POWER OF THE CHURCH ITS PROPERTY INQUISITION. 135 



edifices, without the express license of the monarch. 1 As all the 

 ecclesiastical revenues went to him, his power and patronage were 

 immense. The religious jurisdiction of the church tribunals 

 extended to monasteries, priests, donations, or legacies for sacred 

 purposes, tithes, marriages, and all spiritual concerns. The 

 fueros of the clergy have been already alluded to. " Instead of 

 any restraint on the claims of the ecclesiastics," says Dr. Robert- 

 son, " the inconsistent zeal of the Spanish legislators admitted 

 them into America to their full extent, and, at once imposed on 

 the Spanish colonies a burden which is in no slight degree oppres- 

 sive to society in its most improved state. As early as 1501 the 

 payment of tithes as it was called, in the colonies was enjoined, 

 and the mode of it regulated by law. Every article of primary 

 necessity towards which the attention of settlers must naturally 

 be turned was submitted to that grievous exaction. Nor were the 

 demands of the clergy confined to articles of simple and easy 

 culture. Its more artificial and operose productions, such as 

 sugar, indigo, and cochineal, were declared to be titheable, and, 

 in this manner, the planter's industry was taxed in every stage of 

 its progress from its rudest essay to its highest improvement." 2 

 Thus it is that even now, after all the desolating revolutions that 

 have occurred, we see the wealth of the Mexican church so exor- 

 bitantly exceeding that of the richest lay proprietors. The clergy 

 readily became the royal agents in this scheme of aggrandizement ; 

 convent after convent was built ; estate after estate was added to 

 their possessions ; dollar after dollar, and diamond after diamond 

 were cast into their gorged treasuries, until their present accumu- 

 lations are estimated at a sum not far beneath one hundred 

 millions. 3 The monasteries of the Dominicans and Carmelites 

 possess immense riches, chiefly in real estate both in town and 

 country ; whilst the convents of nuns in the city of Mexico, — 

 especially those of Concepcion, Encarnacion and Santa Terasa, — 

 are owners of three-fourths of the private houses in the capital, and 

 proportionably, of property in the different states of the republic. 4 



Wherever the church of Rome obtained a foothold in the six- 

 teenth century the Holy Inquisition was not long in asserting 

 and establishing its power. Unfortunately for the zealots of this 

 monastic tribunal, the ignorance of the Indians did not permit 



1 Recopilacion, lib. i, Tit. vi, Ley 2, North American Review, art. an tec. p. 189. 



2 Robertson's Hist, of Amer. ; Zavala Hist. Revo, of Mexico. 



3 Otero, Cuestion social, pages 38, 39, 43. 



4 Zavala Hist. Revo, de Mexico, pages 16, 17, vol. 1. 



