I.

religious

To the monastic orders the influence of the times had been CHAP. less beneficial. There were ages during which those institutions produced the greatest blessings in Europe; when they kept State of the alive the lamp of knowledge, mitigated barbarian manners, and orders. carried the light of Christianity among a race of ferocious conquerors. These uses had long since gone by; and the dissolution of the Jesuits had extinguished the missionary spirit which that extraordinary society had provoked in its rivals, and by which it had itself almost atoned to humanity and to religion for its own manifold misdeeds. The wealthy orders still afforded a respectable provision for the younger sons of old or opulent families; the far more numerous establishments of the mendicants were more injuriously filled from the lower classes. The peasant who was ambitious of seeing a son elevated above the rank in which he was born, destined him for a friar; and he who was too idle to work, or who wished to escape from military service, took shelter in the habit. The mendicant orders were indeed a reproach to Catholicism, and a pest to the countries wherein they existed: they contributed not only to keep the people ignorant, but to render them profligate. Yet even among the Franciscans men were found, who, by their irreproachable conduct, their sincere though misdirected piety, and sometimes by their learning and industrious lives, preserved the order from the contempt into which it would otherwise have fallen even among the vulgar. The nunneries of every description produced nothing but evil, except in those cases where persons went into them by their own choice, who in Protestant countries would have been consigned to a Bedlam.

literature.

Literature had revived in both kingdoms, and was flourish- Improving ing, notwithstanding the restraints which the government and the Inquisition continued to impose. Few similar institutions have equalled the Royal Academies of Madrid and Lisbon in

VOL. I.

с

I.

CHAP. the zeal and ability with which they have brought to light their ancient records, and elucidated the history and antiquities of their respective countries. There was one most important subject from which men of letters were compelled to refrain.. the old free constitution: but it met them every where in their researches; and its restoration was the object of their wishes, if not of their hopes.

Morals of the lower

classes.

The lower classes, who in great cities are every where too generally depraved, were perhaps peculiarly so in Spain, from the effect of what may be called their vulgar, rather than their popular, literature. This had assumed a curious and most pernicious character, arising partly from the disregard in which ill-executed laws must always be held, and partly from the faith of the people in the efficacy of absolution. The ruffian and the bravo were the personages of those ballads which were strung for sale along dead walls in frequented streets, and vended by blind hawkers about the country. In these pieces, which, as they were written by men in low life for readers of their own level, represent accurately the state of vulgar feeling, the robberies and murders which the hero commits are described as so many brave exploits performed in his vocation; and, at the conclusion, he is always delivered over safely to the priest, but seldom to the hangman. Fables of a like tendency were not unfrequently chosen by their dramatists for the sake of flattering some fashionable usage of superstition, such as the adoration of the cross and the use of the rosary; and the villain who, in the course of the drama, has perpetrated every imaginable crime, is exhibited at the catastrophe* as a saint by virtue of one of

* What is most extraordinary is, that some German critics have discovered sublimity in these monstrous exhibitions, which are as offensive to common sense as they are to the moral feeling.

I.

these redeeming practices. Such works were more widely CHAP. injurious in their tendency than any of those which the Inquisition suppressed. They infected the minds of the people; and the surest course by which a coxcomb in low life could excite admiration and envy among his compeers was by appearing habitually to set justice at defiance. It became a fashion among some of the higher classes in Spain to imitate * these wretches; and, by a stranger and more deplorable perversion of nature, women were found among those of distinguished rank, who affected the dress and the manners of the vilest of their sex. No such depravity was known in Portugal: the court set an example of decorum and morality there; and as there were fewer large towns, in proportion to the size of the kingdom, there was consequently less corruption among the people.

character

Travellers, forming their hasty estimate from the inhabitants National of sea-ports and great cities, have too generally agreed in unchanged. reviling the Portugueze and Spaniards: but if they whose acquaintance with these nations was merely superficial have been disposed to depreciate and despise them, others who dwelt among them always became attached to the people, and bore willing and honourable testimony to the virtues of the national character. It was indeed remarkable how little this had partaken of the national decay. The meanest peasant knew that his country had once been prosperous and powerful; he was familiar with the names of its heroes; and he spake of the days that were past with a feeling which was the best omen for those that were to come.

Such was the moral and intellectual state of the peninsular Both coun

tries in an improving state.

* The Vermin and Four-in-hand clubs are sufficiently analogous to this Spanis fashion of the Majos, to render this at once intelligible and credible to the English reader.

CHAP. kingdoms toward the close of the eighteenth century. There I. was not the slightest appearance of improvement in the prin

Both become subservient

ciples of the government or in the administration of justice; but, if such a disposition had arisen, no nations could have been in a more favourable state for the views of a wise minister and an enlightened sovereign. For the whole people were proudly and devoutly attached to the institutions of their country ; there existed among them neither sects, nor factions, nor jarring interests; they were one-hearted in all things which regarded their native land; individuals felt for its honour as warmly as for their own; and obedience to their sovereign was with them equally a habit and a principle. In spite of the blind and inveterate despotism of the government, the mal-administration of the laws, and the degeneracy of the higher classes, both countries were in a state of slow, but certain, advancement; of which, increasing commerce, reviving literature, humaner manners, and mitigated bigotry were unequivocal indications. In this state they were found when France was visited by the most tremendous revolution that history has recorded,..a revolution which was at once the consequence and the punishment of its perfidious policy, its licentiousness, and its irreligion.

It was soon seen that this revolution threatened to propagate to France. itself throughout the whole civilised world. The European

governments combined against it: their views were discordant, their policy was erroneous, their measures were executed as ill as they were planned: a master-mind was equally wanting in the cabinet and in the field. In the hour of trial the Spanish court perceived the inefficiency of its organized force; and having neither wisdom to understand the strength of the nation, nor courage and virtue to rely upon it, it concluded a disastrous war by a dishonourable peace. From that time its councils were directed by France, and its treasures were at the disposal of the

I.

same domineering ally. A war against England, undertaken CHAP. upon the most frivolous pretexts, and ruinous to its interests, was the direct consequence; and when, after the experimental peace of Amiens, hostilities were renewed between France and England, Spain had again to experience the same fatal results of the dependence to which her cabinet had subjected her. Portugal had purchased peace with less apparent dishonour, because the terms of the bargain were not divulged; but there also the government soon found that in such times to be weak is to be miserable: it was compelled to brook the ostentatious insolence of the French ambassadors, and to pay large sums for the continuance of a precarious neutrality whenever France thought proper to extort them; for the system of Europe had now been overthrown, and the laws of nations were trampled under foot. A military power, more formidable than that of Rome in its height of empire, of Zingis, or of Timour, had been established in France upon the wreck of all her ancient institutions; and this power was directed by the will of an individual the most ambitious of the human race, who was intoxicated with success, and whose heart and conscience were equally callous.

the French

Many causes combined in producing the French revolution: Causes of the example of a licentious court had spread like a pestilence revolution. through the country; impiety was in fashion among the educated classes; and the most abominable publications were circulated among the ignorant with as much zeal as if a conspiracy had actually been formed for the subversion of social order, by removing from mankind all restraints of morality, of religion, and of decency. Things were in this condition when France took part in the American war; a measure to which Louis XVI. reluctantly consented, because he felt in his heart its injustice, and had perhaps an ominous sentiment of its im