THE INQUISITION IN MEXICO.
[A. D. 1568.] The Visitador Muñoz, who had been sent to inquire into charges respecting the late viceroy, seized Don Martin Cortez, and put him to the torture. Although the innocence of this wretched man was fully established a few years later, he suffered much bodily pain and great losses of property during its seven years' sequestration. The satisfaction with which some of the conquered race must have viewed this putting to the torture of a son of Cortez and Marina, the two instruments of their enslavement, must have been extreme.
What a pity that the monster genius of Spanish invasion could not have been brought within the compass of a single body, and suffocated by the clasp of iron-handed justice upon its throat!
[A. D. 1571.] It was in the year 1571 that the infernal monsters engaged in burning heretics in Spain sent into Mexico the terrible Inquisition. The world immediately within control of that loathsome instrument of Satan, Philip II. of Spain, was becoming purged of its dissenters, and, with his diabolic instinct for making misery more miserable, he reached out his bloody hands towards his western possessions. Thirteen years previously Charles V., the father of Philip, had charged him upon his dying bed to show no mercy to heretics. Says a learned writer upon events of Spanish history: "The devout, prayerful (shall we say conscientious) bigot, with dying breath, urged his son Philip to extirpate heresy from his realms by all the energies of the Inquisition, without favor or mercy to any one. 'So,' says he, 'you shall have my blessing, and the Lord shall prosper all your undertakings.' Philip fulfilled these injunctions with cruelty which one would think must have flooded with tears the eyes of angels."
