Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. III.djvu/521

REVIEW OF THEIR ADMINISTRATION. 493 less serious enough. Under the otherwise benefi- cent operation of their government, however, the healthful and expansive energies of the state were sufficient to heal up these and deeper wounds, and still carry it onward in the career of prosperity. With this impulse, indeed, the nation continued to advance higher and higher, in spite of the system of almost unmingled evil pursued in the following reigns. The glories of this later period, of the age of Charles the Fifth, as it is called, must find their true source in the measures of his illustrious predecessors. It was in their court, that Boscan, CHAPTER XXVI. states, that " in the course of a few years they burned nearly 2000 her- etics ;" thus not only diffusing this amount over a greater period of time, but embracing all the tribu- nals then existing in the country. (Cosas Memorables, fol. 164.) 2. Bernaldez states, that five-sixths of the Jews resided in the kingdom of Castile. (Reyes Catolicos, MS. cap. 110.) Llorente, however, has assigned an equal amount of vic- tims to each of the five tribunals of Aragon, with those of the sister kingdom, excepting only Seville. One might reasonably distrust Llorente's tables, from the facility, with which he receives the most improbable estimates in other mat- ters, as, for example, the number of banished Jews, which he puts at 800,000. (Hist, de I'lnquisition, torn. i. p. 261.) I have shown, from contemporary sources, that this number did not probably ex- ceed 160,000, or, at most, 170,000. (Part I., Chapter 17.) Indeed, the cautious Zurita, borrowing, proba- bly, from the same authorities, cites the latter number. (Anales, tom. V. fol. 9.) Mariana, who owes so much of his narrative to the Aragonese historian, convert- ing, as it would appear, these 170,000 individuals into families, states the whole, in round num- bers, at 800,000 souls. (Hist, de Espafia, tom. ii. lib. 26, cap. 1.) Llorente, not content with this, swells the amount still further, by that of the Moorish exiles, and by emigrants to the New World, (on what authority ? ) to 2,000,000 ; and, going on with the process, computes that this loss may fairly infer one of 8,000,000 inhabitants to Spain, at the present day! (Ibid., ubi suora.) Thus the mis- chief imputed to the Catholic sov- ereigns goes on increasing in a sort of arithmetical progression, with the duration of the monarchy. Nothing is so striking to the im- agination as numerical estimates; they speak a volume in themselves, saving a world of periphrasis and argument ; nothing is so difficult to form with exactness, or even prob- ability, when they relate to an early period ; and nothing more careless- ly received, and confidently circu- lated. The enormous statements of the Jewish exiles, and the base- less ones of the Moorish, are not peculiar to Llorente, but have been repeated, without the slightest qual- ification or distrust, by most mod- ern historians and travellers.