companions, champions of the people's
rights, he goes on to show that while the aristocracy had received a
mortal blow in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in the cause of
consolidating the kingdom and of internal order, they had retained
sufficient power to trample on the liberties of the people, while they
were not strong enough to form a barrier against the encroachments of
the absolute monarchs who succeeded, or to prevent the power eventually
lapsing into the hands of the Church. "Consequently, theocracy gained
the ascendency, formidably aided and strengthened by the odious tribunal
whose installation shadowed even the glorious epoch of Isabel and
Fernando, absorbing all jurisdiction, and interfering with all
government. Religious wars led naturally to European conflicts, to the
Spanish people being led to wage war against heresy everywhere, and the
nation--exhausted by its foreign troubles, oppressed internally under
the tyranny of the Inquisition, which, usurping the name of 'Holy,' had
become the right hand of the policy of Charles V., and the supreme power
in the Government of his grandson, Philip II.--lost all the precious
gifts of enlightenment in a blind and frantic fanaticism. The people
only awoke from lethargy, and showed any animation, to rush in crowds to
the _Autos da fe_ in which the ministers of the altar turned Christian
charity into a bleeding corpse, and reproduced the terrible scenes of
the Roman amphitheatre. Where the patricians had cried 'Christians to
the lions!' superstition shouted 'Heretics to the stake!' Humanity was
not less outraged than in the spectacle of Golgotha. Spanish monarchs
even authorised by their presence those sanguinary spectacles, while the
nobles and great personages in the kingdom thought themselves honoured
when they were made _alguiciles_, or familiars of the holy office.
Theocratic power preponderated, and intellectual movement became
paralysed, civilisation stagnated."

This has ever been the result of priestly rule. One can understand the
feeling of the liberal-minded Spaniard of to-day that, without wishing
to interfere with the charitable works inaugurated by the clergy, nor
desiring in any way to show disrespect to the Church, or the religion
which is dear to the hearts of the people, a serious danger lies, as the
Press is daily pointing out, in the religious orders, more especially
the Jesuits, obtaining a pernicious influence over the young,
undermining by