but the impulse of Torquemada and the Inquisition? Or had not the Moors also deteriorated? Undoubtedly the Moors of the age of Ferdinand and Isabella were not like the first race of polished Arabs in the days of the Abdalrahmans and Alhakem. They had lost much of their early civilization through their own intestine wars, and through the infusion of African races of ruder habits. The capture of Zahara in 1481, by which they drew upon themselves the vengeance of Castille, was marked by the worst spirit of barbarous Eastern warfare; and the savage cruelties with which they inaugurated their rebellion in 1568 were scarcely equalled by the late Indian tragedies at Delhi or Cawnpoor. It should also restrain the extreme censurers of the expulsion, to remember, that if Spain was thus exhausting herself, as they suppose, of her most serviceable inhabitants, it was easy for other countries to have profited by it, and to have invited the Moriscoes to settle among them, had they thought it advisable. Did any European power seize the advantage? The Spaniards indeed seem to have suspected Secretary Cecil of having offered them English protection;* but this must have been a groundless surmise: there was no notion entertained in England of doing for them what was done for the French Protestants after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. As to France, there was no party to shew them favour there. * Davila, 145. Francis I. had long before advised Charles V. to expel them.* Henri IV. gave them no safe passage into his dominions; his subjects pillaged and illtreated those who landed at the French ports.+ A few seem to have wandered on and found refuge in Protestant Germany; but of these all further record is lost. The just inference is, that all the Christian states of Europe deemed it a vain experiment to try to incorporate the race in their own religious or political system. The trial had been made in Spain, and had failed. No doubt the means there adopted for the conversion of the Moriscoes were not such as to attract willing converts; but where better means have been used, as recently in India, with the Moslem. tribes, the result has been disappointing. (36.) All this is not meant in any way to excuse the iniquity of the mode of their expulsion, contrived, as it must almost seem, with a view to their utter destruction. There was an admonition once given by a man of God which ought to have been remembered by Archbishop Ribera, and the Council of State, which acted on his persuasion; Wouldest thou smite those whom thou hast taken captive by thy sword? The power which had once admitted them to the privileges of subjects was bound to protect their lives, their liberties, and property. If they were to be removed from Spain, a refuge should have been provided for + Davila, 148. * Llorente, Cap. xii. ii. 8. + 2 Kings vi. 22. them, either in the Spanish colonies, where there was no want of room, or by treaty, in the territory of a foreign state. Many of them were rich, especially those of Andalusia; but they were allowed to take with them none of the precious metals, except what might serve to defray the expenses of their passage across the straits. The rest they might turn into goods, not without paying heavy duties; and the terms of purchasing goods under such circumstances may be easily imagined. Cervantes, in one passage of his writings, seems to accuse them of hoarding the coin of Spain;* this may have served to tempt the cupidity of their enemies, but does not justify it. All was done with that secrecy and disguise, which at this period the Spaniards were willing to endure, and even admire, in the proceedings of the Inquisition among themselves, and were therefore not likely to resent in the course taken with the Moriscoes. Of 150,000 of these unfortunate people, who were driven from the province of Valencia, nearly two-thirds are supposed to have perished within a year, from want, or from ill-treatment at the hands of their kindred, on the coasts of Barbary.+ · (37.) It is doubtful what it was that provoked this ill-treatment. Lord Bacon seems to have supposed that the sufferers were Christians, whom the Mahommedan Moors regarded as apostates. Cabrera speaks of their sufferings in terms which give some support * Colloquio de Dos Perros, Novelas, p. 394. to this opinion.* Cervantes in one place says, it was a marvel if there were one Christian among them ;+ but the inference to be drawn from his interview between honest Sancho and Ricote the Morisco, a scene evidently true to life, leaves a different impression.‡ There is also an incident in Persiles, where, while he writes as one who meant to justify the expulsion, Shadrach Sherife, the mouth-piece of his sentiments, is like Ricote, a converted Morisco.§ The royal edict indeed exempted from the ban "those who were notoriously good Christians, and the wives and children of old Christians ;"|| but by what test the first were to be distinguished is not apparent. As to Gongora, the little that he says upon the subject is too much in harmony with the notions of Bleda and Ribera, lauding the pious king, "Who drove the dregs of Hagar's offspring hence, Ne'er to annoy our peaceful homes again." (38.) It was a less questionable measure, which was undertaken at the same time, to repress the pirates of Africa, by taking from them the forts of El Arish, called Larache by Spanish writers, and Mamora, or El Mamorah. The Spaniards continued to hold both these places till towards the close of Philip IV.'s reign, when an active Moorish prince, Muley Ismael, profiting by the weakness and distress of the peninsular + Colloquio, 393-4. * Cabrera, 391. kingdom, recovered them. They were, however, now obtained with more show of naval and military preparation, than they seem to have required, for the acquisition of the first was helped forward by a secret understanding with Muley Xeque, a native chief, who sought the aid of Christian arms to establish his power against his competitor Muley Zidan; and in his expedition against the second, the general, Luis Faxardo, landing from ninety vessels a force of between six and seven thousand fighting men, met with so little opposition, that his subsequent request for a large reinforcement is scarcely accounted for.* It was, however, complied with to the full. The king in court having signified his pleasure, that his courtiers could not serve him so well as by joining the expedition, the loyal spirit of the nation was stirred, the nobles and gentlemen went in crowds to embark from the ports of Andalusia, and every one was ashamed to be left behind. This was in the summer of 1614. Gongora has left us one or two humorous sonnets on these expeditions, which shew his opinion that they were occasions of great cry and little wool. But on the news of the capture of Larache he wrote as if he appreciated the importance of a step taken towards completing the policy of Ximenes in the capture of Oran. (39.) Let it be confessed that there was something unworthy of the character of a great nation in command of the seas, when our forefathers rather |