'So essential did I consider an Index to every book that I proposed to bring a Bill into Parliament to deprive an author who publishes a book without an Index of the privilege of copyright; and moreover, to subject him, for his offence, to a pecuniary penalty."-LORD CAMPBELL, Lives of the Chief Justices. Index to the Journal. The reader is requested to consider the headings to each page as the Index, and to accept as supplementary the following Notes. A Journal should be kept (p. 5). "I hate Journals," said a relative as I had the last pages before me, "of all reading they are the most stupid and dull," so I shortened them, remembering the Rev. Sidney Smith's description of the lethargic effects of a dull production. The one in question was a sermon by a Dr. Langford on behalf of the Royal Humane Society. He says, "the critic who had undertaken to review it was discovered with the discourse lying open before him in a state of the most profound sleep; from which he could not by any means be awakened for a great length of time. By attending, however, to the rules prescribed by the Humane Society, flinging in the smoke of tobacco, applying hot flannels, and carefully removing the discourse itself to a distance, the critic was restored to his disconsolate brothers." This amusing exaggeration is figurative of Spain's lost greatness (p. 12).—" In the seventeenth century the Spanish nation fell into a sleep, from which as a nation it has never since awakened. It was a sleep not of repose, but of death. It was a sleep in which the faculties instead of being rested were paralysed. We naturally ask the cause! * Buckle's "History of Civilization," p. 537, vol. 2. Buckle sums it up in few words, "blind obedience to the church (the Roman Church) forms the leading and most unfortunate peculiarity of Spanish history," * and adds "this unhappy peculiarity was the immediate cause of the decline of Spain." + The truth of this is incontrovertible, and the remedy, as in the case of the critic, is to remove the cause. "Froude" puts it in few words, "mountains of lies, taught as sacred truths," while "Carlyle," equally incisive, terms the supreme educated priest of the world "the supreme Quack," and says "the first of all gospels is this, that a lie cannot endure for ever." || The Spanish Armada (p. 14) and Educated Priests (p. 19). The Archbishop of Valencia presented a memorial to Philip III., in which he declared that the Armada which Philip II. sent against England in 1588, had been destroyed because God would not allow even that pious enterprise to succeed, while those who undertook it left heretics undisturbed at home. He told the King it was "evidently the will of heaven that nothing should prosper while Spain was inhabited by apostates." He therefore exhorted the King to exterminate them, "which would make his reign glorious to all posterity, and would raise his fame far above that of his predecessors, who in this matter had neglected their obvious duty." § The Archbishop of Toledo, next to the Pope, the most powerful ecclesiastic in Europe (See Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," Ist vol., p. 50), confirmed this, and said that sooner than have one of these unbelievers to corrupt the land, he would have the whole of them, men, women, and children at once put to the sword." Rather more than 100 years previously, after the Moorish army had been utterly destroyed and annihilated, and the subjugation of the quiet industrious Moorish peasantry was complete, devotees to Romanism exercised the power they possessed by driving out the latter from their homes and homesteads in the most remorseless manner, until all were either killed or driven 1880. "Life of Bunyan," by James Anthony Froude. Edited by John Morley, || See Carlyle's "French Revolution." § Buckle, vol. 2, p. 489. from the country. This great act of cruelty had scarcely been consumated when Ferdinand and Isabella, ever under the influence and guidance of their ecclesiastical advisers (or superiors as some may say), issued a decree expelling from the country every Jew who refused to deny his faith. This was put in force as relentlessly as the previous decrees against the Moorish peasantry. The Crown of Ferdinand and Isabella had descended during these persecutions to Philip II., who lent himself completely to do the will of the priests and whose reign was consequently signalled by a continual crusade against all who were either Protestants or heretics, or were suspected of being such. After his death, notwithstanding all that had been done, the Archbishop of Toledo said there remained those who ought to be put to the sword. Philip III. who was now King was a weak Monarch, whose religious scruples forbade his struggling with the church. The ecclesiastics prevailed and in 1609 “about one million of the most industrious inhabitants of Spain were hunted out like wild beasts, because the sincerity of their religious opinions was doubtful.” * The fate of the country was now sealed, and its fall so rapid that in only three reigns after the death of Philip II. the most powerful monarchy existing in the world was depressed to the lowest point of debasement, insulted with impunity by foreign nations, stripped of her fairest possessions, and reduced to bankruptcy. During the rest of the seventeenth century not only were the interests of the clergy deemed superior to the interests of laymen, but Buckle writes "the interests of laymen were scarcely thought of," so that the Spanish people said the priest's motto was "Everything for me, nothing for you." At the same time the Inquisition was kept continuously in operation. The best troops get disheartened when they see their comrades invisibly shot down, and either killed or suffering terrible tortures; but, under the Inquisition, it was more than this- anyone who manifested the slightest sympathy for the comrade was likewise considered to be manifestly and visibly a heretic, and deserving of like treatment. Those who say the Spanish nation ought not to have allowed themselves to be so enslaved, if they will look carefully into the subject will begin to realise the difficulties * Buckle's "History of Civilization," vol. 2, pp. 489–492. See Ford's "Handbook to Spain," published by John Murray, London. of their case. Priests literally swarmed,* and they taught the mothers and children, and ignorant-and the ignorant comprised nearly the whole nation that it was a virtue to know only what the priest told them, and a crime to know more. Ignorance accordingly was a virtue, knowledge a crime. The circulation of the blood was not allowed to be taught in Spain for 140 years after it was known in other countries, and although the church would inflict the most frightful tortures upon living people, they would not allow their dead bodies to be dissected for the furtherance of medical knowledge. All were religiously taught that it was certain damnation to resist the church in any way. The priests made it so as regards this world, and taught that it would be equally so as respects the next. The continued crusade against the laity and the way in which they were taxed more and more onerously, made every one desire to get either into the church, the army, or into some post under the government, and a Spanish gentleman tells me, as I write these notes, that this is still the Spanish idea of the best thing to do. These occupations everyone looked upon as honourable-everything else as mean and sordid. The consequence was that the numbers of these, the consuming and non-producing classes, so increased that they became out of all proportion to the industrial and producing class, whose numbers had dwindled so exceedingly by successive persecutions that the peasantry, in many parts, were no longer on the land to cultivate it; vast regions of arable land became neglected and, even to the present day, whole districts then deserted have never been repeopled. At the same time the manufactures and commerce of the nation dwindled down and, to a great extent, disappeared. "Why trouble to write all this?" some reader may ask. I reply, in order that every reader of the Journal may understand what has led to the present condition of Spain. Michelet, a French writer and Roman Catholic, author of "Roman History," "History of France," "Modern History," etc., in the preface to one of his books, anticipating the remark, "Why touch upon Christianity?" as some readers of this may ask "Why not leave it alone?" replied "In the middle of my 'Roman History' I met with * There were 100 priests to the Cathedral of Seville, when, Buckle points out, three would have sufficed; and the same superabundance, to a greater or less extent, existed everywhere. The religious zeal of the Spanish people, their national characteristic, was worked upon and fomented by them, while the absolute power of the church was secured by the kings who leagued themselves with the Inquisition, which thus became supported by the steady force of political authority, in addition to the violence of religious passions. (Queen Isabella consented with regret to its establishment. Mariana, book xxiii. xxv.) NOTES. Christianity in its origin; half through my History of France' I encountered it again. In whatever direction I turn it bars my way, and prevents my passing on." So, in writing the Journal, it could not be ignored; when on shore, we seemed to be always visiting churches. And why such a fine country as Spain was in its present condition seemed to be a question continually demanding a reply. Michelet stated his sympathies were with the church in which he was born, the Roman Catholic Church, his mother church, but likened its state to that of his own dying mother, when his filial hands hesitated to touch her lest he might cause pain, so he "will not lay bare the sores of the church," or "enumerate the causes which rendered the triumph of Protestantism inevitable," but mentions what is passing in his mind, that the Roman Church is like the sea, receiving the contents of all the dirty rivers, the impurities of the world, while the purer faith of the little "Heretic Societies" may be compared to the clear mountain stream fed by the rain and dew falling straight from heaven. Again the faith of "the pious and profound mystic of the Rhine and Low Countries," and that of the "simple rustic Waldensians" is "pure as a flower amid Alpine snows," and carrying the metaphor a little further may we not add, pure as the dew drop glistening in the sunlight of heaven. Earthquake at Lisbon (pp. 25 and 26).—The calamity may be said to have called into existence a Philanthropist. The. celebrated John Howard was then only twenty-nine, but hearing of the wide spread ruin amongst so many, he immediately broke up his house, for his father had left him in affluent circumstances, and sailed for the scene of the disaster. But the vessel was captured by a French privateer, and carried into Brest, where they were treated with such extreme cruelty that many of his fellow prisoners died under. the treatment. Thirty-six of them he says were buried in a hole in one day. The sufferings he underwent and witnessed made a lasting impression upon him. Some might say surely he had had enough to teach him not to trouble any more about other people's affairs, and that he had better mind his own business, and leave others to take care of themselves, not so John Howard: his meat and drink and mission in life were from that time forward, to do all he could to mitigate the sufferings of others, especially prisoners. He found many other prisons were little better than black holes |