To the moral judgment of our own day no instrument of persecution seems more odious than the Inquisition. Protestants have persecuted just as whole-heartedly as Catholics, and with far less excuse; but the Inquisition stands by itself, as a regular specialized tribunal for persecution, immensely efficient, with an existence of centuries to its record.[496] We have seen the way in which the Inquisition came into being. Both the circumstances of its origin and the intentions of its various founders gave the tribunal a character only semi-judicial. Indeed, if we object that the Inquisition was a bad court of justice, its originators could retort with truth that it was not intended to be a simple court of justice. The Inquisition was created to deal with erring children, not criminals; not merely to pronounce a verdict, but to produce reconciliation and amendment; not to punish, but to penance. The Church, through the Inquisition, was dealing in the spirit of a parent with her own children, over whom she had all a parent’s rights of discipline and chastisement, but also evincing a parent’s deep desire for something more than justice and punishment, for the ending of estrangement and the restoration of loving union in the family. Such was the pure theory of the Inquisition, a much more benignant conception than that of the ordinary law-court. In the latter, the mere fact of repentance would not avail; in the former, if it were sincere, it availed everything. So de Maistre, defending the Spanish Inquisition, declared it to be the most lenient, the most merciful tribunal in the world. But we have to consider the point of view, not only of the judge, but of the defendant. Whatever the real nature of the tribunal, the man brought before it was on his trial. The tribunal _did_ pronounce a verdict, and upon that verdict his reputation, perhaps his freedom or his life, depended. He wanted justice, not mercy: and the Inquisition might be lenient, but it was not fair. It was radically unfair. It gave no facilities whatever for the plea of Not Guilty. It cared nought for the reputation of the accused. He had already lost his reputation by being before the court at all. The very fact of defamation, of being ‘suspect’ inferred guilt. To leave the court of the Inquisition without a stain upon one’s character was virtually impossible. In all manner of ways the accused was at a disadvantage—in the suppression of the names of witnesses and of evidence, in the refusal of legal assistance, in the use of torture, and above all in the fact that the judge was also the prosecutor, who regarded it as perfectly legitimate to browbeat and confuse the defendant, if he was so misguided and unfilial as to endeavour to defend himself. Inquisitorial procedure was a miserable travesty of justice; and its mercifulness was forthcoming only on its own terms. To all save the meekly submissive the Inquisition typified not mercy and love, but remorselessness and cruelty.