The history of Spain for the last three hundred years affords an illustration of the proposition established by Lecky[28] that “the period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.” In no country in Western Europe has the Church of Rome been so entirely absolute and dominant, since the Reformation, as in Spain, where the Inquisition instantly and finally crushed out all freedom of thought and all opposition to theological orthodoxy. The Church in Spain to-day enjoys the unique position of holding a monopoly of the spiritual direction of the nation. Although other creeds and forms of worship are tolerated, there is no religious liberty. Everywhere else, even in Catholic countries, there is a vigilant and hostile body of opinion, of more or less weight, which necessarily contributes by its very existence to moralise the Church and to enforce on the priesthood a certain standard of duty. In Spain this check is absent. There is no rival Church, for the Spanish Protestants are too few in number and too insignificant in position to make their influence felt, and the working classes, who, as has been shown, are bitterly hostile to the priesthood, are inarticulate, and powerless as an influence corrective of abuses, while the middle classes, who might do something towards enforcing a higher standard, are generally speaking, indifferent. To what extent the corruption of the spiritual power in Spain is responsible for the low moral standard of the laity is an exceedingly difficult question, on which I am not capable of pronouncing an opinion. There is no doubt that Spain for the last three hundred years has suffered from a succession of some of the worst, the most incompetent, and the most corrupt rulers known to history. During all this time, except perhaps during the thirty years when Charles III. was on the throne, the Church was supreme. If the clergy, the directors of the conscience of the nation, armed with the power of the confessional and supported if necessary by the secular arm, had deliberately set their faces against the system of public venality and corruption instituted by Lerma and Olivares and continued by their subordinates and successors, it is difficult to believe that the upas-tree would have grown so tall and struck its roots so deeply as it has.