“What could they do?  The despotism of the Caesars had imposed on the Spaniards a blind obedience to the kings as the representatives of God, and the clergy had educated them in this belief from the community of interests between the Church and the throne.  Even the most illustrious poets corrupted the people, exalting servility to the monarchy in their plays.  Calderon affirmed that the property and life of a citizen did not belong to himself but to the king.  Besides, religion filled everything; it was the sole end of existence, and the Spaniards meditating always on heaven, ended by accustoming themselves to the miseries of earth.  Do not doubt but the excess of religion was our ruin, and came very near exterminating us as a nation.  Even now we are dragging along the consequences of this plague which lasted for centuries.  To save this country from death what had to be done?  The foreigners had to be called in, and the Bourbons came.  See how low we had fallen that we had not even soldiers.  In this land, even if we were wanting in other advantages, we could from the earliest days reckon on good warlike leaders; but look, in the war of succession we had to have English and French generals, and even officers, for there was not a Spaniard who could train a cannon or command a company; we had no one to serve us as a minister, and under Philip V. and Fernando VI. all the Government were foreigners, strangers called in to revive the lost manufactures, to reclaim the derelict lands, to repair the ancient irrigation channels, and to found colonies in the deserts inhabited by wild beasts and bandits.  Spain, who had colonised half the world after her own fashion, was now re-discovered and colonised by Europeans.[1] The Spaniards seemed like poor Indians, guided by their Cacique the friar, with their rags covered with scapularies and miracle-working relics.  Anti-clericalism was the only remedy against all this superstition and ruin, and this spirit came in with the foreign colonists.  Philip V. wished to suppress the Inquisition and to end the naval war with the Mussulman nations which had lasted for a thousand years, depopulating the shores of the Mediterranean with the fear of the Barbary and Turkish pirates.  But the natives resisted any reform coming from the colonists, and the first Bourbon had to desist, finding his crown in danger.  Later on his immediate successors, having deeper roots in the country dared to continue his work.  Carlos III. in his endeavour to civilise Spain laid a heavy hand on the Church, limiting its privileges and curtailing its revenues, being careful of earthly things and forgetful of the heavenly.  The bishops protested, speaking in letters and pastorals ’of the persecutions of the poor Church, robbed of its goods, outraged in its ministers, and attacked in its immunities,’ but the awakened country rejoiced in the only prosperous days it had known in modern times before the disestablishment.  Europe was ruled by philosophic kings and Charles