ten years ago, by those from whom I could not expect so much courtesy. If the forbearance of some, and approbation of others, arose from a belief that the interests of my country had a greater share in urging me to incur the ordeal of criticism, than the vanity of authorship, it affords me an additional source of consolation.

The tone of impartiality I have adopted now, as on every former occasion, and those modifications of opinion, suggested by a more careful examination of facts, will necessarily expose me to the censure of those, who think consistency in error to be the best criterion of virtue. Invariably actuated by a desire to promote the happiness of the greater number, I had no other course left, than the one I have pursued: satisfied, that the surest, perhaps the only way of diminishing those fatal effects, which the slavery of party and faction have, heretofore, exercised on the liberties of mankind, will be found in observing the strictest impartiality towards all those who divide political society, I have never lost sight of that object in the following pages; though this path neither leads to ministerial patronage, emolument nor place, yet it is that which honour and patriotism dictate.

Let it not be imagined from the sketch I

have drawn of these abuses, which ignorance and fanaticism have introduced and perpetuated in the religious system of Spain, that I am the less favourable to toleration in its utmost latitude; or that I conceive the plan of exclusion, which continues to prevail against our Catholic brethren and fellowcitizens, is less injurious to the state, than urgent to those, who are thereby debarred from the enjoyment of their political rights: unable to say all I could wish on this subject, I shall only add, that I recognize no limits to religious tolerance, except those which may be opposed to it by morality and

reason.

The day on which Protestant and Catholic shall meet in the same temple, to adore one common Father, will, in my estimation, exhibit the greatest triumph ever obtained by humanity need I say that this glorious victory can never be achieved while the system of exclusion exists? It is not amongst the least absurd of those anomalies, which I have been called upon to expose, in treating the religious or political affairs of Spain, that while the various sects, into which Christianity is unhappily divided, fervently invoke the protection of Providence, they are, with scarcely a single exception, more or less into