able than exile from one's country; it is the excommunication from
the parental roof and from the affections of those we love.

Have I a right to hold the members of the Episcopal, Lutheran,
Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches responsible for these
proscriptive measures to which I have referred, most of which have been
authorized by their respective founders and leaders? God forbid! I know
full well that these acts of cruelty form no part of the creed of the
Protestant churches. I have been acquainted with Protestants from my
youth. They have been among my most intimate and cherished friends, and,
from my knowledge of them, I am convinced that they would discountenance
any physical violence which would be inflicted on their fellow-citizens on
account of their religious convictions. They would justly tell me that the
persecutions of former years of which I have spoken should be ascribed to
the peculiar and unhappy state of society in which their ancestors lived,
rather than to the inherent principles of their religion.

For precisely the same reasons, and for reasons still more forcible,
Protestants should not reproach the Catholic Church for the atrocities of
the Spanish Inquisition. The persecutions to which I have alluded were for
the most part perpetrated by the founders and heads of the Protestant
churches, while the rigors of the Spanish tribunal were inflicted by
laymen and subordinate ecclesiastics, either without the knowledge or in
spite of the protests of the Bishops of Rome.

Let us now present the Inquisition in its true light. In the first place,
the number of its victims has been wildly exaggerated, as even Prescott is
forced to admit. The popular historian of the Inquisition is Llorente,
from whom our American authors generally derive their information on this
subject. Now who was Llorente? He was a degraded Priest, who was dismissed
from the Board of Inquisitors, of which he had been Secretary. Actuated by
interest and revenge, he wrote his history at the instance of Joseph
Bonaparte, the new King of Spain, and, to please his royal master he did
all he could to blacken the character of that institution. His testimony,
therefore, should be received with great reserve. To give you one instance
of his unreliability, he quotes the historian Mariana as his authority for
saying that two thousand persons were put to death in one year in the
dioceses of Seville and Cadiz alone. By referring to the pages