This procrastination continued to the end. A writer, about 1750, attributes the endless prolongation of the trials to the inefficiency of the inquisitors, and this again to the meagreness of the salaries, which prevents the selection of capable men, but the Suprema itself was frequently to blame by its delay in acting when everything had to be submitted to its approval. Thus when the Logroño tribunal sent to it, September 9, 1818, a _sumaria_, on statement of the evidence, against Fernando de la Hoceja for irreverence to the sacrament, it was not until June 9, 1819, that it ordered prosecution and, when Valladolid proposed, November 12, 1818, to grant _audiencias de cargos_ to Lazaro Matilla, this was not confirmed until June 15, 1819.[215] * * * * * Prosecution of the absent and of the dead formed, especially in the earlier period, a large part of the work of the Inquisition. The sudden development of systematized persecution naturally caused the exodus of thousands of Conversos, in spite of the arbitrary measures adopted to prevent their escape, while the details adduced in the trials furnished evidence against other thousands, who had died in external orthodoxy. It was no part of the policy of either Church or State to condone the offences of the fugitive or of the dead. If the faith could not be vindicated by burning their bodies, it could at least exhume the bones of the departed for cremation and could symbolically consume with fire the effigies of those of whom neither the bodies nor the bones could be had, while the fisc gathered in the confiscations which followed on condemnation, including the collection of debts and the forfeiting of alienations. [Sidenote: _PROSECUTION OF THE DEAD_]