INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE STATE OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, FRANCE AND ENGLAND. ♦GRADUAL DEGRADATION OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.♦ The history of Spain and Portugal, from the foundation of their respective monarchies to the middle of the sixteenth century, when both countries attained their highest point of greatness, is eminently heroic, for the persevering spirit with which they warred against the Moors, never ceasing and scarcely breathing from the contest till they had finally exterminated them; and for the splendour, the extent, and the importance of their foreign conquests. Both kingdoms had risen by the same virtues; the same vices brought on the decline of both; and the history of their decline is not less instructive than that of their rise. Their external relations have been widely different; but notwithstanding this difference, and notwithstanding a national enmity, kept alive rather by old remembrances and mutual pride than by the frequency of their wars with each other, the Spaniards and Portugueze have continued to be morally and intellectually one people. They spring from the same stock; the same intermixture of races has taken place among them; and their national character has been formed by similar circumstances of climate, language, manners, and institutions. The old governments are called free, like all those which the Teutonic tribes established; but this freedom was little better than a scheme of graduated tyranny, and the laws upon which it was founded were only so many privileges which the conquerors reserved or arrogated to themselves. When the commixture of languages and nations was complete, and commerce had raised up a class of men who had no existence under the feudal system, a struggle for political liberty ensued throughout all the European kingdoms. It was soon terminated in Spain: a good cause was ruined by the rashness and misconduct of its adherents; and the scale, after it had been borne down by the sword of the sovereign, never recovered its equipoise: for the Romish church leagued itself with the monarchical authority, against whose abuse it had formerly been the only bulwark; but changing its policy now according to the times, it consecrated the despotism whereby it was upheld in its own usurpations. The effects of this double tyranny were not immediately perceived; but in its inevitable consequences it corrupted and degraded every thing to which it could extend, ... laws, morals, industry, literature, science, arts, and arms. ♦TYRANNY OF THE CHURCH.♦