They were unceremoniously robbed by the government. They were banished without notice. Their debtors were encouraged to repudiate contracts made with them. The officials of the Inquisition took exquisite pleasure in burning Hebrews, always selecting the most wealthy for its victims. Of the one hundred and sixty thousand persons burnt or disciplined during the twenty-eight years comprising the administrations of Torquemada and Ximenes as Inquisitors-General, the majority were of that unfortunate race. The cause of a Jew was prejudged before every tribunal, and it was often difficult for him to obtain a hearing, and still more to secure the protection to which he was legally entitled. Under such intolerable oppression it is not strange that he should, by the adoption of unprincipled methods and by the exaction of enormous usury, have endeavored to compensate himself, in some degree, for the degradation and hardships he was compelled to undergo. This course, however, only intensified the popular hatred until the term Jew was considered the epitome of all dishonor, deceit, and unprincipled villany. These discreditable prejudices, dictated by general ignorance and by the sacerdotal malice of the Middle Ages, are still, it is well known, far from being eradicated even by the superior understanding and liberal opinions of the twentieth century. The universal distress which afflicted the peasantry, as well as the poorer classes of the cities, is revealed by the inhumanity with which they were accustomed to treat their offspring. Robbed and oppressed by both priest and baron, and barely able to eke out a miserable existence by themselves, they regarded the birth of an infant as a domestic calamity. Parents deliberately abandoned their children in unfrequented places to perish by starvation or to be torn to pieces by birds of prey. Many were drowned like puppies. Some were buried alive. Others were deposited at the doors of churches and convents, where they were often killed by dogs. The extent of the evil, as well as the prevalent immorality existing in a single country, may be inferred from the fact that the Hospital of Santa Cruz, founded by Cardinal Mendoza of Spain in the sixteenth century, received and sheltered during twenty years more than thirteen thousand foundlings.