[Sidenote: _ITS INFLUENCE_] There was, moreover, the fatal facility afforded for the safe gratification of malice, as in the case of Don Joseph del Campillo, whose merits raised him from obscurity to the position of finance minister under Philip V, in 1740. In 1726, when holding a responsible office in the administration of the navy, he had a quarrel with a Gerónimite fraile over the occupancy of a house. The fraile forthwith collected gossip about him, especially from a dissolute chaplain whom he had dismissed from the service, and all this was welcomed by the tribunal of Logroño, which commenced to gather testimony against him with a view to prosecution. It came to his ears through the boasts of the frailes as to what they had done, and the profound horror which seized him at the prospect of being dishonored for life, by the mere suspicion that he was liable to prosecution, shows how terrible a weapon the system placed at the service of malignity.[276] * * * * * In the life of a nation, outward calamities can be survived and recovery from their effects is but the work of time. Far more lasting and benumbing are the results of the perpetual and unrelaxing vigilance which seeks to penetrate into the secret heart of every man, to control his thoughts, to stifle their expression, to repress every effort to move out of a beaten and prescribed track, to destroy mutual confidence and to lead each individual to regard his fellows as the possible destroyers of his reputation and career. Such was the system imposed on Spain by the Inquisition, and its appropriate expression is found in the Edict of Faith. CHAPTER V. APPEALS TO ROME. So long as the acts of the Spanish Inquisition were not final but were subject to revision by the Roman curia, its jurisdiction was incomplete. To emancipate itself from this it struggled for more than two centuries, aided unreservedly by all the power of the Spanish crown. This long-protracted and intricate contest is full of interest and merits a somewhat detailed investigation. Soon after the Inquisition commenced its work, complaints of its remorseless cruelty poured in upon the sovereigns. They sent around, as we are told, certain conscientious prelates to investigate and report, who informed them that four thousand houses had been abandoned in Andalusia, but this seems only to have inflamed Isabella's ardor and the business of vindicating the faith was prosecuted with undiminished energy.[277] The only refuge of the victims was the Holy See, which had always been open to appeals from the sentences of the Inquisition. [Sidenote: _APPEALS TO ROME_]