Note 19 — Chapter V

"The Inquisition," says Salgado, "is subject to no other laws, but arbitrarily racks souls, and murders bodies, of which there are clouds of witnesses,—men condemned, because the Inquisition would be cruel. What blasphemy in this tribunal ever to pretend to be actuated by a divine impulse, where every brick seems a conjuring spell, and every officer a tormenting fiend; for suppose a Jew, a Mahometan, or a Christian, in their hands, what do they pretend to do with such an one? Would they chastise him? What need have they then of so many officers? Why such scandalous methods, as a secret chamber, an unseen tribunal, invisible witnesses, a perfidious secretary, and merciless servants,—confiscation of goods through fraud and guile, keepers as hard hearted as the relentless walls, the fiscal mutes, the shameful sanbenitos, unrighteous racks, a theatre filled with horror to astonish the prisoner, a hypocritical sentence, a disguised executioner, and a peremptory judgment? In all the times of Paganism, no such Roman tribunal was ever erected. In their amphitheatres, men had not quite put off humanity; those condemned to die were exposed to wild beasts to be torn to pieces, they knew their executioner; but here the condemned are tormented by disguised ones;—men they should be by their shape, but devils by their fierceness and cruelty."