Yet the meetings of the Cortes, shorn as that body was of its ancient privileges, were not without important benefits to the nation. None could be better acquainted than the deputies with the actual wants and wishes of their constituents. It was a manifest advantage for the king to receive this information. It enabled him to take the course best suited to the interests of the people, to which he would naturally be inclined when he did not regard them as conflicting with his own. Even when he did, the strenuous support of their own views by the commons might compel him to modify his measures. However absolute the monarch, he would naturally shrink from pursuing a policy so odious to the people that, if persevered in, it might convert remonstrance into downright resistance. The freedom of discussion among the deputies is attested by the independent tone with which in their petitions they denounce the manifold abuses in the state. It is honourable to Philip, that he should not have attempted to stifle this freedom of debate; though perhaps this may be more correctly referred to his policy, which made him willing to leave this safety-valve open for the passions of the people. He may have been content to flatter them with the image of power, conscious that he alone retained the substance of it. However this may have been, the good effect of the exercise of these rights, imperfect as they were, by the third estate, must be highly estimated. The fact of being called together to consult on public affairs gave the people a consideration in their own eyes which raised them far above the abject condition of the subjects of an Eastern despotism. It cherished in them that love of independence which was their birthright, inherited from their ancestors, and thus maintained in their bosoms those lofty sentiments which were the characteristics of the humbler classes of the Spaniards beyond those of any other nation in Christendom. One feature was wanting to complete the picture of absolute monarchy. This was a standing army,--a thing hitherto unknown in Spain. There was, indeed, an immense force kept on foot in the time of Charles the Fifth, and many of the troops were Spaniards. But they were stationed abroad, and were intended solely for foreign enterprises. It is to Philip's time that we are to refer the first germs of a permanent military establishment, designed to maintain order and obedience at home.