Torquemada’s crucifix so dramatically flung into the scales had definitely settled the question. The Sultan Bajazet, who welcomed and sheltered not a few of the fugitives in Turkey, was overcome with amazement at this blunder of statecraft, so that he is reported to have asked whether this king were seriously to be taken for a great statesman who impoverished his kingdom to enrich another’s. What the Grand Turk perceived so readily, priest-ridden Ferdinand dared not perceive. In banishing Jew and Moslem from her soil--for the Moor was soon to follow, though temporarily permitted to remain by virtue of the terms of the capitulation of Granada--Spain banished her merchants and financiers on the one hand, and her agriculturists and artisans on the other; in short, she banished her workers, the productive section of her community. It is accounted by many that she did so with the fullest consciousness of the consequences--an act of heroic sacrifice to principle and to religious convictions. And it may be that she accounted herself God-rewarded by the gift of a new world for this sacrifice to God. The arts, the industries, manufactures, agriculture, and commerce have been bewailing for four hundred years the lack of hands to serve them. The New World proved but an illusory and transient compensation. Its gold could not furnish Spain with the workers that she lacked. On the contrary, it increased that lack. The New World repaid herself with interest for what she gave. In return for the gifts she poured into the lap of Spain she took to herself the very children of Spain, luring them overseas with the fabulous tales of riches easily to be acquired. Driven by this greed of gold, multitudes of families emigrated to increase the depopulation of their country. And when, in the course of time, those children of Spain in the New World had grown to a sufficient strength to claim their emancipation, they threw off the yoke of the motherland and distributed among themselves her vast possessions. They left her bare indeed, who by her own act was without home-resources, to realize perhaps at last what manner of service had been rendered her by the Prior of Holy Cross. * * * * * The Moors of Granada, meanwhile, had obtained from Ferdinand a promise that the Inquisition should not be set up in Granada within the following forty years, nor yet any prosecution instituted of Moriscoes (baptized Moslems) for the observance of Mohammedan customs.