stematically
lowered, and rendered incapable by exclusion, and for incapacity
excluded from affairs. In this circle the body is in a manner
annihilated; and so little means have they of any weighty exertion
either to control or to support the crown, that, if they at all
interfere, it is only by abetting desperate and mobbish insurrections,
like that at Madrid, which drove Squillace from his place. Florida
Blanca is a creature of office, and has little connection and no
sympathy with that body.

As to the clergy, they are the only thing in Spain that looks like an
independent order; and they are kept in some respect by the Inquisition,
the sole, but unhappy resource of public tranquillity and order now
remaining in Spain. As in Venice, it is become mostly an engine of
state,--which, indeed, to a degree, it has always been in Spain. It wars
no longer with Jews and heretics: it has no such war to carry on. Its
great object is, to keep atheistic and republican doctrines from making
their way in that kingdom. No French book upon any subject can enter
there which does not contain such matter. In Spain, the clergy are of
moment from their influence, but at the same time with the envy and
jealousy that attend great riches and power. Though the crown has by
management with the Pope got a very great share of the ecclesiastical
revenues into its own hands, much still remains to them. There will
always be about that court those who look out to a farther division of
the Church property as a resource, and to be obtained by shorter
methods than those of negotiations with the clergy and their chief. But
at present I think it likely that they will stop, lest the business
should be taken out of their hands,--and lest that body, in which
remains the only life that exists in Spain, and is not a fever, may with
their property lose all the influence necessary to preserve the
monarchy, or, being poor and desperate, may employ whatever influence
remains to them as active agents in its destruction.

[Sidenote: Castile different from Catalonia and Aragon.]

The Castilians have still remaining a good deal of their old character,
their _gravedad, lealtad_, and _el temor de Dios_; but that character
neither is, nor ever was, exactly true, except of the Castilians only.
The several kingdoms which compose Spain have, perhaps, some features
which run through the whole; but they are in many particulars as
different as nations who go by different nam