by the choice of the bishops and palatines; and
after the failure of the line of Alaric, the regal dignity was still
limited to the pure and noble blood of the Goths. The clergy, who
anointed their lawful prince, always recommended, and sometimes
practised, the duty of allegiance; and the spiritual censures were
denounced on the heads of the impious subjects, who should resist his
authority, conspire against his life, or violate, by an indecent
union, the chastity even of his widow. But the monarch himself, when
he ascended the throne, was bound by a reciprocal oath to God and his
people, that he would faithfully execute this important trust. The real
or imaginary faults of his administration were subject to the control of
a powerful aristocracy; and the bishops and palatines were guarded by
a fundamental privilege, that they should not be degraded, imprisoned,
tortured, nor punished with death, exile, or confiscation, unless by the
free and public judgment of their peers.

One of these legislative councils of Toledo examined and ratified the
code of laws which had been compiled by a succession of Gothic kings,
from the fierce Euric, to the devout Egica. As long as the Visigoths
themselves were satisfied with the rude customs of their ancestors, they
indulged their subjects of Aquitain and Spain in the enjoyment of the
Roman law. Their gradual improvement in arts, in policy, and at length
in religion, encouraged them to imitate, and to supersede, these foreign
institutions; and to compose a code of civil and criminal jurisprudence,
for the use of a great and united people. The same obligations, and
the same privileges, were communicated to the nations of the Spanish
monarchy; and the conquerors, insensibly renouncing the Teutonic idiom,
submitted to the restraints of equity, and exalted the Romans to
the participation of freedom. The merit of this impartial policy was
enhanced by the situation of Spain under the reign of the Visigoths.
The provincials were long separated from their Arian masters by the
irreconcilable difference of religion. After the conversion of Recared
had removed the prejudices of the Catholics, the coasts, both of the
Ocean and Mediterranean, were still possessed by the Eastern emperors;
who secretly excited a discontented people to reject the yoke of the
Barbarians, and to assert the name and dignity of Roman citizens. The
allegiance of doubtful subjects is indeed most effectually secured by
their