to the inspection of the Sovereign, and under him, the archbishops and other dignitaries of the church, the Inquisition would be a most valuable auxiliary to the well-doing and purifying of the most Catholic kingdom.  He produced argument after argument of most subtle reasoning, to prove that every effort to abolish the office in Spain had been entirely useless:  it would exist, and if not publicly acknowledged, would always be liable to abuse and desecration; that the only means of exterminating its secret, and too arrogant power, was to permit its public establishment, and so control it, that its measures should be open to the present, and to every successive sovereign.  He allowed the necessity, the imperious necessity of rooting out the secret office; but he was convinced this could not be done, nor in fact would the church allow it, unless it should be recognized in the face of all Europe, as based on alike the civil and religious laws of Spain.

On Ferdinand the wily churchman worked, by proving that his royal prerogative would be insured rather than injured by this proceeding; that by publicly establishing the Inquisition, he proved his resolution to control even this power, and render it a mere instrument in his sovereign hand; that his contemplated conquest of the Moors could not be better begun than by the recognition of a holy office, whose glory it would be to bring all heathens to the purifying and saving doctrines of the church of Rome.  Ferdinand, though wary and politic himself, was no match for Torquemada’s Jesuitical eloquence; he was won over to adopt the churchman’s views with scarcely an effort to resist them.  With Isabella the task was much more difficult.  He appealed guardedly and gently to her tender regard for the spiritual welfare of her people, sympathized with her in her indignant horror of the crimes committed under religion’s name, but persisted that the evil of a secret Inquisition would never be remedied, save by the measure he proposed.  He pledged himself never to rest, till the present halls and ministers of darkness were exterminated from every part of Spain; but it could only be on condition of her assent to his counsel.  He used all his eloquence; he appealed to her as a zealous Catholic, whose first duty was to further and purify her faith; but for four days he worked in vain; and when she did give her consent, it was with such a burst of tears, that it seemed as if her foreboding eye had indeed read the shrouded annals of the future, and beheld there, not the sufferings of individuals alone, but of the decline and dishonor of that fair and lovely land, which she had so labored to exalt.  Ere another year from that day had passed, the Inquisition was publicly established throughout the kingdom; and Torquemada, as first Grand Inquisitor, reaped the reward of his persevering counsel, and sealed, with blood, the destiny of Spain.