prevalence of a spirit of military adventure, and broke down the industry of the country; by the vast increase of the ecclesiastical institutions, which created a ruinous amount of pensioned idleness; and by the wasteful luxury brought in with the gold of America, which seemed to corrupt whatever it touched; so that, when that wary prince died, he left an impoverished people, whose energies he had overstrained and impaired by his despotism, and whose character he had warped and misdirected by his unrelenting and unscrupulous bigotry.[262] [262] There is a remarkable paper, in the sixth volume of the “Seminario Erudito,” on the causes of the decline of Spain;--remarkable because, though written in the reign of Philip IV., by Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, an ecclesiastic of rank, whom Charles III. afterwards asked to have canonized, it yet attributes the origin of the prostration under which Spain suffered in his time mainly to the war with the Netherlands. His successor, feeble-minded and superstitious, was neither able to repair the results of such mischiefs, nor to contend with the difficulties they entailed upon his country. The power of the clergy, grown enormous by the favor of Philip the Second and the consolidated influence of the Jesuits, continued to gain strength, as it were of itself; and, under the direct persuasions of this mighty hierarchy, nearly six hundred thousand descendants of Moors--who, though preserving, as their fathers had done for a century, the external appearances of Christianity, were yet suspected of being Mohammedans at heart--were now, by a great crime of state, expelled from the land of their birth; a crime followed by injuries to the agriculture and wealth of the South of Spain, and indeed of the whole country, from which they have never recovered.[263] [263] There is a great discrepancy in the accounts of the number of Moriscos expelled from Spain, 1609-11,--several making it a million, and one reducing it so low as a hundred and sixty thousand. But, whatever may have been the number expelled, all accounts agree as to the disastrous effects produced on a population already decaying by the loss of so many persons, who had long been the most skilful manufacturers and agriculturists in the kingdom; effects to which the many _despoblados_ noted on our recent maps of Spain still bear melancholy testimony. (Clemencin, Notes to Don Quixote, Parte II. c. 54.) In stating six hundred thousand to have been the number driven out, I have taken the reckoning of Circourt, (Tom. III. p. 103,) which seems made with care.