Another characteristic was _the development of a substitute for political morality_. These nobles were brave. The chronicles gave them plentiful supply of chivalric maxims, and they carried these out into chivalric practices. Their quickness in throwing about them the robes of chivalry was only excelled by their quickness in throwing off the garb of ordinary political morality. They could die for an idea, yet we constantly see among them acts of bad faith--petty and large--only befitting savages. John Alonzo de la Cerda, by the will of the late King, had been deprived of a certain office; he therefore betrays the stronghold of Myorga to the new King's enemies.[9] Don Alonzo de Lara had caused great distress by his turbulence. Queen Berengaria writes an account of it to the King. Don Alonzo does not scruple to waylay the messenger, murder him, and substitute for the true message a forgery, containing an order in the Queen's hand for the King's murder.[10] Of such warp and woof is the history of the Spanish aristocracy--the history of nobles whose boast was their chivalry. How is this to be accounted for? Mainly by the fact, I think, that the pride engendered by lording it over a subject class lifts men above ordinary morality. If commonplace truth and vulgar good faith fetter that morbid will-power which serf-owning gives, truth and good faith must be rent asunder. The next characteristic was _the erection of a theory of easy treason and perpetual anarchy_. Prescott calls this whimsical; he might more justly have called it frightful. For this theory, which they asserted, maintained, and finally brought into the national notion and custom was, that in case they were aggrieved--_themselves being judges_--they could renounce their allegiance, join the bitterest foes of king and nation,--plot and fight against their country,--deluge the land in blood,--deplete the treasury; and yet that the King should take care of the families they left behind, and in other ways make treason pastime. Spanish history is black with the consequences of this theory. Mariana drops a casual expression in his history which shows the natural result, when he says: "The Castro family were _much in the habit_ of revolting and going over to the Moors."[11] The absurdity of this theory was only equaled by its iniquity. For it involved three ideas absolutely fatal to any State--_the right of peaceable secession--the right of judging in their own cause, and the right of committing treason with impunity_. Now, any nation which does not, when stung by such a theory, throttle it, and stamp the life out of it, is doomed. Spain did not grapple with it. She tampered with it, truckled to it, compromised with it. This nursed another characteristic in her nobility, which is sure to be developed always under like circumstances. This characteristic was _an aristocratic inability to appreciate concessions_.