Horrible as the atrocities of the inquisition were in the mother country, it is doubtful if they ever reached the acme of savage cruelty that they attained during the period when Spain was seeking to strengthen the fetters with which she nominally held Holland in her grasp. The Spanish government, from the time when it first acquired a place among nations, has never been satisfied with a reasonable tribute from its dependencies. Its plan ever has been to exact all, and leave nothing to supply more than a miserable existence. So it was in the middle of the sixteenth century, when Philip II., greedy of the treasures of Holland, determined to spoil them of their wealth, and planned to establish the inquisition among them by the sword. The duke of Alva, already famous for his harshness and bigotry, was named commander of the forces, with almost unlimited powers. He entered the Netherlands with about 20,000 tried troops, ready for cruelties, and all hopes of peace or mercy fled before them. There was a great and desperate exodus of the inhabitants; thousands took refuge in England, Denmark and Germany, and despair and helplessness alone remained to greet the cold Spaniard and his train of orthodox executioners. The Council of Troubles--the "Blood-tribunal"--was immediately established, and the land was filled with blood. In a short time he totally annihilated every privilege of the people, and with unrelenting cruelty put multitudes of them to death. The more the peasants rebelled, the crueler were the methods of Alva. Men were tortured, beheaded, roasted before slow fires, pinched to death with hot tongs, broken on the wheel, flayed alive. On one occasion the skins of leaders were stripped from their living bodies, and stretched upon drums for beating the funeral march of brethren to the gallows. During the course of six years Alva brought charges of heresy and treason against 30,000 inhabitants, and made the infamous boast that, in addition to the multitudes killed in battle and massacred after victory, he had consigned 18,000 persons to the executioner. This unholy war with the Netherlands lasted with occasional cessations of hostilities for eighty years, and during its progress Spain buried 350,000 of her sons and allies in Holland, spent untold millions in the attempted destruction of freedom, and sunk from the first power in Europe, an empire whose proud boast it had been that upon her possessions the sun never set, to the level of a fourth-rate country, cruel in government, superstitious in religion, and ever an enemy to progress. EXPULSION OF THE MOORS.