says a Spanish rhyme. Obedience to the king is conditional; it is based upon the monarch's respect for the supreme order of justice, and his submission to a tacit or explicit contract between king and people. Charters, traditions, and usages limit the absolutism of the monarch. In the Cortes of Orcana in 1469 it is declared that the king is the "mercenary" of the people, who pay him a "salary."[2] All Spanish obedience is steeped in this kind of pride; the nobles of Aragon feel themselves individually the equals of the king, and collectively his superior. The cities, federated into _hermandades_ or unions, treat with the monarch; they form a State within the State; they oppose the Government and force it to recognise their privileges. In 1226 the cities of Aragon and Catalonia demand of Jaime II. the grant of a charter of popular rights. Insurrections are frequent, and are incarnated in a hero of the rude national epic: the _Cid_. Mariana, a historian, authorises any violence directed against royal tyranny. {36} This individualism upholds a strict justice against the narrowness of the laws and the Byzantine debates of lawyers; against sentences, penalties, and tribunals. Poems and proverbs express this continual clash between the juridic ideal and the law; the Peninsular conscience condemns the partial and precarious justice of the codes. Joaquin Costa writes: "Of all the epics known to me--whether national or racial--the Spanish has done most to elevate the principle of justice, and has rendered the cult of justice most fervent." Austere and inviolable, the law represents a category of eternal relations, beside which all individualities are insignificant, even that of the king, and all institutions fragile, even the Church.