When the Inquisition was thrown open, in 1820, by order of the Cortes, _twenty-one_ prisoners were found in it, not one of whom knew the name of the city in which he was; some had been confined three years, some a longer period, and not one knew perfectly the nature of the crime of which he was accused. One of these prisoners had been condemned, and was to have suffered on the following day. His punishment was to be death by the _pendulum_. The method of thus destroying the victim was as follows:--The condemned was fastened in a groove upon a table, on his back; suspended above him was a pendulum, the edge of which was sharp; and it was so constructed as to become longer with every movement. The wretch saw this implement of destruction swinging to and fro above him, and every moment the keen edge approaching nearer and nearer; at length it cut the skin of his nose, and gradually cut on until life was extinct. This, it appears, was one of the substitutes for the more barbarous exhibitions in public, when the inquisitors did not dare to perform an _auto da fé_. And this, let it be remembered, was one of the modes of punishing those accused of heresy, by the secret tribunal of the Romish Inquisition, A.D. 1820! Spain still groans under the dreadful domination of popery. Christian liberty is unknown to her people. They are kept by the Romish priesthood in a state of the most debasing ignorance, bound with the chains of a deplorable superstition. They are still held by the gloomy spirit of the Inquisition, though its courts are not in operation; but the more intelligent--and the number of this class, even in Spain, is believed to be increasing--enumerate, with horror, its past victims. The most complete estimate of the wretched sufferers by the “Holy Office” has been made by Jean Antoine Llorente, Secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid, in 1789-1790. In the “Preface” to his valuable “History” of that court, he says, “My perseverance has been crowned with success far beyond my hopes; for, in addition to an abundance of materials, obtained with labour and expense, consisting of unpublished manuscripts and papers mentioned in the inventories of deceased inquisitors and other officers of the institution, in 1809, 1810, and 1811, when the Inquisition in Spain was suppressed, _all the archives were placed at my disposal_; and, from 1809 to 1812, I collected everything that appeared to me of consequence in the registers of the council of the Inquisition, and in the provincial tribunals, for the purpose of compiling this History.” Llorente gives the following as the total numbers of the victims, ascertained from the records of the Inquisition in Spain:-- Persons who were condemned and perished in the flames 31,912 Persons burnt in effigy 17,659 Persons condemned to severe penances 291,450 ------- Total 341,021