it was suited to the
character of the Spaniard.

But it was not suited to the free and independent character of the
people of the Netherlands. Freedom of thought they claimed as their
birthright; and the attempt to crush it by introducing the pernicious
usages of Spain was everywhere received with execration. Such an
institution was an accident, and could not become an integral part of
the constitution. It was a vicious graft on a healthy stock. It could
bear no fruit, and sooner or later it must perish.

Yet the Inquisition, such as it was, did its work while it lasted in the
Netherlands. This is true, at least, if we are to receive the popular
statement, that fifty thousand persons, in the reign of Charles the
Fifth, suffered for their religious opinions by the hand of the
executioner![392] This monstrous statement has been repeated by one
historian after another, with apparently as little distrust as
examination. It affords one among many examples of the facility with
which men adopt the most startling results, especially when conveyed in
the form of numerical estimates. There is something that strikes the
imagination, in a numerical estimate, which settles a question so
summarily, in a form so precise and so portable. Yet whoever has had
occasion to make any researches into the past,--that land of
uncertainty,--will agree that there is nothing less entitled to
confidence.

In the present instance, such a statement might seem to carry its own
refutation on the face of it. Llorente, the celebrated secretary of the
Holy Office, whose estimates will never be accused of falling short of
the amount, computes the whole number of victims sacrificed during the
first eighteen years of the Inquisition in Castile, when it was in most
active operation, at about ten thousand.[393] The storm of persecution
there, it will be remembered, fell chiefly on the Jews,--that ill-omened
race, from whom every pious Catholic would have rejoiced to see his land
purified by fire and fagot. It will hardly be believed that five times
the number of these victims perished in a country like the Netherlands,
in a term of time not quite double that occupied for their extermination
in Spain;--the Netherlands, where every instance of such persecution,
instead of being hailed as a triumph of the Cross, was regarded as a
fresh outrage on the liberties of the nation. It is not too much to say,
that such a number of martyrs as that pretended would have