fight under the banners of ignorance and presumption.' At the same time he pays a well-merited compliment to the integrity and correctness of delineation of the author of the Topography of Troy, and a gentleman, 'who has never called in his pencil to the aid of his pen, but with a candour and ingenuity very rarely to be met with, has in the fidelity of his representations furnished us with competent means of disproving his system.' After all, in spite of the very laudable pains bestowed upon this portion of his work, which may be considered as containing the refutation of every theory yet attempted, we cannot help thinking it the least interesting part of his volume; though our opinion may be rather unfairly influenced by the tedium which we acknowledge that we feel, in balancing arguments or rather conjectures upon a question so often brought before us, and from which we have so little hope of deriving any practical result or satisfactory conclusion.

Our travellers were detained for some time after the arrival of their firman, by the contrary winds, which for nine months in the year blow with no small violence out of the Straits. At length however they passed the Dardanelles and proceeded slowly up the sea of Marmora to Constantinople. Here Mr. Hobhouse was for some time in doubt whether to close his volume or proceed; assigning as a reason, his despair of telling us any thing not before too well known to require repetition. But he had read his Juvenal, and his publisher having handsomely engaged that there should be no lack of paper, he wisely decided that clemency on his part would be folly; and he accordingly proceeds to be very entertaining for 200 additional pages, upon Constantinople and Constantinopolitans. As we cannot give ourselves the same licence, we must of necessity curtail our observations, recommending in the mean time even this part of the Journey, as containing, besides what has indeed been often described, a very clear and interesting account of Selim's plans of reform, and of the late revolutions in the Turkish government, which have cut off the ablest and most efficient men from the state, and left the last of his race on the throne of the Ottomans.

There is also in the Appendix a good account of the expedition to the Dardanelles, written with a view to justify the ministry who planned it from any imputation in consequence of its failure. In this, though we should rather be inclined to throw the blame upon the admiral than the ambassador, we think he, in some measure, succeeds; but we apprehend that as far as the ministry are concerned, he mistakes the question at issue; which, in our view of it, is not whether they provided well for the success of the expedition, but whether the expedition itself was wise in its object. And here as we fully agree with him that its failure is not to be

regretted,

regretted, and that to have irritated the Turks by the destruction of their capital could have produced no equivalent advantages to ourselves; he will perhaps admit with us, that an expedition, the success of which was to be deprecated, could not have been very politic in its projection. Upon one point we are glad to have confirmed from him an opinion which we formerly stated, that nothing has been lost to the English character by the failure, and that every thing he could gather upon the spot induced him to suppose,

'that there was not an intelligent man in the empire, who thought that those who had burst through their redoubtable Dardanelles, were intimidated by the cannon on the mouldering walls of the Seraglio; or who attributed the safety of the capital to any other motive than forbearance, and a disinclination from having recourse to unjust extremities.'

Having thus given a sketch of the contents of this massive but entertaining volume, we have only to add our opinion, that should the defects of which we have already spoken, be corrected in a future edition, by a little more attention to the technicalities of bookmaking, and a revision of some parts of the style, which is at times perversely or provokingly careless, the work itself will have a standard place in all collections of voyages and travels; a place which it will fully merit, by the industry and ardour of research conspicuous throughout, as well as by the spirit, vivacity, and good sense of the general narrative.

ART. IX. 1. The Speech of Doctor D. Antonio Joseph Ruiz de Padron, Deputy to the Cortes, from the Canary Islands, spoken in the Sitting of January 18, 1813, relative to the Inquisition.

2. Bread and Bulls, an Apologetical Oration, on the flourishing State of Spain, in the Reign of King Charles IV. Delivered in the Plaza de Toros, Madrid. By Don Gaspar Jovellanos. Mediterranean; printed on board His Majesty's Ship Caledonia, off Toulon. 1813.

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SPEECH against the Inquisition, delivered in the sitting of the Cortes, and another on Bread and Bulls, on the degraded state of Spain, spoken in the great square of the capital, both the genuine production of native Spaniards, may be regarded among the unequivocal signs of the times.-But when we look at the spot whence these singular productions issue, in their present dress, we cannot consider them as any thing short of literary curiosities. They are translations by the officers of the Caledonia, undertaken," in all probability, to beguile the many tedious hours spent in watch

ing an enemy shut up in the port of Toulon. If the language be not always correct, nor the style highly polished, we have, at least, every reason to trust to the fidelity of the translation. But they were printed also on board this ship; and the type, the ink, the paper, and, indeed, the whole of the mechanical processes are so well conducted as to be by no means inferior to many of the best editions of the London press.

Doctor Antonio Joseph Ruiz de Padron undertakes to prove the three following propositions:

First, That the tribunal of the Inquisition is totally useless in the church of God, and contrary to the spirit of the gospel.

Secondly, That it is contrary to the wise and religious constitution which the state has sanctioned, and to which the people have

sworn.

Thirdly, That it is prejudicial to the state.

It will not be necessary to go through all the proofs which he adduces to establish the first proposition. It is certain that no such tribunal as that which has arrogated to itself the title of 'holy,' entered into the plan of the Saviour of the World. It is equally so that nothing contained in the writings of the Evangelists, can be construed to sanction it, and that, of the ministers elected by divine authority for the promulgation of the gospel, none were inquisitors. Believe me, sir,' says the orator,' that neither in the catalogue of the ministers of the faith, enumerated by St. Paul, nor in the council of Jerusalem, do I find one vacant place for an inquisitor.' It was not found necessary to erect a tribunal of inquisitors to punish Arius, when he denied the eternal generation of the Word--the divines of Nice were satisfied with condemning "the impious and detestable" doctrine, and with separating the author of the heresy from the communion of the faithful. The Nestorians, the Pelagians, and all the various sects, who moved hell itself to shake the faith of the Catholics,' shared the same fate -the Church of God trampled on all its enemies, and without the assistance of the holy office.' That it is not only useless but injurious to the Church of Rome, he illustrates, from his own experience, when at Philadelphia. Here, at the house of Benjamin Franklin, he used to join in the evening conversations where the ministers of the Protestant communion designated him by the appellation of the Papist.'

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Young as I then was,' says he, 'I was able to convince many of the supremacy which the Bishop of Rome obtains, by divine right, over the whole church-a supremacy of jurisdiction and not merely of honour-but I confess that when, all in a body, they beset me on the establishment of the Inquisition, I had not a word to say.'

Discussions of this nature, he tells us, also took place in the

house

house of George Washington, but he was never able to ascertain to what sect that celebrated General belonged. The Philosopher Franklin, however, was suspected to be an Arminian. On the challenge of Franklin, to give a public proof of his sincerity, he preached in the Catholic Church of Philadelphia against the Inquisition; his sermon was translated into English; it was then preached throughout the provinces of New York and Maryland; and so satisfied were the auditors that the Inquisition was the work of human policy, and despotism, that many of the Anglo-Americans changed their faith and became good Catholics. Since that time, the Doctor tells us, no less than five bishoprics have been established in places where, had the Inquisition extended its baneful authority, there would not have been one.

Secondly, To prove that the Inquisition is contrary to the constitution of the state, the Doctor says nothing more is necessary than to take in one hand the political system, and in the other the dark and fanatical code of this tribunal-the one breathes nothing but justice and humanity; the other is an outrage on all human laws, and human feelings-a code dark, dismal, and intricate as its own dungeons, made up of cavils, artifices, and the meanest tricks, and more adapted for hunting out supposed criminals than for ascertaining real crimes.

The Constitution says,

Within twenty-four hours the prisoner shall be made acquainted with the cause of his imprisonment, and the name of his accuser if he have one. They shall read to him, entire, all the documents, together with the names and depositions of the witnesses; and if from these he shall not comprehend them, they shall give him as much information as he may require, in order to discover who they are. That the process shall henceforward be public, in the manner and form determined by law. That neither torment nor compulsion shall be used towards him, neither shall he suffer confiscation. That no punishment imposed, whatever the crime may be, shall in any manner pass to the family of the delinquent, but shall take effect solely upon the person who committed the offence.'

But what says the code of the Holy Inquisition?

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It admits,' says the Doctor, into its bosom, slander, calumny, accusation, and vengeance. It inspires, or rather orders, a blind obedience to its commands, as though it were infallible, and not responsible to any one for its actions. It orders inquiries, encourages informers, and protects spies, against all the laws of confidence and nature, imperiously commanding the dearest friends to accuse each other. It signifies not whether, under the pretext of preserving the faith, the father accuses the son, the son the father; the husband the wife, or the wife the husband. Brothers, parents, and friends, all, according to the spirit of this tribunal, are obliged to watch, to inform against, and

accuse

accuse each other. A commissary of the holy office, accompanied by the alguazil, and his assistants, is authorised, with impunity, to enter houses with a mysterious silence, even at midnight, and snatch a father from the bosom of his family, in the midst of their terrors, without allowing him to take a last farewel of his wife or children, condemning them to endless misery, which is the only patrimony this unfortunate father can transmit to his posterity. Whole generations before they are born, are thus sentenced, not only to poverty and beggary, but to perpetual ignominy and disgrace.' Thus it is that the holy office deprives society of useful and industrious citizens, and buries them in its infectious dungeons. It does more. In the edict of faith, which this tribunal publishes every year, it invites every person to accuse himself, who expects to be accused by another; and to those who comply within a certain time, it promises pardon; but to those who neglect it, it has no mercy-they are arrested, their fortunes confiscated, and they suffer the utmost punishment of its laws.'

The scenes of horror which take place at the examination of supposed criminals have often been described in novels and romances, but here we have the facts truly and distinctly stated by a Spaniard well informed of all the proceedings of this dark and sanguinary tribunal. The punishment that follows confession, and even precedes conviction, is horrible to relate.

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In the first case,' says he,' sentence is passed after a thousand mysterious questions; but in the second, besides the confinement in dark dungeons, destitute of all human consolation, they employ dreadful torments to extort confession. A pully, suspended to the ceiling, through which is passed a thick rope, is the first spectacle which meets the eye of the unhappy victim. The attendants load him with fetters, and tie a hundred pounds of iron to his ancles; they then turn his arms to his shoulders, and fasten them with a cord; they fasten the rope round his wrists, and having raised him from the ground, they let him fall suddenly, repeating this twelve times, with a force so great that it disjoints the most robust body. If he does not then confess what the inquisitors wish, other torture awaits him; having first bound him hands and feet, eight times does the sad victim suffer the rack; and if he persists without confessing, they compel him to swallow a quantity of water, to restore his respiration. But where this is not sufficient, the torment of the brasero completes the sanguinary scene, the slow fire of which cruelly roasts the naked feet, rubbed over with grease and secured in a block.

The authority of this infernal tribunal extends even to the regions of the dead.

'How often have the inquisitors ordered graves to be opened for the remains of those whom they judged to have died in heresy, in order to commit them to the flames! Unhappy relics of the human race! Sad spoils of death! Respected shades of the departed, who, having died in innocence, have become the victims of calumny, malevolence, or vengeance,