Aragon, Navarra, and Granada; the feudal system disappeared—­it had never extended far into the eastern limits of the kingdom—­the abuses in the Church were in great measure reformed, the administration of the kingdom with the magnificent reign of justice began to be consolidated, in the Cortes the powerful voice of the people was heard; and almost at the same moment Christian Spain achieved the conquest of the Moors, against whom the different provinces had been struggling for eight centuries, and the immortal discovery of a new world.  Up to this moment the prosperity of Spain was rising; from that hour her decadence began.  With her liberty she lost everything, although for some time longer her military laurels covered from sight her real misfortunes.”  After referring to the defeat of the Comuneros, and the execution of Padilla and his companions, champions of the people’s rights, he goes on to show that while the aristocracy had received a mortal blow in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in the cause of consolidating the kingdom and of internal order, they had retained sufficient power to trample on the liberties of the people, while they were not strong enough to form a barrier against the encroachments of the absolute monarchs who succeeded, or to prevent the power eventually lapsing into the hands of the Church.  “Consequently, theocracy gained the ascendency, formidably aided and strengthened by the odious tribunal whose installation shadowed even the glorious epoch of Isabel and Fernando, absorbing all jurisdiction, and interfering with all government.  Religious wars led naturally to European conflicts, to the Spanish people being led to wage war against heresy everywhere, and the nation—­exhausted by its foreign troubles, oppressed internally under the tyranny of the Inquisition, which, usurping the name of ‘Holy,’ had become the right hand of the policy of Charles V., and the supreme power in the Government of his grandson, Philip II.—­lost all the precious gifts of enlightenment in a blind and frantic fanaticism.  The people only awoke from lethargy, and showed any animation, to rush in crowds to the Autos da fe in which the ministers of the altar turned Christian charity into a bleeding corpse, and reproduced the terrible scenes of the Roman amphitheatre.  Where the patricians had cried ’Christians to the lions!’ superstition shouted ‘Heretics to the stake!’ Humanity was not less outraged than in the spectacle of Golgotha.  Spanish monarchs even authorised by their presence those sanguinary spectacles, while the nobles and great personages in the kingdom thought themselves honoured when they were made alguiciles, or familiars of the holy office.  Theocratic power preponderated, and intellectual movement became paralysed, civilisation stagnated.”