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