to discover causes in operation which would ultimately render the system of Philip ii. impossible in any part of the globe.  Certainly, were it otherwise, the study of human history would be the most wearisome and unprofitable of all conceivable occupations.  The festivities of courts, the magnificence of an aristocracy, the sayings and doings of monarchs and their servants, the dynastic wars, the solemn treaties; the Ossa upon Pelion of diplomatic and legislative rubbish by which, in the course of centuries, a few individuals or combinations of individuals have been able to obstruct the march of humanity, and have essayed to suspend the operation of elemental laws—­all this contains but little solid food for grown human beings.  The condition of the brave and quickwitted Spanish people in the latter half of the sixteenth century gives more matter for reflection and possible instruction.

That science is the hope of the world, that ignorance is the real enslaver of mankind, and therefore the natural ally of every form of despotism, may be assumed as an axiom, and it was certainly the ignorance and superstition of the people upon which the Philippian policy was founded.

A vast mass, entirely uneducated, half fed, half clothed, unemployed; and reposing upon a still lower and denser stratum—­the millions namely of the “Accursed,” of the Africans, and last and vilest of all, the “blessed” descendants of Spanish protestants whom the Holy Office had branded with perpetual infamy because it had burned their progenitors—­this was the People; and it was these paupers and outcasts, nearly the whole nation, that paid all the imposts of which the public revenue was composed.  The great nobles, priests, and even the hidalgos, were exempt from taxation.  Need more be said to indicate the inevitable ruin of both government and people?

And it was over such a people, and with institutions like these, that Philip ii. was permitted to rule during forty-three years.  His power was absolute.  With this single phrase one might as well dismiss any attempt at specification.  He made war or peace at will with foreign nations.  He had power of life and death over all his subjects.  He had unlimited control of their worldly goods.  As he claimed supreme jurisdiction over their religious opinions also, he was master of their minds, bodies, and estates.  As a matter of course, he nominated and removed at will every executive functionary, every judge, every magistrate, every military or civil officer; and moreover, he not only selected, according to the license tacitly conceded to him by the pontiff, every archbishop, bishop, and other Church dignitary, but, through his great influence at Rome, he named most of the cardinals, and thus controlled the election of the popes.  The whole machinery of society, political, ecclesiastical, military, was in his single hand.  There was a show of provincial privilege here and there in different parts of Spain, but it