These alms were of various kinds. Those called pious works (_obras pias_), consisted of certain rents, or pensions, granted to a convent on condition that certain masses should be said therein, during the year, for the soul of the grantor. Rich men who had acquired a fortune by unfair means, or through an extortionate usury, were induced to expect forgiveness of their sins, if they left large sums of money to the fathers of the convent the saint of which they were accustomed to worship or venerate, and to whom they usually paid their devotions. Some of those benefactors, most generously, defrayed the expenses of a religious festival, from which resulted a considerable profit to the convent in which that festival was celebrated. Others repaired conventual edifices at their own expense, or enlarged them by making extensive wings or other additions, in which there was always a profuse display of marble, bronze, and other precious materials. But the principal source of the revenue of the mendicant orders was that called the _questacion_. {57} Every morning each convent poured out from its gates a certain number of lay brothers (_legos_), each being furnished with a wallet over his shoulder; and it was the duty of each to traverse the whole town, begging alms for his respective convent. These pious beggars visited, one by one, the shops of the trades-people, and places most frequented, calling at the houses of the poor as well as at those of the rich. The alms which they thus received were chiefly in bread, meat, eggs, and every description of eatables, besides small copper coins generally contributed by the poor, and which were not the least important parts of these gatherings. In this way thousands of robust, able-bodied men, not only maintained themselves, but were enabled to live in the lap of luxury, for many years, without contributing, on their part, one farthing to the public treasury, but on the contrary diminishing, immensely, the population and the number of those engaged in cultivating the soil and in other useful labour. Was not this alone sufficient to explain the deplorable state of the economy of the Spanish Peninsula, the paucity of its inhabitants, the backwardness of its agriculture, its want of capital, and the nakedness and poverty of its fields and its towns? Indolence being, so to speak, thus sanctified, what stimulus could there be for productive labour? Why should men have fatigued themselves by arduous employments, when the convent offered them not only food, raiment, and lodging, but even a respectable position in society, without further trouble than that of passing a few hours in the choir of the church, to confess penitents, assist now and then at the bedside of a dying person, and to preach an occasional sermon, for which they always received a decent payment?