to be on the borders of Spain. The marquis unexpectedly advanced upon him with fifty men wellarmed, carried him off prisoner, and conducted him to Madrid.

The whole imposture was speedily discovered at Lisbon; the council of Madrid condemned the legate Saavedra to be flogged, and sent to the galleys for ten years; but the most admirable circumstance was, that pope Paul IV. confirmed subsequently all that the impostor had established; out of the plenitude of his divine power he rectified all the little irregularities of the various procedures, and rendered sacred what before was merely human. Of what importance the arm which God employs in his sacred service?

Qu'importe de quel bras Dieu daigne se servir?

Such was the manner in which the inquisition became established at Lisbon; and the whole kingdom extolled the wisdom and providence of God on the occasion.

To conclude, the methods of procedure adopted by this tribunal are generally known; it is well known how strongly they are opposed to the false equity and blind reason of all other tribunals in the world. Men are imprisoned on the mere accusation of persons the most infamous; a son may denounce his father, and the wife her husband; the accused is never confronted with the accusers; and the property of the person convicted is confiscated for the benefit of the judges: such at least was the manner of its proceeding down to our own times. Surely in this we must perceive something decidedly divine; for it is absolutely incomprehensible that men should have patiently submitted to this yoke.

At length count Aranda has obtained the blessings of all Europe by paring the nails and filing the teeth of the monster in Spain; it breathes, however, still.*

The subsequent history of the inquisition is well known, as well as the enlightened attempts to revive it in Spain, under the benign and appropriate auspices of its present sovereign.-T.

INSTINCT.

INSTINCTUS, impulsus,' impulse;-but what power impels us?

All feeling is instinct.

A secret conformity of our organs to their respective objects forms our instinct.

It is solely by instinct that we perform numberless involuntary movements, just as it is by instinct that we possess curiosity, that we run after novelty, that menaces terrify us, that contempt irritates us, that an air of submission appeases us, and that tears soften us.

We are governed by instinct, as well as cats and goats; this is one further circumstance in which we resemble the mere animal tribes-a resemblance as incontestable as that of our blood, our necessities, and the various functions of our bodies.

Our instinct is never so shrewd and skilful as theirs, and does not even approach it; a calf and a lamb, as soon as they are born, rush to the fountain of their mother's milk; but unless the mother of the infant clasped it in her arms, and folded it to her bosom, it would inevitably perish.

No woman in a state of pregnancy was ever invincibly impelled to prepare for her infant a convenient wicker cradle, as the wren with its bill and claws prepares a nest for her offspring. But the power of reflection which we possess, in conjunction with two industrious hands presented to us by nature, raises us to an equality with the instinct of animals, and in the course of time places us infinitely above them, both in respect to good and evil: a proposition condemned by the members of the ancient parliament and by the Sorbonne, natural philosophers of distinguished eminence, and who, it is well known, have admirably promoted the perfection of the arts.

Our instinct, in the first place, impels us to beat our brother when he vexes us, if we are roused into a passion with him and feel that we are stronger than he is. Afterwards, our sublime reason leads us on to

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the invention of arrows, swords, pikes, and at length musquets, to kill our neighbours withal.

Instinct alone urges us all to make love-" Amor omnibus idem;" but Virgil, Tibullus, and Ovid sing it.

It is from instinct alone that a young artisan stands gazing with respect and admiration before the superfine gilt coach of a commissioner of taxes. Reason comes to the assistance of the young artisan; he is made a collector; he becomes polished; he embezzles; he rises to be a great man in his turn, and dazzles the eyes of his former comrades as he lolls at ease in his own carriage, more profusely gilded than that which originally excited his admiration and ambition.

What is this instinct which governs the whole animal kingdom, and which in us is strengthened by reason or repressed by habit? Is it "divinæ particula auræ?" Yes, undoubtedly it is something divine; for everything is so. Everything is the incomprehensible effect of an incomprehensible cause. Everything is swayed, is impelled by nature. We reason about everything, and originate nothing.

INTEREST.

WE shall teach mankind nothing, when we tell them that everything we do is done from interest. What! it will be said, is it from motives of interest that the wretched fakir remains stark-naked under the burning sun, loaded with chains, dying with hunger, half devoured by vermin, and devouring them in his turn? Yes, most undoubtedly it is; as we have stated elsewhere, he depends upon ascending to the eighteenth heaven, and looks with an eye of pity on the man who will be admitted only into the ninth.

The interest of the Malabar widow, who burns herself with the corpse of her husband, is to recover him in another world, and be there more happy even than the fakir. For, together with their metempsychosis, the Indians have another world; they resemble ourselves; their system admits of contradictions.

Were you ever acquainted with any king or republic

that made either war or peace, that issued decrees, or entered into conventions, from any other motive than that of interest?

With respect to the interest of money, consult, in the great Encyclopedia, the article of M. d'Alembert on Calculation, and that of M. Boucher d'Argis on Jurisprudence. We will venture to add a few reflections.

1. Are gold and silver merchandize? Yes; the author of the Spirit of Laws does not think so when he says:*"Money, which is the price of commodities, is hired and not bought."

It is both lent and bought. I buy gold with silver, and silver with gold; and their price fluctuates in all commercial countries from day to day.

The law of Holland requires bills of exchange to be paid in the silver coin of the country, and not in gold, if the creditor demands it. Then I buy silver money, and I pay for it in gold, or in cloth, corn, or diamonds.

I am in want of money, corn, or diamonds, for the space of a year; the corn, money, or diamond merchant says I could, for this year, sell my money, corn, or diamonds to advantage. Let us estimate at four, five, or six per cent, according to the usage of the country, what I should lose by letting you have it. You shall, for instance, return me at the end of the year, twenty-one carats of diamonds for the twenty which I now lend you; twenty-one sacks of corn for the twenty; twenty-one thousand crowns for twenty thousand crowns. Such is interest. It is established among all nations by the law of nature.

The max

imum or highest rate of interest depends, in every country, on its own particular law.† At Rome money is lent on pledges at two and a half per cent. according to law, and the pledges are sold, if the money be not paid at the appointed time. I do not lend upon pledges, and I require only the interest customary in

*Book xxii. chap. 19.

The rate of interest ought to be free, and the law is not right in fixing it, except in cases in which it has not been determined by a special contract.-French Ed.

Holland. If I was in China, I should ask of you the customary interest at Macao and Canton.

2. While the parties were proceeding with this bargain at Amsterdam, it happened that there arrived from St. Magliore, a jansenist, (and the fact is perfectly true, he was called the Abbé des Issarts); this jansenist says to the Dutch merchant, "Take care what you are about; you are absolutely incurring damnation; money must not produce money,

' nummus

nummum non parit.' No one is allowed to receive interest for his money but when he is willing to sink the principal. The way to be saved is, to make a contract with the gentleman; and for twenty thousand crowns which you are never to have returned to you, you and your heirs will receive a thousand crowns per annum to all eternity."

"You jest," replies the Dutchman; you are in this very case proposing to me a usury that is absolutely of the nature of an infinite series. I should (that is myself and heirs would) in that case receive back my capital at the end of twenty years, the double of it in forty, the four-fold of it in eighty; this you see would be just an infinite series. I cannot, besides, lend for more than twelve months, and I am contented with a thousand crowns as a remuneration."

THE ABBE DES ISSARTS.

I am grieved for your Dutch soul. God forbade the Jews to lend at interest, and you are well aware that a citizen of Amsterdam should punctually obey the laws of commerce given in a wilderness to runaway vagrants who had no commerce.

THE DUTCHMAN.

That is clear: all the world ought to be Jews; but it seems to me, that the law permitted the Hebrew horde to gain as much usury as they could from foreigners, and that, in conseqence of this permission, they managed their affairs in the sequel remarkably well. Besides, the prohibition against one Jew's taking interest from another must necessarily have become obsolete, since our Lord Jesus, when preaching at Jerusalem, expressly said, that interest was in his time cent.