was guided, and the tragedies it frequently exhibited, to pervert the sentiments of justice and to encourage hardened inhumanity. When denunciation was commanded under the sanction of the most formidable anathemas, the gratification of private malice became a religious duty. Revenge, when baffled in other quarters, might drag its prey to

the prisons of the holy office, and there, without the fear of detection, was always sure of ample vengeance. Condemned already was the man, on whom his enemy could contrive to attach such a suspicion of heresy as to excite the activity of the tribunal. He was seized in the silence of the night, and his house exchanged for a dungeon, on a charge which he had neither the means of knowing or disproving. The very suspicion of guilt was its punishment. His friends avoided him like a pestilence, because, without being able to assist him by their services, they might expose themselves to his fate by their interference. His family, though involved in his ruin by the sequestration of his property and by the collateral and transmissible infamy attached to his name, were not allowed to see him, to administer to him either consolation or advice. It might have been some relief to have seen his accuser, or to have been confronted with his witnesses, that he might answer the charges of the one, or disprove the testimony of the other; but this also was denied him he was fatally involved in the labyrinth of his mysterious guilt, without a consciousness of his crime, or a clue to escape. He descended to those durissima regna without a friend, without an adviser, without a prosecutor, where he found only the inquisitor and his ministers,

regemque tremendum, Nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda : where he found the gloom, the solemnity, the terrors of the poetic hell; in short all the preparations and attributes of the pagan's last judgment, except its justice. Here he was left, during the pauses of punishment, to conjecture by whom and for what he was accused and punished; instead of hearing his accuser and witnesses named, he was obliged to name them himself under the torture; and, if he failed in his conjecture, after ransacking his memory for every possible ground of charge, and every probable enemy, his condemnation was decreed. With the frightful prospect of death before them, and under the excruciating agony of the question, the wretched prisoners ran over crimes they never dreamt of committing, and gave a catalogue of persons whom they never suspected of enmity or heresy. A woman, whose fate is recorded, being required to mention her accomplices, informer, and witnesses, named 600 individuals; but, as she did not fix upon the proper persons, she was condemned. On her way to the fire her daughter approached her, and particularised some relation which she thought her mother might have forgotten. Alas!' cried the devoted victim, I have already named all Portugal and Castile, but it would not avail.'

The culprit, after undergoing the torture and a long imprisonment, was at last handed over to the secular power as impenitent, contumacious, or relapsed, and the spectacle exhibited to the people was now still more cruel and terrible than that which the holy fathers enjoyed in their pitiless dungeons. The condemned were led forth to execution by burning (which is the most terrible death, says a Spanish author, for the most horrible of crimes); and of this display of sup

pliciary vengeance the most tremendous and awful solemity was made. Notice was given at the churches that on a particular day (generally a festival or Sunday), an act of the faith (which originally meant a sermon concerning the faith preached on such occasions) would be given at such a particular place, and an indulgence of forty days offered to all who should go to witness the transactions there to be performed, the torments and punishments of heretics. Great crowds of the faithful attended-the monasteries sent forth their tribes-the clergy, from a considerable distance, poured towards the executionthe civil authorities of all classes were on dutythe greatest preparations were made the bell of the cathedral tolled-the standard of the inquisition was unfurled-and the train of heretics, dressed in sackcloth painted with flames, devils, and monsters, and walking barefooted accompanied with cannibals which we have neither space nor desire to describe, proceeded, first, in procession from the prison to the holy office to hear a sermon, and then to the place of execution. The prisoners were frequently reserved till there was a sufficient accumulation of them for one grand tragedy. To this entertainment kings, princes, grandees, and courtiers, were invited, as to a magnificent bull-fight, a splendid display of fire-works, or a gorgeous theatrical exhibition. The effect of the pageant was not to be weakened by the emotions of pity. Philip II. enjoyed the sight with a countenance and a heart unmoved. Charles II. had the most pompous one that ever was exhibited, prescribed to him as a medicine. It will be seen, in accounts of these spectacles, with what unmoistened eyes and unruffled features even the ladies of the court beheld the writhings and convulsions of these suffering wretches, heard their horrible cries, and resisted their moving appeals. To have shed tears would have been a crime. They would as soon have wept over Satan on the burning lake. Philip III. is said to have expiated some natural tears shed by him on this occasion with his blood; that is, with a drop of his blood drawn by the inquisitor-general, and burnt by the hands of the common executioner as an emblem of the punishment such heretical sympathy deserved. The preacher who delivered the sermon of the faith, at the great auto, before Charles II. in 1680, where 120 prisoners were present, nineteen of whom were in an hour to be cast into the flames; in the plenitude of his joy burst into an appropriation of the words of the Canticles: Ah! thou holy tribunal!' said he, for boundless ages mayest thou keep us firm in the faith, and promote the punishment of the enemies of God. Of thee I may say what the Holy Spirit said of the church, Thou art fair, my love, thou art fair as the tents of Kedar, as the sightly skins of Solomon.' Of the infuriated conduct of the people on such occasions, the following account from Dr. Geddes will be a sufficient specimen. At the place of execution, in Lisbon, there are so many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt, with a good quantity of dry furze about them. The stakes of the professed are about four yards high, and have a small board within half a yard of the top.

The negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, the professed go up the ladder betwixt the two Jesuits who have attended them all; and when they come up to the board they turn round to the people, and the Jesuits spend nearly a quarter of an hour in exhorting them to be reconciled to the church of Rome, which if they refuse to do, the Jesuits come down and the executioner ascends, and having turned the professed off the ladder upon the seat, and chained their bodies close to the stake, the Jesuits renew their exhortation, and, at parting, tell them that they leave them to the devil, who is standing at their elbow to carry their souls to hell as soon as they are out of their bodies.'

6

Scenes, at the description of which the flesh creeps and the heart is horror struck, were often presented at these spectacles. The prisoners frequently resisted with the greatest fury, struggling to free themselves from the stake, while the incarnate fiends allowed the fire to fall away, or added fuel as suited their purpose to heighten or prolong their torments. Sometimes the exultation of martyrdom was expressed in the defiance of despair. Francisco Botello, a Jew, when brought forth for execution was shown his wife, who, without his knowledge, made one of the same auto; but such was his shameful conduct,' says the Report, that he beheld her with as much joy as if it had been the happiest day of his life, animating a friend who was burning beside him to die in his own lame faith.' 'Francisco Lopez,' says another Report, who was burnt in an auto celebrated at Mexico in 1659, stood on the platform of the stage in a most contumacious manner, and, resembling a demon, cast forth sparks from his eyes, and gave beforehand signs of his eternal condemnation.' Sometimes the sufferers, in their lingering torments, made the most pathetic appeals to the sympathy of the spectators, not for a release from their doom, but a more speedy dispatch of their agony. Of the five persons condemned,' says Mr. Wilcox, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, in a letter to Dr. Burnet, speaking of an. auto celebrated at Lisbon, on the 10th of December, 1705, there were but four burnt. Two were first strangled, two, a man and a woman, were burnt alive. The execution was very cruel-the woman was alive in the flames half an hour, and the man above an hour. The present king and his brother were seated in a window so near as to be addressed in very moving terms by the man while he was burning. The favor he asked was only a few more faggots, yet he was unable to obtain it. Those who are burned here are seated on a bench twelve feet high, fastened to a pole, and above six feet higher than the faggots. The wind being a little fresh, the man's hinder parts were perfectly wasted, and as he turned himself his ribs opened before he left speaking; the fire being recruited as it wasted, to keep it just in the same degree of heat. All his entreaties could not procure him a larger allowance of wood to shorten his misery.' The last instance of barbarity carried to the length of burning for heresy, was exhibited at Seville in 1781, on the person of a woman who had been guilty of licentious irregu

larities, and justified her conduct by special revelations from an angel.

The power of the inquisition was still considerable after its holocausts had ceased; but it was exerted rather in encouraging petty vexations, enjoining ridiculous penances, and prohibiting useful books, than in serious acts of outrage. The rack was disused, as well as the faggot. The familiars became less officious, and the inquisitors were sometimes found to be men of worth and humanity. During the administration of the prince of peace, and for some time before, the holy office became a mere tool in the hands of the government, and was even in this point of view thought of so little service that the design was more than once entertained of abolishing it; and he is said to have got the royal signature to a decree for that purpose in 1796, which by some accident was not carried into execution. The evidences of its former exploits still graced the walls of churches and convents; the pictures and sentences of those whose persons it had burned, or whose property it had confiscated, still remained exposed for the edification of the faithful. A profligate monk or a licentious nun, for bringing scandal on their order, might be threatened with its vengeance; it suppressed mason lodges, and political tracts; and from the arbitrary nature of its proceedings, which remained unchanged, it was still capable of doing much mischief, but it latterly made no approach to violence or rigor.

The last auto of any consequence that it celebrated was in 1781, and excited the ridicule of all Madrid. Ignacio Rodriguez, a common beggar, was condemned to wholesome penance for deserting his mendicant profession, turning sorcerer, and making love-powders. During the time of the French revolution it was of course very active in preventing any importation of political or religious works from that infected country; and many books of all kinds were inserted in its Index Expurgatorius, or laid up on its shelves under the protection of hosts of devils, cracking the bones of heretics. leniency or inefficiency does not seem to have proceeded from any improvement in the popular mind, but from the insensible influence of European liberality on the high classes, and from the want of opposition or provocation.

This

In this state of weakness was it when, in 1808, Napoleon decreed its abolition, and the inquisitor-general joined the French party. In the troubles which followed the French invasion the functions of the different tribunals remained suspended, although several of them did not acknowledge the authority of the conqueror. The inquisition usurps the authority of the bishops, the ordinary judges of heretical pravity, by virtue of a papal commission, conferred on it through the medium of the inquisitor-general, in whom the election of subordinate officers is vested, and whose sanction is necessary to give validity to every sentence. Without him the courts can no more act than an army without a general; without him their judges are no more judges of the faith, than ministers of finance; and as the pope, whose bull is necessary to confer that commission, was in the hands of the enemy that dissolved it.

as well as the individual who formerly held it, no processes could be instituted or concluded. The inquisitors, thus dispersed, flocked from all quarters to Cadiz, besieging the government with petitions and memorials; and while not a spot of the Peninsula remained unpolluted with the foot of the invader, except one city, while even the batteries of the enemy were endangering the safety of the existing authorities within the walls of that city, while their country was overrun with Catholic enemies, and defended alone by heretical friends, the most strenuous efforts were made by superstition for the restoration of its protecting judicature.

The liberal party perceived the advantage they had gained, and vigorously laid hold of it. They considered the inquisition as abolished, and they threw upon their opponents the burden of proving the necessity of its re-establishment: they gained the concurrence of the nation for a constitution, the articles of which, defining the judicial power and regulating its exercise, were inconsistent with its existence; and thus its restoration became impracticable. They decreed that torture should be no longer employed, that trials should be public, that witnesses should be confronted with those against whom they depose, that confiscation should no longer exist, that freedom of speech was the necessary privilege of a deputy. And having thus removed the fundamental principles of inquisitorial legislation, the very pillars and corner-stones on which it rested, they allowed it to drop on the heads of its supporters. The nation was asked if they would consent to reconstruct such a monument of barbarism; if, after having sworn to defend the constitution, they were inclined to commit political perjury in destroying it; if they were prepared to erect a mausoleum for their liberty at the very hour of its birth. All the zeal and talent of the nation were employed in the controversy. Innumerable publications appeared on both sides. After receiving petitions from the inquisitors for the revival of the office, after hearing representations from bishops, towns, and provinces, on the same subject, the Cortes appointed a commission, of which Arguelles and several other able and enlightened men were members, to enquire whether the re-establishment of the inquisition was consistent with the maintenance of the constitution; and the result of their opinion was that the tribunal ought to be abolished. The eloquent, elaborate, and ingenious statement of the facts and reasonings which determined their judgment, is detailed in their report, presented to Congress on the 8th of December, 1812. This was followed up with equal ability in the speeches of many of the members of that body; the majority of which on the great question (ninety to sixty) came to a similar conclusion. The discussion on the different propositions connected with the subject continued with some intervals from the end of December to the 22d of February. The speeches (most of them read and handed over to the printer) are now before us in a volume of 694 pages, and display sometimes a depth of research, and sometimes a power of eloquence, united with liberal views and sound reasoning, which it

would be difficult to match in any country but our own. But it must not be supposed, though the liberal party was triumphant in the Cortes, that the nation was unanimous in their support, that their opponents were few or insignificant, or that what has happened since is at all an anomaly. The greatest clamor was raised both in the national assembly and in the country; and the cry that the church was in danger resounded on all sides.

The priests and monks contrived to convince the people that the Catholic faith and the holy office were identified, that the inquisition and religion were synonymous terms, and that every one who spoke and wrote against that tribunal was an enemy of devotion, an antichrist, a blasphemer of the glorious saints, and of the blessed virgin. Doctrines such as these were preached in every village, before every convent, in almost every public square: handbills were posted up to the same effect, and every engine of delusion and falsehood was set at work. The ignorant were told that they could not hold their religion a day if they were deprived of the tribunal that protected it; that they would all be obliged to become heathens, heretics, and Lutherans; that they would have no mass, no pope, no purgatory, no rosaries; that our Lady of the Pillar, and St. James of Compostella, would desert them; that they must expect no longer the countenance of the saints; that every miracle would cease; that they would be exposed without protection to the visitations of earthquakes, storms, and bad harvests. In order to make them cling still closer to their religion, and that institution which by one fanatic was called the poniard of the faith, and by another its battering ram, they were told that they were the only nation hitherto uncontaminated with heresy; that this pestilent distemper had been kept off from their shores by an inquistorial quarantine; that they were the most Catholic people upon earth, the privileged monopolists of a pure apostolic worship, the champions of the virgin, and the favorites of heaven and its inhabitants. The nations around them were stigmatised as composed of men overrun with the plague of apostasy; a revolting assemblage of atheists, sorcerers, and freemasons; the enemies of the pope and the sacraments; the contentious partisans of infuriated sects; and the devoted victims of divine vengeance. The steps by which they had arrived at such a deplorable state of corruption and infidelity were, the impunity allowed to heretics, the establishment of the principles of toleration, and the opposition made to the holy office. The Jews and Moors, with all their diabolical rites, had been expelled by the zeal of Catholic kings, or had fled from the just terrors of a sanbenito and a faggot; but more insidious and dangerous enemies of the true faith threatened the Spanish church, if its natural bulwark were destroyed, in the professors of liberal ideas, the preachers of clerical reform, the pretenders to primitive purity, the antagonists of priestly and papal domination, the secret emissaries of heresy or protestantism, the bastard children of the church who, having no share of the inheritance of their father, were anxious to excite dissentions within the family of the faithful, the vipers who endea