son and successor of the Emperor Charles? We are so accustomed to hear this prince lauded to the skies as the great champion of Catholicity against Elizabeth of England and the Protestants of the Continent, that to write anything to the contrary would seem, to the unlearned majority of Catholics, to savor of heterodoxy. It is time that the championship of Philip II. and the services by him rendered to the cause of the Church should be submitted to the judgment of impartial history.

Philip began by annihilating whatever remained of the free institutions of his country. So great was the need of money and so universal and unblushing had public venality become, that deputies to the wretched Cortes of that reign had to purchase the votes of their electors, a choice costing the candidate 14,000 ducats.1 In order to provide some remedy for the national ruin and bankruptcy bequeathed by the preceding reign, the ministers of Philip II. proposed seriously to their master to legalize the system of repartimientos, by which the natives of the West Indies and America were divided into large land lots, and, with these, sold to the highest bidder. This inhuman proposition was rejected by Philip because it would create in the New World a feudal system more iniquitous and more oppressive than that of Europe, and more dangerous to the Crown. They next advised him to repudiate all the contracts entered into by his father with foreign or native bankers, under the plea that these had already been overpaid by the exorbitant interest exacted and by the fruitful monopolies so long enjoyed by the usurers. This, again, Philip rejected because he feared to close against himself, by such repudiation, all the money-markets of Europe. Finally, in 1556, they bethought them of coining a depreciated currency, and only discontinued the vile practice, forbidden by the Councils of the Church under pain of excommunication, because the rogues who carried on the work quarrelled about the profits.2

Then followed a series of unworthy and oppressive financial measures which one would regard as incredible were they not attested by contemporary writers, themselves eye-witnesses of the facts they related. Ruy Gomez de Silva was sent into the provinces of Castile with full powers to mortgage or sell everything on which money could be raised, and to obtain loans or grants by every possible expedient. Even the Princess Juana was compelled to surrender the greatest part of the revenues bestowed on her by the Cortes or inherited from her parents. The King of Portugal sent a large quantity of East Indian wares, which were disposed of to great advantage in Flanders. Philip himself demanded of the 'Marina: "Teoria de las Cortes," p. 27.

2 Micheli: “ Relazione d'Inghilterra," fol. 79.

Low Countries a loan of twenty-four tons weight of gold, and got it. Encouraged by this, he forthwith asked a further grant of 800,000 florins, and, under various pretexts, in a single year he extorted from these oppressed provinces the enormous sum of 5,000,000 of ducats.

Following the example of the foolish dame who killed the hen that laid the golden eggs, the ever-needy despot imposed a tax of one ducat on every sack of wool carried on Spanish bottoms to the Low Countries and two ducats on every sack exported to France and Italy. When the ships were not Spanish this export tax was doubled. The woollen manufactures of Spain, like that of silk and every other national industry, were already perishing beneath the load of taxation or sacrificed to the interests of foreign monopolies controlled by the King's creditors. The raising of wool for foreign exportation was one resource left to Spanish producers. This was now imperilled by the new taxation. The nation sent forth a cry of alarm, and the Cortes of 1558 remonstrated with. the King. He answered that sheer necessity compelled him to this measure.

This, however, was only one among many similar administrative acts equally ruinous to the national prosperity. The King mortgaged or farmed out to the highest bidder the crown domains, hamlets, villages, towns, fiefs, jurisdictional privileges, commercial property of every description. When the same Cortes of 1558 reminded him of the oath he had taken and the obligation he had contracted to protect all vested rights against violence and abuse, Philip only replied by putting up for sale the commanderies of the military orders, titles of nobility, the offices of regidor, alcalde, and register, all of which, up to that time, had been bestowed gratuitously as a reward for great public services.

And, these means proving to be insufficient, Philip asked the Pope to be allowed to sell all the Church property from which the clergy derived their resources, promising to indemnify them at some future day. At length he was driven to the necessity of seizing the goods and money of all merchants and travellers arriving in Spain from the East or West Indies.

Philip II. pretended to be, like the ancient caliphs of Damascus and Cordova, dueño de vida y hacienda, "master of the life and property" of every subject. The men who acted as his agents and instruments in this reckless course of oppression played the tyrant, each in his own sphere, and appropriated to themselves a goodly share of the spoils thus collected. Thus only a portion of the public plunder found its way to the royal treasury and went to defray the expenses of Philip's interminable wars. Meanwhile unspeakable misery reigned among the Spanish populations.

Ranke tells us that from 1575 to 1578 they were reduced to despair by the intolerable burdens placed on them.

When Philip had taken from the people all that the tax-gatherer could obtain by force or terror, and stripped the Church of the possessions guaranteed by the nation and by the rightful ownership of centuries, he cast about for some device for compelling the aristocracy to give up a part of their wealth. Setting aside all the ⚫ titles and letters-patent granted by former kings of Spain, he decreed that all noblemen, of whatever rank, should have their titles examined and renewed. The court established for this revision began its labors with some of the highest and most ancient families in the kingdom, whom it deprived of their right to collect tithes of the sea-fisheries near their domains. But the ancient feudal power of the nobles was not so weakened nor their spirit so broken by long servility, that they did not take alarm at this invasion of their rights and resent this infraction of their privileges. They had been insensible to the sufferings of the oppressed popular classes; they had rejoiced at seeing the clergy despoiled and impoverished. Now that the King's hand was extended to seize their coronets and challenge their titles, they banded together like one man, and royalty gave way before them.

Disappointed and irritated by the ill success of his scheme, Philip, whose pecuniary need was ever on the increase, had once more recourse to the familiar expedient of plundering the clergy and the communes. Pius IV., sorely against his will and to avoid greater evils, granted the King one-half of the entire Church revenues in his dominions, and this concession was soon followed by yearly subsidies for the support of the Spanish fleet, these subsidies to be drawn from the same source and to continue so long as the King needed them. To be sure, the fleets of Spain in the Mediterranean and along the northwest coast of Africa were presumed to be chiefly employed in watching the Mohammedan pirates. We know, however, that they were more frequently destined for a far different service.

Nevertheless the battle of Lepanto stands out, at this period, as the one mighty event which saved Europe and Christendom from the yoke of Islam. For Spain's principal share in this memorable victory the world is indebted to the eloquence and saintly influence of Francis of Borgia, who gave the last years of his life and the last efforts of his apostolic zeal toward organizing this crusade against the Turk, thereby consummating the work begun by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Then it was that Pius V. renewed in favor of Philip the escusado, or concession in perpetuity, of the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues, as well as the revenue arising from the sale of the bull of the Cruzada. These heavy burdens laid on

the clergy did not suffice; and Gregory XIII., after a long negotiation, had to grant a further tax of 170,000 gold crowns annually on all church property.

Simultaneously with these exactions, and when the Church of Spain found it impossible to bear the load of taxation thus laid on its members and its possessions, the people were called upon to furnish the King with additional subsidies. The alcabala tax, so heavy before, was then raised ten per cent. The government

monopolized the manufacture and the sale of playing-cards — a most profitable industry-for the passion for gambling increased among all classes in proportion to the progress of the public misery; the extraction and sale of mercury also became a government monopoly; enormous duties were imposed on all objects imported into Spain, and an additional tax was placed on every pound of wool taken out of the kingdom.

Again the Cortes protested against the crushing load thus placed on property-holders and producers. The King was courageously reminded that his conduct was in open violation of his coronation oath. What cared Philip? His reply was to ask for contributions in kind, when it became impossible to obtain gold or silver. Every province throughout its length and breadth was ransacked for produce of every description. Andalusia was forced to furnish 2000 quintals of hard-baked bread; Seville had to contribute 10,000 barrels of wine; Galicia 6000 quintals of salt meat. Then came,

in 1589, the oppressive impost, known as that of millones, which fell on the articles most necessary to the sustenance of the people in Spain, wine, olive oil, and meat of all kinds. This impost yielded 8,000,000 ducats annually. At length, when clergy and people could give no more, reduced, as they were, to such extreme poverty as had never before been heard of; when industry and commerce were prostrated under the load of taxation, Philip was, literally, forced to beg a subsidy from his nobles. They were the only class in the kingdom whom his long series of exactions had left untouched. They gave generously. It was only a drop of water thrown into the bottomless gulf.

"In 1595," says Marliani, quoting Gonzalves de Avila, biographer of Philip II., "a year thrice as fruitful as most of the preceding, 35,000,000 of crowns in gold and silver are landed at San Lucar (near Cadiz); in 1596 not a trace was to be found of all that money in Castile; the difficulties of the royal treasury still subsisted in all their hideous nakedness. Then Philip wished his counsellors to inform him of the cause of this phenomenon, thereby showing himself to be as ignorant an administrator as he was a cruel despot. He deplores his abject poverty after all the money extorted by violence, and finds no remedy to it save in a new course of

spoliation. Taking up the project first set on foot in 1575, he decrees that the creditors of the state shall forfeit all their revenues, their rights, the property held by them in pledge, all the title-deeds intrusted to them; all these were to be restored to the government. This system of public robbery, adopted and legalized by a great sovereign, filled Spain and Europe with consternation. Everywhere the unfortunate men thus despoiled had recourse to bankruptcy. The remaining creditors demand the restitution of their capital. Philip replies by asking them for more money, and accepts loans on the most usurious conditions, pledging in advance all the revenues of the state, and spending the money loaned as soon as received. When he found himself once more penniless, and when the state could no longer claim as its own a single source of public revenue, . . when the cities of Spain refused to grant him a single contribution, because the produce of the soil and the other property revenues no longer sufficed to pay the taxes, the sovereign of the empire on which the sun never set, was forced to hold out his hand and beg." (Vol. i., pp. 57, 58.)

We are accounting here for the present impoverished condition of Spain, for the chronic lethargy in which are sunk, and sunk hopelessly, to all seeming, the once splendid industrial activities of the nation, the intelligent and successful commercial enterprise, the prosperity once so unrivalled and so envied. More than that, we are explaining the apparently inexplicable contradiction of a national Church despoiled, impoverished, and restricted in the use of her most sacred rights in a land where no rival faith exists; of a clergy reduced, in the immense majority of its members, to a state of poverty so degrading, that their lot is more pitiable than that of our hod-carriers; to a loss of influence so utter that the meanest can insult them with impunity. It is commonly thought that this sad state of things began with the French invasion under Napoleon I. But the "origin of contemporary Spain" is to be sought for as far back as the beginning of the sixteenth century. We have only pointed out to the intelligent reader where he has to seek for the causes which, century after century, and reign after reign, were at work to ruin and debase Spain, to despoil, fetter, and degrade religion.

And, while urging this consideration on the students of history, we are anxious to dispel from their minds a very serious error. They must have read a hundred times, at least, that up to the nineteenth century Spain was the most priest-ridden of countries, since there the Inquisition kept souls in subjection, and repressed by sheer terror free thought, free inquiry, and free speech on all matters touching on religion. We think we can promise American readers a true history of the Spanish Inquisition from the pen of