This useless prolongation of existence was soon to end. One of the first measures of the revolution of 1820, which restored the Constitution of 1812, was the royal decree of March 9th, suppressing the Inquisition. Before this reached Mexico officially, the Viceroy Count of Venadita had seen it in the _Gaceta de Madrid_ and had arranged for the extinction of the tribunal. The officials ceased their functions on May 31st; as before, they had transferred their political prisoners to the public prison and those for matters of faith to various convents, the archives were delivered to the custody of the archbishop and the officials hastened to find other homes. Then, on June 14th, the viceroy sent orders for compliance with the decree and, on the 16th, the Inquisitor Antonio de Pereda reported that the tribunal had ceased in all its functions and remained in a condition of absolute extinction. The papers of pending trials were distributed among the appropriate diocesans and the Intendente took possession of the property.[552] The officials straggled back to Spain, where they were provided for in common with those of the Peninsula. In the accounts of 1833 there still appear as in receipt of salaries the senior inquisitor, Antonio de Pereda, the secretaries Venancio de Pereda y Cassolla and José María Briergo, and the _nuncio y portero_, Tomás del Perojo.[553] Thus forlorn and discredited passed away the tribunal which had in its prime cast terror over all the provinces between the two oceans, but the impression which it had produced did not disappear with it. In 1821 Don Celestino de la Torre reprinted a savage attack issued in Spain, under the title of “Memorial de la Santa Inquisicion,” which he says, in a prefatory note, is for the disillusionment of the _serviles_ who sigh for the restoration of the Holy Office. It is still more significant that, in the agitation caused, in 1833, by the effort of the Government to reduce the Church to acquiescence in the new order of things, there appeared a little anonymous tract entitled “Mientras no haya Inquisicion se acaba la Religion”--“Without the Inquisition, Religion is destroyed”--arguing that heresy can never be suppressed without the use of force; excommunication, censures and argument are of no avail and the faith of Christ can only be preserved by arming the bishops with all the powers and methods of the Inquisition and enforcing their penal sentences by the State. The bishops, in fact, were quite ready to assume its functions as far as they could for, as late as 1850, on the appearance of a translation of Féréal’s _Mystères de l’Inquisition_, with notes by Don Manuel de Cuendias, a diocesan _junta de censura_ was held which, without hearing the accused, passed a sentence of excommunication on the editor and on all who should read the book, all of which was publicly proclaimed by edict. This was based on a consulta presented to the junta by Doctor Sollano, who lamented the abolition of