Perhaps the best-known and most thorough-going apologist for the Inquisition, so far as Spain is concerned, is Count Joseph De Maistre (1754-1821), a Romanist layman who adopted a strongly ecclesiastical point of view, and whose great ability was marred by a tendency to paradox and dogmatism. His _Letters to a Russian Gentleman on the Spanish Inquisition_ are full of a vivacious special pleading, which perplexes without enlightening the reader. His main arguments group themselves round three points: (1) That the Spanish Inquisition was a purely secular institution; (2) that it did not condemn to death; (3) that it did not punish the expression of opinion on questions of religion. With regard to the first point De Maistre says: “The Inquisition, by virtue of the Bulls of the Sovereign Pontiff, and the King, by virtue of his royal prerogative, constitute the authority which regulates, and has always regulated, the tribunals of the Inquisition--tribunals which are, at the same time, both royal and ecclesiastical; so that, if either of the two powers happened to withdraw, the action of the tribunal would necessarily be suspended” (p. 8). How this explicit admission that the Spanish Inquisition was both a State and a religious organization is reconcilable with the assertion that it was “entirely a royal institution” must be left to the reader’s ingenuity to discover. De Maistre effectively demolishes his own contention. It is still more effectively confuted by a later and better authority. Dr. Pastor admits that the Spanish Inquisition was “a mixed, but primarily ecclesiastical, institution. The fact that the condemned were handed over to the secular arm testifies to the correctness of this view. Had the Spanish Inquisition been a State Inquisition, a royal court of justice, there would have been no necessity for this. A court which invariably hands over those whom it finds guilty to the secular arm for punishment cannot itself be a secular tribunal. It was precisely the ecclesiastical character of the new Inquisition which made its judges decline to execute capital sentences and follow the custom always observed by the ecclesiastical Inquisition, of requesting that the prisoner ‘might be leniently dealt with’--a formality prescribed by the canon law.”[50] The formula of mercy, of course, deceived no one. In another place Dr. Pastor says: “It is important to note, as a significant fact bearing on the character of this institution, that ‘not only the ecclesiastical authorization of the first Inquisitors, but also the first regulations as to the mode of procedure, emanated directly from the Pope.’”[51] Lea states that the Inquisition even claimed that all civil statutes of which it disapproved should be abrogated.[52] But if the responsibility for the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition rests only partially upon the Popes, there is no question of divided responsibility in the case of the institution with which the present essay is concerned.