Besides these, however, it is presumed that very many died under torture by the inquisitors, and that large numbers perished in prison, without any record on earth being made of their sufferings or their names. The last person that was publicly burnt by the inquisitors in Spain, is said to have been a Beata; and she was charged with having entered into a compact with the devil: she suffered, November 7th, 1781. Spain, at present, is proverbial for its degradation, under the blighting intolerance and bigotry of popery. This is testified by intelligent travellers, who represent the debasement of the nation as resulting from the past operations and the remaining spirit of the Romish Inquisition. The testimony of two of these discriminating observers of society may suffice for the present purpose. Captain Widdrington, R.N., in his volumes on “Spain and the Spaniards,” in 1843, cites from Gibbon, “What has Spain done with the _four hundred cities_ she once possessed?” and replies, “Spain might answer to the pithy question, ‘Ask the _church_, they can, perhaps, inform you.’ It is not owing to the _church_,” he adds, “but to the ecclesiastical bodies under that name, whose will was the law for so many ages, that Spain has all but been erased from amongst the nations of the earth. The persecutions of the Jews; the expulsion of the Moriseoes; the locking-up of vast properties in mortmain; and the final establishment of the dreadful tyranny, to consolidate and keep these enormities together, have destroyed the resources of the country, and converted, probably, one-half of the finest part of it into _despoblados_. These causes, and not the discovery of America, have reduced this first of European kingdoms to the state in which we behold it. Where are the forty towns of Toledo, that have disappeared since the time of Philip II.? Ask the _priesthood_, for they are the real authors of such destruction. Where are the industrious people that teemed in Andalusia, the very names of whose locations are lost, although they once filled the country along the Guadalquivir, making it one vast garden and continued line of towns and villages? Ask the advisers and directors of the Catholic kings. Who have caused the reduction of Estremadura, nearly the most beautiful region in all Europe, to a vast _despoblado_? The same authorities. Let the traveller go from Burgos to Valladolid, and thence to Leon, returning by Benevente, or shape his course as he may in that region, he will see everywhere--amid the most fertile land, producing everything to gladden the heart of man--little more than the ruins of decayed villages and towns--the shadows and spectres of former wealth and prosperity; the same heads and hands have produced these fatal consequences--a state of things to which there is, happily, no parallel in Europe!”