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posts in the councils of Castille, of the finances, and of the Indies; to many of these bishops embassies and vice-regal appointments were confided; and, in the provinces, the civil authority was eclipsed before their influence, for they became usurpers of its most important functions. Those were the palmy days of the Inquisition, when, secure of the monarch's favour and co-operation, it gave itself up, without restraint, to that spirit of hatred which constituted the chief ingredient of its institution, and covered the Spanish peninsula and its colonies with suffering, with tears, and with blood. As those ideas and sentiments entirely absorbed the minds of Spaniards; so, on the other hand, all public action was concentrated in the king, he having silenced the voice of the Cortes and abolished the charters (_fueros_) of the municipalities, to which had pertained all the political and civil legislation of Spain from the foundation of the monarchy; in fine, as the severity of the fiscal laws opposed an insuperable barrier to all sorts of industry and enterprise, it is not surprising that it should have transformed, as in effect it did, the national character, or that the whole social and domestic life of Spaniards should be nothing short of an entire and absolute consecration to the church and its ministers, to religious ceremonies, and to the exercises of devotion and penance. In all the hours of his life, in all professional and lucrative occupations, in all functions incident to public employments, nay, even in his very amusements, the religious idea is always present to the eyes of a Spaniard; sometimes, indeed, severe and gloomy, at others majestic and solemn, but always overwhelming him with the weight of its preponderance, and assuming the rule and arbitrament of his thoughts and actions. The following pages will offer to the reader sufficient proofs of this truth; and in each of the scenes which they present will be discovered, without difficulty, the features of the sketch which, in this introduction, we have endeavoured to trace. We have written them without anger and without partiality, and we propose to insert in them no facts, or even statements, but those gathered from personal observation, and which no Spaniard will dare to deny; facts which many sensible and upright men in that nation worthy a better condition, do most bitterly lament. It may be right to add, as an undoubted fact which cannot be too
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