Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/448

434, and, as sovereigns, highly worthy of imitation; but they did not seem to have merited all the praises that were bestowed upon them by the Spanish historians. They did not live like man and wife, having all things in common; but, like two princes in close alliance. They neither loved nor hated each other; were seldom in company together, had each a separate council, and were frequently jealous of one another in the administration. But they were inseparably united in their common interests; always acting upon the same principles, and forwarding the same ends. Their first object was the regulation of their government, which the civil wars had thrown into the greatest disorder. Rapine, outrage, and murder, were become so common, as not only to interrupt commerce, but, in a great measure, to suspend all intercourse between one place and another. These evils the joint sovereigns suppressed by their wise policy, at the same time that they extended the royal prerogative. By supporting a society, called the Holy Brotherhood, formed to apprehend and carry delinquents to punishment, and other salutary measures, prompt and impartial administration was restored, and with it tranquillity and order.

But, at the same time they were giving vigour to civil government, and securing their subjects from violence and oppression, an intemperate zeal led them, 1480, to establish an ecclesiastical tribunal, equally contrary to the natural rights of mankind and the mild spirit of the gospel, the Inquisition. The same zeal, however, which thus led to the depopulation and barbarising of Castile and Arragon, led also to their aggrandizement. The kingdom of Granada alone, remained of all the Mahometan possessions in Spain. Princes