ides paying a fine of 50 pesos.

These are the only cases on record. Only the walls of the Inquisition
building, could they speak, could reveal what passed within them from
the time of Manso's arrival in 1520 to the end of the sixteenth
century, when the West Indian Superior Tribunal was transferred to
Cartagena, and a special subordinate judge only was left in San Juan.
Bishop Rodrigo de Bastidas, who visited San Juan on a Government
commission in 1533, perceiving the abuses that were committed in the
inquisitor's name, proposed the abolition of the Holy Office; but the
odious institution continued to exist till 1813, when the
extraordinary Cortes of Cadiz removed, for a time, this blot on
Spanish history. The decree is dated February 22d, and accompanied by
a manifesto which is an instructive historical document in itself. It
shows that the Cortes dared not attempt the suppression of the dreaded
Tribunal without first convincing the people of the disconnection of
the measure with the religious question, and justifying it as one
necessary for the public weal.

"You can not doubt," they say, "that we endeavor to maintain in this
kingdom the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman religion, which you have the
happiness to profess; ... the deputies elected by you know, as do the
legislators of all times and all nations, that a social edifice not
founded on religion, is constructed in vain; ... the true religion
which we profess is the greatest blessing which God has bestowed on
the Spanish people; we do not recognize as Spaniards those who do not
profess it ... It is the surest support of all private and social
virtues, of fidelity to the laws and to the monarch, of the love of
country and of just liberty, which are graven in every Spanish heart,
which have impelled you to battle with the hosts of the usurper,
vanquishing and annihilating them, while braving hunger and nakedness,
torture, and death."

The Inquisition is next referred to. It is stated that in their
constant endeavor to hasten the termination of the evils that afflict
the Spanish nation, the people's representatives have first given
their attention to the Inquisition; that, with the object of
discovering the exact civil and ecclesiastical status of the Holy
Office, they have examined all the papal bulls and other documents
that could throw light on the subject, and have discovered that only
the Inquisitor-General had ecclesiastical powers; that the Provincial
Inquis