erty, had it not been for the
potent machinery of the Inquisition; nor could that perfection of
terrorism have become an established institution but for the
extraordinary mixture of pride and superstition of which the national
character had been, in the course of the national history, compounded.
The Spanish portion of the people hated the nobles, whose petty exactions
and oppressions were always visible; but they had a reverential fear of
the unseen monarch, as the representative both of the great unsullied
Christian nation to which the meanest individual was proud to belong, and
of the God of wrath who had decreed the extermination of all unbelievers.
The "accursed" portion of the people were sufficiently disloyal at heart,
but were too much crushed by oppression and contempt to imagine
themselves men. As to the Netherlanders, they did not fight originally
for independence. It was not until after a quarter of a century of
fighting that they ever thought of renouncing their allegiance to Philip.
They fought to protect themselves against being taxed by the king without
the consent of those constitutional assemblies which he had sworn to
maintain, and to save themselves and their children from being burned
alive if they dared to read the Bible. Independence followed after nearly
a half-century of fighting, but it would never have been obtained, or
perhaps demanded, had those grievances of the people been redressed.

Of this perfect despotism Philip was thus the sole administrator.
Certainly he looked upon his mission with seriousness, and was
industrious in performing his royal functions. But this earnestness and
seriousness were, in truth, his darkest vices; for the most frivolous
voluptuary that ever wore a crown would never have compassed a thousandth
part of the evil which was Philip's life-work. It was because he was a
believer in himself, and in what he called his religion, that he was
enabled to perpetrate such a long catalogue of crimes. When an humble
malefactor is brought before an ordinary court of justice, it is not
often, in any age or country, that he escapes the pillory or the gallows
because, from his own point of view, his actions, instead of being
criminal, have been commendable, and because the multitude and continuity
of his offences prove him to have been sincere. And because anointed
monarchs are amenable to no human tribunal, save to that terrible assize
which the People, bursting its chain from tim