The unhappy Jews were now expelled by this high Caste from Spain, as though they had been Sudras so foul as to defile this holy land. The rabbi Abarnabel found his way into the royal presence, knelt before the king and queen, and weeping implored pity on his nation, and offered to lay down as ransom six hundred thousand crowns of gold. These intercessions had nearly prevailed. The king was calculating whether he had not better accept the ready money, when the first inquisitor ended his hesitation at a stroke.

Torquemada rushed into the room where the king and queen were sitting, holding up a crucifix, and shouting at the top of his voice, 'Judas sold the Son of God once for thirty pieces of silver ; your highnesses are going to sell Him the second time for thirty thousand. Here He is; here you have Him; sell Him if you will.' And then the audacious bigot flung the crucifix before them on the table, and retired in fury. The full weight of Papal indignation seemed to overhang them, and Abarnabel and his friends were put to silence. Here indeed the tribunal did not act, but only its head and its members, who engaged their sovereigns to act instead of them. The expulsion of the Jews, therefore, must not be overlooked, as if it were not a deed of the Inquisition. Having gained so much, Torquemada made the most of his opportunity. He sent preachers through the country to convert the Jews, and published an edict, offering baptism and reconciliation; but very few indeed submitted. He forbade Christians to hold any communication with them after the month of April, or to supply them with food, shelter, or any necessary; thus annulling a promise given in the royal decree, that during the period of four months no wrong or injury should be done to them. 'A contemporary and eye-witness,' cited by Lindo, shall describe their condition at this time. 'Within the term fixed by the edict, the Jews sold and disposed of their property for a mere nothing. They went about begging Christians to buy, but found no purchasers. Fine houses and estates were sold for trifles. A house was exchanged for an ass, and a vineyard given for a little cloth or linen. Although prohibited carrying away gold or silver, they secretly took large quantities in their saddles, and in the halters and harness of their loaded beasts. Some swallowed as much as thirty ducats to avoid the rigorous search made at the frontier towns and seaports by the officers appointed for the purpose. The rich Jews defrayed the expenses of the departure of the poor, practising towards each other the greatest charity, so that, except very

1 Bernaldez, MS. Chron. de los Reyes Catholicos.

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few of the most necessitous, they would not become converts. In the first week of July, they took the route for quitting their native land, great and small, old and young; on foot, on horses, on asses, and in carts; each continuing his journey to his destined port. They experienced great trouble, and suffered indescribable misfortunes on the roads and country they travelled; some falling, others rising; some dying, others coming into the world; some fainting, others being attacked with sickness; so that there was not a Christian but felt for them, and persuaded them to be baptized. Some, from misery, were converted, but they were very few. The rabbis encouraged them, and made the young people and women sing, and play on pipes and tabors, to enliven them and keep up their spirits.' All their synagogues were left unpurchased, to be converted, without compensation, into mass-houses.

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“On one occasion the people of Seville rose against the Inquisition. Their opposition, however, was too feeble to endure; it was based upon no true Christian principle. Crowds of fugitives were driven back into Seville, bound like felons; the dungeons and apartments of the convent overflowed with prisoners; and the king assigned to the new and holy tribunal' the castle of Triana, on the opposite bank of the Guadalquiver, to be a place of custody. The inquisitors, elate with triumph over the reluctant magistrates and panic-stricken people, shortly afterwards erected a tablet, with an inscription, to commemorate the first establishment of the modern Inquisition in Western Europe. The concluding sentences of this inscription, were: May God grant that, for the protection and augmentation of the faith, it may abide until the end of time! Arise, O Lord, judge Thy cause ! Catch ye the foxes!'

"One Gaspar de Santa Cruz escaped to Toulouse, where he died, and was buried, after his effigy had been burnt at Saragoza. In this place remained a son of his, who, as in duty bound, had helped to make good his retreat. This son was delated as an impeder of the Holy Office, arrested, brought out in an 'act of faith,' made to read a condemnation of his deceased father, and then sent to the inquisitors at Toulouse, who took him to his father's grave, and compelled him to dig up the corpse and burn it with his own hands. Llorente shudders as he relates the fact, not knowing whether the barbarity of the inquisitors or the vileness of the young man is the more worthy of abhorrence. But it is a chief glory of the Inquisition that it can vanquish natural affection.

"As the sovereigns had given way before Torquemada, and banished the Jews, so now they yielded to his successor as their spiritual guide, and gave up the Moors. The Sultan, who had been appealed to from Granada, sent an embassy to demand that

his brethren should not be forced into Christianity. The Jews had not been so treated, because there was no earthly power sufficiently interested to avenge their cause. The Church, although she feared not the God of Abraham, was afraid of the Sultan. But no foreign Moor was thenceforth allowed to enter Spain.

"At length the Inquisition interfered; that holy and impassive corporation determined to purge Spain of the Moors as they had previously cleared it of the Jews. Rebellion followed. A fierce warfare spread havoc over all the province; but the inquisitors assured the king that his only remedy was to extirpate the Moriscoes; and after the last of their strongholds was taken, the remnant then scattered over the country was sentenced to expatriation. The bands of the Church military occupied all the kingdom of Granada, now marked out into districts. A troop of licentious soldiery drove the weeping Moriscoes from their houses into the neighbouring churches, and thence carried them away, in such vehicles as could be found, to towns beyond the frontiers, and from those towns they were distributed all over the Spanish peninsula, and mingled with the general population. Thenceforth the hated race had no visible existence.

"We now append the number of Torquemada's victims, according to the calculation of Llorente, which is quite exclusive of the Jews, and appears to be very moderate, notwithstanding a charge of exaggeration laid against him by modern admirers and apologists of the Holy Office :

"From the time of Torquemada until the year 1809 there were,

And what is the opinion of the Select Commission of the Spanish Cortes of 1811 relative to this Holy Inquisition? This commission presented an elaborate and profoundly interesting report, containing a review of the history of the Spanish Inquisition from its

SPANISH COMMISSION ON THE INQUISITION.

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earliest and most authentic records, concluding that it could not be established consistently with the liberties of Spain.

Of the main question it thus speaks :

"This is the tribunal of the Inquisition,—that tribunal which is not dependent upon any in its proceedings; that, in the person of the inquisitor-general, is sovereign, since he dictates laws for judgments wherein sentence to temporal punishment is pronounced ;that tribunal which, in the darkness of night, drags the husband from the side of his wife, the father from the arms of his children, the children from the sight of their parents, without hope of seeing them again until they be absolved or condemned; without power to contribute to their defence and that of the family; and with no means of knowing that, in truth and justice, they ought to suffer punishment. And, after all this, besides the loss of husband, parent, child, they must endure the sequestration of their property, the confiscation of their estates, and the dishonour of their family. And can this be compatible with the constitution, by which order and harmony have been established between the supreme authorities, and in which Spaniards perceive the shield that must preserve them from the attacks of arbitrary power and of despotism? Priests, ministers of that God of peace and charity who went about doing good, are they who decree the torture, and are present at its infliction, to hear the piteous cries of innocent victims, or the execrations and blasphemies of the guilty! It is inconceivable how far prejudice can fascinate and false zeal can lead astray !"

I remember to have heard, a few years ago, from the lips of the Padre de la Canal, one of the most accomplished scholars and historians of Spain, in his library in the Augustinian monastery in Madrid, the sentence," The Inquisition has ruined Spain." And Spain must be colonized, peopled anew, and made Christian, before these traces of ruin, more general and more lasting than the vestiges of Roman, Goth, or Saracen, will disappear from the social condition of that fine people.

Llorente estimates the number of Jews who perished in the streets, under the fury of mobs, at upwards of one hundred thousand in the year 1391. To evade persecution, multitudes submitted to be baptized. More than a million changed name in the fourteenth century.

Let us now survey the reciprocity of indulgence which has, in Spain, existed between the High-Caste Holy Inquisition and the Protestant Soodra Caste of Great Britain. It is the same tale all over the world.

In the year 1713, Gibraltar was ceded to Great Britain; and by an article of the treaty of Utrecht, "her Britannic Majesty, at the

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instance of the Catholic king, consented and agreed that on no account should Jews or Moors inhabit or have dwelling in the said city of Gibraltar;" but "her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain promised that the inhabitants of the said city of Gibraltar should be allowed the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion." The very next year, an Englishman, Isaac Martin, was imprisoned and tortured by the Inquisition in Granada, on the very spot where the edict was written for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain ; as if to show Great Britain the effect of principles to which she had rendered obeisance in the proscription of the Jews at Gibraltar, and the return she might expect for indulgence towards "the Roman Catholic religion" within her own dominions.

What is the position of Protestant Christians at Rome? What places of worship, again we ask, are allowed to be raised? It is a state of things disgraceful to civilization. But is the Inquisition the only corporation that burns human beings? Let us see.

A Mr. J. Kingsley supplies the following communication to the "New York Anti-Slavery Standard" of January 17 :-" Happening to have occasion to visit Carter county (Kentucky) last week, I was made the unwilling witness of a scene of barbarity that would have made the bloodthirsty Nero tremble. It seems, from what I afterwards learned, that the slaves of one William M‘Minnis, quite an extensive farmer of Carter county, Kentucky, were suspected of being engaged in a conspiracy to rise upon a certain night, and, in connection with the slaves of an adjoining farm, murder the white people. This report having gained credence, the slaves were arrested, and tried by one of those mock courts so common in the southern country. One negro, who was supposed to be in the conspiracy, was closely questioned, and threatened with severe punishment in case he did not reveal the whole affair. The negro stoutly denied having anything to do with such a proceeding, disclaimed any knowledge of an insurrection, and begged to be released. But he was doomed to be tortured until he confessed. In order to intimidate the other slaves, it was deemed necessary to torture this miserable creature before their eyes. Accordingly he was stripped, the weather being cold, and then he received two hundred lashes on the bare back; still the negro swore that he knew nothing about the insurrection. Not yet satisfied, these inhuman monsters, excited as it were by the blood they had already drawn, proceeded to tie him up to a stake, with the evident intention of burning him. When told he was next to be burned, the screams of the poor creature were indeed terrific and heart-rending; but despite his entreaties and cries, a pile of dry wood was heaped around him, and again he was told, if he would not confess, he would be burned