If there were frequent perjury and subornation of testimony it is not to be supposed that the seekers for limpieza hesitated to corrupt the officials who controlled their destinies, nor is it unreasonable to assume that many of the latter were accessible to bribery. The opportunities were tempting and they were freely exploited. An experienced writer, in 1648, describes this as the most troublesome business in the tribunals, leading to quarrels, which he hints arose between those honestly endeavoring to discharge their duty and those who had been bribed. The fiscal is reminded that he must set his face like flint against all efforts to pass a genealogy in which there is a flaw, for the aspirants tempt the officials, there is collusion between them and forged documents are to be expected. The chief reason, he says, why commissionerships are sought is because of the opportunities thus afforded and, writing in Toledo, he declares that all the commissioners and notaries attached to that tribunal are untrustworthy and venal.[892] * * * * * It was natural that the evils with which this absurd cult of limpieza afflicted the land should arouse opposition and call forth suggestions to mitigate its hardship. The earliest writer who ventured publicly to urge a reform seems to have been Fray Agustin Salucio, a distinguished Dominican theologian. In 1599 he issued a brief tract, pointing out that practically all Spaniards, in the course of ages, had contracted some more or less infinitesimal impurity of blood and that, unless investigations were limited to some moderate period, such as a hundred years, only the lower orders, whose genealogies were untraceable, could escape the consequences. He tells us that both Pius V and Gregory XIII drew up briefs prescribing narrow limits to these investigations but that, on communicating their designs to Philip II, discussions arose as to the term, which proved so protracted that the briefs were never published. Philip himself became convinced of the necessity of some limitation and, towards the close of his reign, he assembled a junta, including Inquisitor-general Portocarrero (1596-99) which unanimously agreed to a term of a hundred years, but Philip's death caused the project to be dropped. Salucio's tract was promptly suppressed by Philip III, but it was reprinted, in 1637, by Fray Gerónimo de la Cruz with a verbose confutation. Yet, while he indignantly denied the aspersion on the limpieza of the nation, he was fully alive to the misery caused by the current practice and he urged a limitation of time, placing it at 1492, the year of the expulsion of the Jews.[893] [Sidenote: _ATTEMPTED REFORM_]