s to stay to examine the
foundations for these sinister accusations. We are not ignorant how far
popular credulity will go, above all when it is under the influence of
excited feelings, which makes it view all things in the same light. It is
enough for us to know that these rumors circulated everywhere and with
credit, to understand what must have been the public indignation against
the Jews, and consequently how natural it was that authority, yielding
to the impulse of the general mind, should be urged to treat them with
excessive rigor.

The situation in which the Jews were placed is sufficient to show that
they might have attempted to act in concert to resist the Christians;
what they did after the death of St. Peter Arbues shows what they
were capable of doing on other occasions. The funds necessary for the
accomplishment of the murder--the pay of the assassins, and the other
expenses required for the plot--were collected by means of voluntary
contributions imposed on themselves by all the Jews of Aragon. Does not
this show an advanced state of organization, which might have become
fatal if it had not been watched?

In alluding to the death of St. Peter Arbues, I wish to make an
observation on what has been said on this subject as proving the
unpopularity of the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain. What more
evident proof, we shall be told, can you have than the assassination of
the inquisitor? Is it not a sure sign that the indignation of the people
was at its height and that they were quite opposed to the Inquisition?
Would they otherwise have been hurried into such excesses? If by "the
people" you mean the Jews and their descendants, I will not deny that the
establishment of the Inquisition was indeed very odious to them, but it
was not so with the rest of the nation. The event we are speaking of gave
rise to a circumstance which proves just the reverse. When the report of
the death of the inquisitor was spread through the town, they went in
crowds in pursuit of the New Christians, so that a bloody catastrophe
would have ensued had not the young Archbishop of Saragossa, Alphonsus of
Aragon, presented himself to the people on horseback, and calmed them by
the assurance that all the rigor of the laws should fall on the heads of
the guilty. Was the Inquisition as unpopular as it has been represented?
and will it be said that its adversaries were the majority of the people?
Why, then, could not the tumult of S