church, and much of the remainder in vast entailed estates--it was nearly
impossible for the masses of the people to become owners of any portion
of the land. To be an agricultural day-labourer at less than a beggar's
wage could hardly be a tempting pursuit for a proud and indolent race.
It was no wonder therefore that the business of the brigand, the
smuggler, the professional mendicant became from year to year more
attractive and more overdone; while an ever-thickening swarm of priests,
friars, and nuns of every order, engendered out of a corrupt and decaying
society, increasing the general indolence, immorality, and unproductive
consumption, and frightfully diminishing the productive force of the
country, fed like locusts upon what was left in the unhappy land.
"To shirk labour, infinite numbers become priests and friars,"
said, a good Catholic, in the year 1608--[Gir. Soranzo].

Before the end of the reign of Philip III. the peninsula, which might
have been the granary of the world, did not produce food enough for its
own population. Corn became a regular article of import into Spain, and
would have come in larger quantities than it did had the industry of the
country furnished sufficient material to exchange for necessary food.

And as if it had been an object of ambition with the priests and
courtiers who then ruled a noble country, to make at exactly this epoch
the most startling manifestation of human fatuity that the world had ever
seen, it was now resolved by government to expel by armed force nearly
the whole stock of intelligent and experienced labour, agricultural and
mechanical, from the country. It is unnecessary to dwell long upon an
event which, if it were not so familiarly known to mankind, would seem
almost incredible. But the expulsion of the Moors is, alas! no
exaggerated and imaginary satire, but a monument of wickedness and
insanity such as is not often seen in human history.