situation in which many rival races were placed, in the
presence of danger which menaced one of them, or in the interest which
the kings had in maintaining the tranquillity of their states and
securing their conquests from all danger?

I will not enter into a detailed examination of the conduct of the
Spanish Inquisition with respect to Judaizing Christians; and I am
far from thinking that the rigor which it employed against them was
preferable to the mildness recommended and displayed by the popes. What
I wish to show here is that rigor was the result of extraordinary
circumstances--the effect of the national spirit and of the severity of
customs in Europe at that time. Catholicity cannot be reproached with
excesses committed for these different reasons. Still more, if we pay
attention to the spirit which prevails in all the instructions of
the popes relating to the Inquisition, if we observe their manifest
inclination to range themselves on the side of mildness, and to suppress
the marks of ignominy with which the guilty, as well as their families,
were stigmatized, we have a right to suppose that, if the popes had not
feared to displease the kings too much, and to excite divisions which
might have been fatal, their measures would have been carried still
further. If we recollect the negotiations which took place with respect
to the noisy affair of the claims of the Cortes of Aragon, we shall see
to which side the court of Rome leaned.

As we are speaking of intolerance with regard to the Judaizers, let us
say a few words as to the disposition of Luther toward the Jews. Does
it not seem that the pretended reformer, the founder of independence of
thought, the furious declaimer against the oppression and tyranny of the
popes, should have been animated with the most humane sentiments toward
that people? No doubt the eulogists of this chieftain of Protestantism
ought to think thus also. I am sorry for them; but history will not allow
us to partake of this delusion. According to all appearances, if the
apostate monk had found himself in the place of Torquemada, the Judaizers
would not have been in a better position. What, then, was the system
advised by Luther, according to Seckendorff, one of his apologists?
"Their synagogues ought to be destroyed, their houses pulled down, their
prayer-books, the _Talmud_, and even the books of the Old Testament to
be taken from them; their rabbis ought to be forbidden to teach, and be