We have elsewhere touched upon ecclesiastical espionage which, we may presume, is not confined to any particular Church. Its operations in certain bodies may be said from earliest times to have assumed the importance of an institutional principle. In view of our expression of opinion that espionage is a necessary condition of any essentially autocratic polity, we are only consistent in supposing that any Church which requires from its adherents a total submission of the Will to its arbitrary authority can only maintain its semblance of doctrinal and disciplinary freedom by the most guileful arts and methods; and it is not necessary to enunciate the doctrine of Private Judgment to show that intellectual or political liberty can flourish only where its principles fully prevail. It is easy, but altogether supererogatory, for the once great religious congregations to disclaim—now that they are shorn of the secular and political influence which was undoubtedly theirs in the darker ages—all possession of secret systems by which they once so effectively kept men's minds under their sway. It is only necessary to read the story of the Inquisition in Venice, in Spain, in Portugal, to learn how these Church-ruled communities fared under the iron tutelage of their congregational overlords. There is to be found, indeed, a strong analogy between the demoralised soul of modern spy-ridden Prussia and that of Spain in the days of the Inquisition, when, under the pretence of winning men to salvation, crimes were committed in the name of the Cross beside which the short but horrific annals of modern Hunnism stand spectral and anæmic in their comparative bloodlessness. Napoleon was, as usual, correct in his view that men who sought the refuge of the cloister were of a kind who neither wanted the world, nor were wanted by the world; it was unfortunate, however, that the wish and will to segregate oneself from secular activities, far from killing those characteristics of intrigue which we associate with the business of worldly life, had the effect merely of emphasising them in the chosen narrower sphere and, by a natural reaction, of turning their currents to baser uses and abuses than would have been possible in the larger freedom of the world. We speak, of course, of the Dark Ages. It is not our intention to go into the question of ecclesiastical espionage; but inasmuch as the Inquisition's operations in Europe were based mainly, in respect of its bloody triumphs, on the work of a vast network of espionage which assured to the Inquisitors their periodical supply of victims it is only fair, without taking sides, that the story should be told. Our authority for the following account of espionage as it was used by the Inquisition—the name itself suggests its spying character—is Joseph Lavallée, a French Catholic, who has dealt authoritatively with the whole subject of the Inquisition. Lavallée writes in effect: