The Spanish inquisition, strictly so called, that is to say, the modern or later institution established by Pope Alexander the Sixth and Ferdinand the Catholic, was doubtless invested with a more complete apparatus for inflicting human misery, and for appalling human imagination, than any of the other less artfully arranged inquisitions, whether papal or episcopal.  It had been originally devised for Jews or Moors, whom the Christianity of the age did not regard as human beings, but who could not be banished without depopulating certain districts.  It was soon, however, extended from pagans to heretics.  The Dominican Torquemada was the first Moloch to be placed upon this pedestal of blood and fire, and from that day forward the “holy office” was almost exclusively in the hands of that band of brothers.  In the eighteen years of Torquemada’s administration; ten thousand two hundred and twenty individuals were burned alive, and ninety-seven thousand three hundred and twenty-one punished with infamy, confiscation of property, or perpetual imprisonment, so that the total number of families destroyed by this one friar alone amounted to one hundred and fourteen thousand four hundred and one.  In course of time the jurisdiction of the office was extended.  It taught the savages of India and America to shudder at the name of Christianity.  The fear of its introduction froze the earlier heretics of Italy, France, and Ger many into orthodoxy.  It was a court owning allegiance to no temporal authority, superior to all other tribunals.  It was a bench of monks without appeal, having its familiars in every house, diving into the secrets of every fireside, judging, and executing its horrible decrees without responsibility.  It condemned not deeds, but thoughts.  It affected to descend into individual conscience, and to punish the crimes which it pretended to discover.  Its process was reduced to a horrible simplicity.  It arrested on suspicion, tortured till confession, and then punished by fire.  Two witnesses, and those to separate facts, were sufficient to consign the victim to a loathsome dungeon.  Here he was sparingly supplied with food, forbidden to speak, or even to sing to which pastime it could hardly be thought he would feel much inclination—­and then left to himself, till famine and misery should break his spirit.  When that time was supposed to have arrived he was examined.  Did he confess, and forswear his heresy, whether actually innocent or not, he might then assume the sacred shirt, and escape with confiscation of all his property.  Did he persist in the avowal of his innocence, two witnesses sent him to the stake, one witness to the rack.  He was informed of the testimony against him, but never confronted with the witness.  That accuser might be his son, father, or the wife of his bosom, for all were enjoined, under the death penalty, to inform the inquisitors of every suspicious word which might fall from their nearest relatives.  The indictment