In alluding to the death of St. Peter Arbues, I wish to make an observation on what has been said on this subject as proving the unpopularity of the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain.  What more evident proof, we shall be told, can you have than the assassination of the inquisitor?  Is it not a sure sign that the indignation of the people was at its height and that they were quite opposed to the Inquisition?  Would they otherwise have been hurried into such excesses?  If by “the people” you mean the Jews and their descendants, I will not deny that the establishment of the Inquisition was indeed very odious to them, but it was not so with the rest of the nation.  The event we are speaking of gave rise to a circumstance which proves just the reverse.  When the report of the death of the inquisitor was spread through the town, they went in crowds in pursuit of the New Christians, so that a bloody catastrophe would have ensued had not the young Archbishop of Saragossa, Alphonsus of Aragon, presented himself to the people on horseback, and calmed them by the assurance that all the rigor of the laws should fall on the heads of the guilty.  Was the Inquisition as unpopular as it has been represented? and will it be said that its adversaries were the majority of the people?  Why, then, could not the tumult of Saragossa have been avoided in spite of all the precautions which were no doubt taken by the conspirators, at that time very powerful by their riches and influence?

At the time of the greatest rigor against the Judaizing Christians, there is a fact worthy of attention.  Persons accused, or threatened with the pursuit of the Inquisition, took every means to escape the action of that tribunal:  they left the soil of Spain and went to Rome.  Would those who imagine that Rome has always been the hot-bed of intolerance, the firebrand of persecution, have imagined this?  The number of causes commenced by the Inquisition, and summoned from Spain to Rome, is countless, during the first fifty years of the existence of that tribunal; and it must be added that Rome always inclined to the side of indulgence.  I do not know that it would be possible to cite one accused person who, by appealing to Rome, did not ameliorate his condition.  The history of the Inquisition at that time is full of contests between the kings and popes; and we constantly find, on the part of the holy see, a desire to restrain the Inquisition within the bounds of justice and humanity.  The line of conduct prescribed by the court of Rome was not always followed as it ought to have been.  Thus we see the popes compelled to receive a multitude of appeals, and mitigate the lot that would have befallen the appellants if their cause had been definitely decided in Spain.  We also see the Pope name the judge of appeal, at the solicitation of the Catholic sovereigns, who desired that causes should be finally decided in Spain:  the first of these judges was Inigo Manrique, Archbishop of Seville.  Nevertheless,