504 
For the Monthly. Magazine. 
SKETCHES Of RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. 
NO, I. 
The Inquisition. 
HE history of the Inquisition is a 
full fountain, sending forth bitter 
waters ; butit is a fund for supplying 
subjects of meditation, that should 
never leave a blank in our thoughts, 
nor should the memory of past events, 
indissolubly connected with it, be 
suffered to perish, like ephemeral 
topics of conversation, which cannot 
outlive the month. From long habit, 
we read over, with frigid indifference, 
the calamities resulting from those 
three great phenomena,—earthquakes, 
the eruptions of volcanoes, and the 
pestilence which walketh in darkness. 
Should a worid of news of this kind 
start up to sight, the workings of our 
fancy would soon be wound up, and 
the expressions of curiosity would be 
faint: but the dreadful idea of the 
Inquisition, like some theme that 
comes home to men’s business and 
bosoms, sets every spring of the mind 
in motion, employs the magnifying 
powers of imagination, and ranks high 
as a leading object in the series of 
intelligence and extensive enquiry. 
The Inquisition in Spain has been 
ever accompanied by a_ series of 
inauspicious occurrences. This bloody 
tribunal has ever given a turn deci- 
dedly sinister to the current of national 
prosperity, and, enveloped in obscurity 
itself, like a malignant planet, has 
intercepted the lustre of its history, so 
that it appears to have experienced 
almost a total eclipse. Wherever the 
poisonous breath of the Holy Office 
(like the blast of death) has diffused 
itself, ihe most populous towns have 
been deprived of their inhabitants, 
their walls have included only in- 
formers and victims, and the most 
productive soil has proved stubborn 
and ungrateful to the plough. 
Portugal, Italy, Sicily, and several 
parts of the Indies and New World, 
have long groaned, mere or less, 
under the homicidal axe) of inqui- 
sitors; but no-where has the Inquisi- 
tion vented such hostile rage, no-where 
have its thunders been pointed with 
such terrible and irresistible effect, as 
in Spain. In vain has creation 
smiled, — woods, hills, vales, the 
boundless charms of nature, inviting 
to gaze end admire; all these scenes 
of beauty were marred, ¢lethed with 
Sketches of Religious Persecution, No. I. 
[Jan. 1, 
a mournful hue, by those spirits or 
HELL, torturing the hearts of the inno- 
cent with needless wretchedness. 
Their crimes, their cruelties, perpe- 
trated in the name of indulgent 
heaven; the mild effulgence of the 
God of mercy pleaded to drag their 
victims to the fire; men, like fiends, 
attired in the robes of religion, virtue, 
civil worth! In the states of most 
Catholic kings, the ministers of a 
religion, which commands us to pardon 
errors unto seventy limes seven, with 
peace on their lips, and murder in the 
heart, parting as under the bonds of 
nature, and waging an accurst infernal 
war with the dawnings of pure reason, 
with virtues which they well knew, 
but would not imitate. 
Happily for humanity, and, I dare 
say, for religion also, the Inquisition 
changed its existence for the long* 
sleep of an eternal night. The French, 
in their attempts to impose a new 
yoke on the Spaniards, emancipated 
them from that of the Holy Office, and 
the Cortes of Cadiz solemnly sanc- 
tioned the suppression of the Tribunals 
of Thought. Now the Constitutional 
government is destroyed, the close, in- 
sinuating, cunning, rapacious, and 
revengeful, Confrerie, will continue to — 
inflict its wrongs, 
Several authors, French, Spanish, 
and Portuguese, have attempted to 
write the history of the Inquisition, or 
rather to develope and recapitulate 
its crimes. Secrecy, however, among 
other justly odious measures for the 
attainment of their objects, being 
always the prime mover in their arbi- 
trary councils, this very circumstance 
has bereaved writers of authentic ma- 
terials, and led them into gross errors 
or exaggerations unworthy of history. 
Truth was concealed, from the danger 
of revealing it; and, in fact, what his- 
torian, prior to ‘the French revolution, 
would have attempted to disgrace, or 
dared to denounce, the Inquisition, as 
a barbarous and anti-christian insti- 
tution? Such, then, was the dread of 
giving umbrage to the Holy Office, 
that the author of the “ History of In- 
quisitions,” the only critical work that 
appeared under the ancient regime, 
was obliged to publish it in Germany, 
with the. precaution of being strictly 
anonymous. 
Soon after the French had abolished 
the Inguisition in Spain, M. Lavallé 
published at Paris an “ History of the 
Religious Inquisitions of Italy, Spain, 
and 
