Note 22 — CABINET OF BIOGRAPHY. (continued 2)

Mendoza felt himself obliged in his own person to refrain from all censure on the edicts of his sovereign. But in a speech he introduced after the manner of Sallust, as spoken by one of the chiefs, he conveyed, in forcible terms, his sense of the persecution which the unhappy Moors endured. The conspirator exclaims: "What hinders a man, speaking Castilian, from following the law of the prophet, or one who speaks Morisco from following that of Jesus? They take our children to their congregations and schools, teaching them arts which our ancestors forbade, that purity of the law might not be disturbed nor its truth disputed. We are threatened at every hour that they shall be taken from the arms of their mothers and the bringing up of their fathers, and carried into distant lands, where they will forget our customs, and learn to become the enemies of the fathers who begot them, and the mothers who bore them. We are ordered to cast off our national dress, and to adopt the Castilian. Germans dress after one manner, the French after another, the Greeks after another. The clergy have a peculiar garb—youths one sort of dress—old men another—each nation, and each profession, and each rank, adopts its own style of dress. Yet all are Christians. And we Moors—why do we dress in the Morisco, as if our faith hung in our garb—not in our hearts?"